Dunkeld and Birnam
-> Scotland
-> Central Scotland
-> Perthshire
-> Strath Tay to Loch Tay
-> Dunkeld and Birnam
DUNKELD, twelve miles north of Perth on the A9, also served by trains between Perth and Inverness and buses #23 and #27 (bus #22 on Sun), was proclaimed Scotland's ecclesiastical capital by Kenneth MacAlpine in 850. The town is one of the area's most pleasant communities, with handsome whitewashed houses, appealing arts and crafts shops and a lovely cathedral. The tourist office is at The Cross in the town centre (July & Aug Mon-Sat 9am-6.30pm, Sun 11am-5pm; April-June, Sept & Oct Mon-Sat 9.30am-5pm, Sun 11am-4pm; Nov-March Wed-Sun 9.30am-5pm; tel 01350/727688). Dunkeld's partly ruined cathedral is on the northern side of town, in an idyllic setting amid lawns and trees on the east bank of the Tay. The present structure, in Gothic and Norman style, consists of the fourteenth-century choir and the fifteenth-century nave. The choir, restored in 1600 (and several times since), now serves as the parish church, while the nave remains roofless apart from the clocktower.
Dunkeld is linked to its sister community, BIRNAM, by Thomas Telford's seven-arched bridge of 1809. This little village has a place in history thanks to Shakespeare, for it was on Dunsinane Hill, to the southeast of the village, that Macbeth declared: "I will not be afraid of death and bane/Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane", only to be told later by a messenger:
As I did stand my watch upon the Hill,
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon me thought
The Wood began to move .
The Birnam Oak, a gnarly old character propped up by crutches just on the edge of the village, is inevitably claimed to be a survivor of the infamous mobile forest. Several centuries after Shakespeare another literary personality, Beatrix Potter, drew inspiration from the area, recalling her childhood holidays here when penning the Peter Rabbit stories. An exhibition on Potter, directed both at children and parents, can be found in the impressive barrel-fronted Birnam Institute on the main road, an Arts Lottery-funded theatre and community centre. It incorporates the Beatrix Potter Garden (Mon-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 2-4pm; free), where various characters from the books are hidden amongst the bushes.
Copyright Rough Guides Ltd as trustees for its authors. Published by Rough Guides. All rights reserved. The Rough Guides name is a trademark of Rough Guides Ltd. |
back