Illuminating the Vale of Virtue: New Light on Perth’s Lost Charterhouse

The Rhoda Fothergill Memorial Lecture

Perth’s Carthusian priory – the Charterhouse – is one of Scotland’s least understood but most historically significant medieval monastic sites. Co-founded by James I and Joan Beaufort in the fifteenth century, but destroyed during the Scottish Reformation, it leaves no obvious above-ground remains in the modern Perth landscape but has been an intermittent focus of local historians, including Robert Scott Fittis and Rhoda Fothergill.

This lecture explores two interconnected strands of research ongoing as part of the Perth Charterhouse project. It will explore new insights arising from both research into the documentary evidence (both held at the NRS and Perth & Kinross Archives) and results of our initial phase of Ground-Penetrating Radar (GRP) scanning of the site in September 2024 (undertaken by AOC Archaeology, with support from Gavin Lindsay, All Ages Ltd., and financial support from the Strathmartine Trust). It will conclude with some reflections on unfolding plans for the Perth Charterhouse Project, particularly its community-based activities, in both the shorter and longer term.

This talk is the Third Annual Rhoda Fothergill Memorial Lecture, marking the significant contribution made by Rhoda Fothergill to Perth’s cultural and historical life. It is free to attend and is delivered in partnership between The Friends of Perth & Kinross Archive, Perth Civic Trust and Perthshire Society of Natural Science. The talk will be held in Soutar Theatre, AK Bell Library.

Speaker biography

The talk will be delivered by Dr Lucy Dean, Senior Lecturer in History, University of the Highlands and Islands. Lucy is a senior lecturer and interim head of the Centre for History at UHI, and has collaborated with Prof Richard Oram, University of Stirling, and CPK/ Perth & Kinross Archive and other local organisations, on the Perth Charterhouse Project for several years.

In 2024 her monograph titled Death & the Royal Succession in Scotland, c.1214–c.1543: Ritual, Ceremony and Power was published with Boydell, and she has published widely on Scottish royalty, ceremony, material culture and royal masculinity, and is finalising her first publication about the Charterhouse project at present. She is a keen advocate of public history and taking history beyond the academy to work with the public in exploring the past in a variety of ways.