St Martha’s Hospital and St Fillan’s Well, Aberdour

St Martha’s Hospital and St Fillan’s Well, Aberdour

James Douglas, 1st earl of Morton (d.1493) founded St Martha’s hospital in Aberdour in 1474. It was located close to a holy well dedicated to St Fillan whose water was believed to cure nervous ailments, blindness, and deafness. The location of the well is recorded in the name of an eighteenth-century house ‘Wellside’, located at 45-47 Main Street, Aberdour. The tradition of those with eye problems visiting the well and using its water, seems to have survived well into the modern era. Writing in the 1850s, William Ross stated that this was a practice that was within living memory. The proximity of the site to Inchcolm means that it is possible that the hospital could also have been intended to serve any pilgrims heading to that island, where an image of St Columba was the subject of miracle stories. By 1486, frustrated that the project had not been realised despite a number of endowments of lands, the earl of Morton granted the lands and building to four sisters of the Order of St Francis, and a bull of 1487 extinguished the name and rights of the hospital.

sacredlandscapesoffife

1470

tt27@st-andrews.ac.uk

Site

160

04/08/2021

10/05/2023 04:24:19 pm

(1) Simon Taylor & Gilbert Markus, The Place-Names of Fife. Volume One. West Fife between Leven and Forth (Donington, 2006), p. 55. (2) William Ross, ‘Notice of the Hospital of St Martha at Aberdour, Fife’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, volume iii (1857-60), pp. 214-220

cm x cm x cm

current,56.05715766036127,-3.2960772509977687;

St Martha’s Hospital and St Fillan’s Well, Aberdour

TEXT

Building

1560

Catholic

Aberdour