Widening Support

During the restoration members of the Scalan Association were kept informed by a twice-yearly newsletter.  Scalan News (which developed into a magazine) also serves to announce the Annual Pilgrimage Mass on the first Sunday of July and to report on it afterwards.  Hundreds attend each year.  Readers began to write in, and then to e-mail their queries and reactions.  There is now a lively and informative Scalan website www.scalan.co.uk which not only reproduces the magazine online but also ranges wider than the seminary in Glenlivet.  It was developed by Mike Morrison of Inverness, whose pursuit of Spanish Gordons connected with St Margaret’s Church, Huntly, is typical of the variety on offer.  It was the hope of the three founding Fathers that their new project would ‘promote and foster, as far as the funds of the Association permit, a knowledge and interest in the College of Scalan and also the other monuments associated with Scottish Catholic life during the penal era.’ [My italics, as former editor].  This has largely been achieved through the magazine (and now the website) with income generated by helping to attract - and keep - new members.

Scalan News is a heritage magazine, but sometimes it has leaned towards scholarship.  Shortly before his death the Abbot Mark Dilworth, last of Fort Augustus, welcomed fresh light on links between Buchan and the Scots monasteries in Germany at Regensburg and elsewhere.  There have been Scalan-related discoveries too.  But the light-hearted local stories by Isobel Grant which achieved book form as Tales of the Braes of Glenlivet are more typical.  Ann Dean of Insch became the illustrator, as well as occasional writer, adding greatly to the magazine’s appeal with sketches humorous and atmospheric.  Maps appeared early on the back cover, introducing sites like Scalan in one issue after another:  this editor’s move to Morar brought the West Highlands increasingly under review.  In recent years rising interest in family history has produced The Glenlivet Project, truly worldwide with a website www.clicktrees.com.  Maureen Gibb of Aberdeen and Ottawa provided the link.  Improved by colour photography, Scalan News is now produced under the leadership of Mrs Sylvia Toovey, co-tenant with her husband of the Braes chapel house.

Visitors have been coming to Scalan in a spirit of pilgrimage since publicity began to be generated in the post-war period.  Sometimes they travel in coaches from city parishes far to gather for worship in summer, but others come when the place is quieter.  By no means all of them are Catholics or Christians, for the appeal of Scalan reaches past boundaries.  Although the Old College is featured in one of the area’s sign-posted walks, bolder spirits arrive by way of the steep ‘Ladder’ from Strathdon or along the ‘Whisky Road’ from the Lecht.  The Scalan Association is open to all who send £10 to Mrs Jane McEwan at Gallowhill, GLENLIVET AB37 9DL.   Membership is now in the six hundreds.  The latest count shows women outnumbering men except when clergymen are weighed in the balance - as they certainly ought to be!