Lincluden Collegiate Church

Lincluden Collegiate Church stands on a green beside the River Cluden at the edge of a housing estate on the western outskirts of Dumfries. A Benedictine nunnery was founded here in the 1160s, but in 1389 Archibald the Grim, Lord of Galloway, had it suppressed, claiming the nuns spent its income dressing their daughters in fine clothes, and installed a provost, eight priests and 24 bedesmen to pray for his family. The church built for him around 1400 by the French master mason John Morrow has a choir that Historic Scotland ranks among the finest Gothic architecture in Scotland. Inside are a stone screen carved with angels and scenes from the life of Christ, seats for the priests, a piscina and, in the north wall, the great tomb of Princess Margaret, Lady of Galloway, who died in 1450. The last Mass was said in the 1580s, and the Maxwells turned the domestic ranges into a house. The site is open at all times; park on Abbey Lane.