Balmaclellan

About Balmaclellan

Balmaclellan is a small village but hosts some of the best views in all the Glenkens. Get up high to the viewing point for some extraordinary views of the Rhins of Kells. There’s also a village shop and the Smiddy, a recently converted community facility that’s well worth a nosy around.

Look to the north and you’ll see a simple but distinct feature on the skyline, a feature which played its part in the village’s growth – the small mound or motte of a 12th or 13th century castle.

At the western end of the village you will find the other feature important to its history – the Parish Church. The site of a church since the 15th century, the current building dates to the 1750s and is a Listed Building along with its surrounding churchyard. Amongst its gravestones you will find the only civic Crimean War Memorial in Scotland, built in the 1850s to commemorate five soldiers who died in the war with Russia; the Covenanter Robert Grierson; an unmarked stone said to mark the grave of a witch; and the local stone carver, Robert Paterson. Immortalised by Sir Walter Scott as ‘Old Mortality’, Paterson dedicated most of his working life to voluntarily restoring Covenanter memorials and a statue of him with his pony can be seen set into the churchyard wall.

Even older traces have been found in the area including the bronze Balmaclellan strip and mirror. Carefully wrapped in cloth and placed in a peat bog during the Iron Age some 2,000 years ago, they now reside at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.