18 Century Heather Priests Hide-away

This is a hidden gem but go soon for by October basic renovation will be complete. No amount of restoration will detract from the magic and bleakness reflecting hardship and conviction.

The “heather priests” were a small clandestine 18th Century community in the secluded Braes of Glenlivet at a time when Catholicism was still illegal in Scotland.

Scalan Seminary, which dates to 1716, was then Scotland’s only teaching college for priests and set up to secure a future for the faith following the brutal years of the Reformation.

With the help of the Duke of Gordon, himself a Catholic, the seminary was built in the remote location near Tomintoul with the modest property naturally shielded by the undulating terrain and tiny access track.

Father Michael Briody, chairman of the Scalan Association, said those living at the seminary had lived in danger given the penal laws of the day.

With Hanoverian soldiers routinely patrolling the countryside following the 1715 Jacobite Uprising, Father Briody claimed the residents of the seminary, which sat among a farming settlement, risked threats and attack.

During the 1720s, at least two attacks were recorded at Scalan, where 64 priests were trained until its closure in 1799.