Christianity Comes Early to Dundonald
Sheltered from the prevailing winds by the Clevance Hills to the south west, and dominated by its 14th Century Castle, Dundonald village occupies a very favourable position at the heart of Ayrshire. Today, at the start of the 21st Century, it is a community of some 3000 people yet it still retains many of the characteristics of a village, with its Church, its school, its few Main Street shops and its surrounding fertile countryside.
Farming is still a major activity in the parish, though most of the residents of the village travel elsewhere to work. Transport links are good by road, rail or air, and yet there remains a feeling of living in the country. These attractions make Dundonald a desirable place to live and new houses have been steadily added to the village over the last 50 years.
And it seems that the attractiveness of its location is not a recent phenomenon. Archaeological investigations by Historic Scotland in the 1980’s revealed that the hill on which the castle now stands has been the site of human habitation for around 5000 years. Stone Age man, attracted by the relative security and the sheltered nature of the Castlehill, occupied the site from around 3000 BC. The hill would be easily defended and the fertility of the surrounding country-side would offer opportunities for cultivation and the hunting of wild animals in the forest and scrub which at that time covered much of the central Ayrshire plain. Later the hill became the site of a Dark Age hill fort or Dun, perhaps a minor stronghold of the Strath Clyde Britons who occupied much of southern Scotland and north west England after the departure of the Romans in the 5th century. Yet later in time, around the middle of the 12th Century, Dundonald became the principal residence of the High Steward of Scotland, leading eventually to the Castle becoming a Royal residence when Robert, the 6th High Steward, became the first monarch of the Stewart Dynasty.
Christianity also appears to have come early to Dundonald. History records that a lady known as Modwenna, a missionary from the Celtic Christian settlement at Whithorn, founded seven Churches in Scotland in the years around 500. These include one at Dundevenal, an early name for Dundonald. Others were at Dumbarton, Stirling, Edinburgh, Trapain Law and Longforgan. Some of these were strongholds of the Strathclyde Britons, and it seems that the missionaries from Whithorn, including Modwenna, were successful in converting the Britons to Christianity. Thus, it appears that Dundonald was one of the earliest Christian settlements in Scotland, and has a Christian history spanning some 1500+ years.
The precise location of this early Church is not known but it seems likely that it would have been within the protection of the Dark Age fort which the archaeological excavations confirmed existed on the Castle Hill. It would have been a very small building, little more than a cell, but would have been of special significance to the community that occupied the fort. But the final demise of the Fort appears to have been catastrophic. Archaeology revealed that a major fire occurred around 1000 AD, a conflagration so intense as to have melted the stonework, some vitrified pieces of which were unearthed. The Church, if it was still sited within the Fort, would have been consumed along with the rest of the settlement. Nothing is known about the 100 years or so that followed the catastrophic destruction of the hill fort but, at this point, there may well have been a break in the continuity of Christian worship here. Note, a “Monk’s Cell” appears on early maps of the area and was sited where Hill House is above Hillhouse Quarry. The area is long consumed by the quarry but, interestingly, a site adjacent to Hill House is named “Chapel Hill” (B. McM.).