Logie in Angus - Three Places, One Name

  

The Three Logies of Angus

There are three places in Angus which bear the name Logie. Two of these are - or were at one time - parishes, located at opposite ends of the county.  The northerly Logie is 5 miles north-west of Montrose, and indeed was originally known as Logie-Montrose.  This parish (which borders the Mearns) subsumed the neighbouring parish of Pert around the year 1610 and became Logie-Pert.  Another former designation of Logie was Over Inchbrayock.  However, its very earliest designation was Ecclesia de login cuthel.  Thomas Owen Clancy (cited below), tentatively links this second element with Gaelic còmhdhal/Scots couthal ‘open air court’.

Logie Pert

   Logie House, Kirriemuir, is a modified 16th century tower house, which I suppose just falls short of designation as a castle.  The laird's house, a little to the south of the town, has an 18th century walled garden which contains a herb garden, and is open to the public.  The estate was, for centuries, a property of the family of Kinloch.

   According to the Rev J. G. Mc Pherson in Strathmore, Past and Present (Perth, 1885. p. 225):

The family of Kinloch of Logie may be traced to the twelfth, if not to the ninth, century. There is a charter extant which was confirmed by William the Lion to Sir John de Kinloch. One of the family was raised to the high position of physician to King James the Sixth. The baronetcy was forfeited after the battle of Culloden. On the passing of the General Police Act, Colonel Kinloch of Logie was appointed the first Inspector of that force in the counties and burghs in Scotland. The house of Logie stands about a mile south of the town. It is surrounded by the largest trees in the parish. One ash-tree measures twenty-one feet in circumference. Irrigation was very' extensively and successfully practised by Mr. Kinloch in 1770.

Logie House, Kirriemuir

   

The Place-name - Ancient Church Sites

The name Logie was generally believed to be Gaelic and appears to connote 'hollow' or low-lying ground', probably deriving from Logaigh, later Lagaigh. The situation of the church of Logie (Pert) suits this, sitting in a conclavity near the River North Esk. However, Thomas Owen Clancy in a recent article ('Logie: an ecclesiastical place-name element in eastern Scotland,' The Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 10, 2016) convincingly argues that 'the term which actually underlies
some of the eastern logie names was *login ‘ecclesiastical site, church’, a productive and hitherto undetected ecclesiastical place-name element in eastern Scotland'. This seems particularly significant where the name is cognate with recognisable ancient parishes. It has a connection with the Latin locus, signifying 'holy place'.

   In the case of Logie-Dundee, the heart of the parish was a dell which now forms the route of Lochee Road, between the rising ground on either side which culminates in the hills of Balgay and the Law.  The parish church, however, which may be a very ancient Christian site, is situated on  a small but prominent hill on one side of the low lying road.  Here we may have an unrecognised, very early Pictish Christian settlement.  Topographic and other studies might in  time relate this place possibly with the supposed Pictish foundation at Dargie (Invergowrie) on the north coast of the River Tay, several miles to the south-west.  In the same way the northern Logie (Pert) may be linked in the sacral landscape to the nearby, attested church site on Inchbrayock.  It is unfortunate that neither of the Angus Logie parishes have yielded up archaeological confirmation of early Church activity (though some carved stones were found at Logie and were subsequently lost).

Logie-Dundee

 The most southerly Logie is Angus is now firmly incorporated within the city of Dundee, but was a separate parish before being incorporated in the parish of Liff, to the west, and then part of Liff and Benvie, before being added to Dundee.  It was first mentioned in the records of the Abbey of Scone, between 1165 and 1178, when ecclesia de Logyn Dundho was confirmed as a possession of that abbey by the Bishop of St Andrews.  

   The following is taken from my previous post about Logie in Dundee (Dundee's Oldest Suburb (and its fleeting ghost).  The final word about this lost parish is still to be written.  In the meantime, the post following this one will direct the reader's attention to the mysterious legend of The Dark Lady of Logie.  

Some years ago I read a debate in a local paper about what was Dundee's earliest suburb. I seem to remember the journalist said it was the Magdalen Green, which would have been to the west of the medieval town, adjacent to the River Tay. But there was no doubt in my mind that the earliest satellite settlement was probably Logie, on the north-west road out of the burgh. Did pre-industrial up and comers migrate here to escape the sewage filled vennels of Dundee? No, it was likely an independent, adjacent settlement that in time became incorporated into the town, never quite blossoming into full identity on its own. Despite the fact that the place-name Logie seems to derive from the Gaelic word for hollow, the most prominent feature in the area is the mound which overlooks Lochee Road, and around which the latter curves around. Once the site of an old kirk, the green hill is now a forlorn graveyard stranded in an urban settling. But the landscape, a holy site on a hill once crowned by a church, gives the clue that we have here a candidate for an ancient Celtic church. Artificial mounds and small hillocks (think of St Vigeans near Arbroath) were once favoured by early ecclesiastical builders in our area. The church and lands of Logie-Dundee were gifted to the Abbey of Scone by Alexander I in the early 12th century. But little more is heard of it until it is mentioned in the Pontifical Offices of St Andrews under the year 1243. On the 11th September, 1243, Bishop David of Birnam travelled here from Benvie to the west and dedicated the kirk anew. It was part of a grand tour, a rolling programme of the bishop re-dedicating existing, ancient places of worship in the east of Scotland. (Many other Angus churches had been visited and re-dedicated in the previous year).