Newabbey, a village and a parish of E Kirkcudbrightshire. The village stands on the right bank of Newabbey Pow, at the northern base of Criffel (1867 feet), 6 miles ESE of Killywhan station and 7¾ S of Dumfries, under which it has a post office. Here also are two inns, a public school, the parish church, a Free church, and St Mary's Roman Catholic church (1824; 50 sittings). The old parish church of 1731, on the S side of the abbey ruins, has been demolished; and a new one was built of granite in 1876-77 on the lands of Friars' Yard at a cost of £2400. A Latin cross in plan, 13th century Gothic in style, it has an open timber roof, 400 sittings, and a belfry 40 feet high.
Sweetheart or New Abbey, after which the parish is named, lies just to the E of the village. It took the latter designation, 'New,' to distinguish it from Dundrennan Abbey in Rerwick parish, which was founded 30 years earlier, and came to be popularly called the Old Abbey. New Abbey itself, which, like all Cistercian abbeys, was dedicated to the Virgin, was founded in 1275 by Devergoil, who also founded Baliol College, Oxford, and built the old bridge at Dumfries. She was third daughter of Allan, lord of Galloway, a great-great-granddaughter of David I., and mother of the vassal king, John Baliol. Her husband, John de Baliol, had died in 1269 at Barnard Castle. There he was buried, all but his heart, which Devergoil caused to be embalmed and casketed in a 'coffyne of evorie'-
'And always when she gaed till meat,
That coffyne she gart by her set;
And till her lord, as in presens,
Ay to that she dyd reverens.'
When in 1289 she died at the age of eighty, her body, according to her directions, was brought from Barnard Castle to New Abbey, and buried in a rich tomb before the High Altar, the heart of her much-loved lord being laid on hers. Hence the name Dulce Cor or Sweetheart Abbey. Hugh de Burgh, prior of Lanercost, according to the manuscript chronicle of that house, composed an elegy for Devergoil, which was inscribed on her tomb:-
'In Dervorgil, a sybil sagge doth dye, as
Mary contemplative, as Martha pious;
To her, oh deign, high King.! rest to impart,
whom this stone covers, with her husband's heart.'
The abbey was colonised by Cistercian monks, and appears to have been richly endowed. Grose assigns to it possessions, which seem, from the charter of the bishopric of Edinburgh, to have belonged to the Abbey of Holyrood. But irrespective of these, it owned the churches of Newabbey, Kirkpatrick-Durham, Crossmichael, Buittle, and Kirkcolm, the baronies of Lochkinderloch and Lochpatrick, and much other property. In 1513 the monks placed themselves and their tenants under the protection of Lord Maxwell; in 1544 they feued to his family at a low rate, in compensation for services done them, their barony of Lochpatrick; and in 1548 they gave him the five-mark lands of LochArthur, and constituted him heritable bailie of the whole jurisdiction over all their lands. The property was in 1587 vested in the Crown by the annexation act; granted in 1624 to Sir Robert Spottiswood and Sir John Hay; resigned by them in 1633, to be given to the bishop of Edinburgh; given back, soon after the suppression of Episcopacy, to Sir Robert Spottiswood; and sold by his heir to the family of Copeland. Part of it, however-consisting of the lands of Drum in Newabbey-was burdened with a mortification by Queen Anne, in favour of the second minister of Dumfries. John, the last abbot but one, sat in the parliament of August 1 560, which approved the Confession of Faith; and the last and most noted abbot was Gilbert Brown, who had a written controversy, on the doctrines of Romanism, with the famous John Welsh of Ayr (then of Kirkcudbright). The prototype of Scott's 'Abbot,' he was denounced in 1596 by the commissioners of the General Assembly to the king as a Jesuit and excommunicated papist, and recommended to be seized and punished. Ten years later he was with difficulty apprehended by Lord Cranston, captain of the Border guard, and, after brief imprisonment, banished the kingdom. He died at Paris in 1612. The exquisite ruins of Sweetheart Abbey rise from the middle of a fine level field of 25 acres, the Precinct, round which ran a boundary wall of granite boulders, 8 or 10 feet high. The ruins served as a quarry till 1779, when £42 was subscribed by the parish minister and some of the neighbouring gentry to purchase their preservation; and since 1862 several hundreds have been spent on repairs, the removal of disfigurements, etc. - The goodly chapterhouse suffered most from ruthless dilapidation; and little remains now but the ruined conventual church -a cruciform structure, mainly late First Pointed in style. With an extreme length of 203 feet, it consisted of a six-bayed nave (110 x 66 feet), a transept (115 feet long), an aisleless choir (28 feet wide), and a central saddle-back tower (92 feet high). In the roof of the S transept is an escutcheon, charged with 2 pastoral staves in saltire; over them a heart, and beneath them 3 mullets of 5 points, 2 and 1; said to be the arms of the abbey. An inscription over the escutcheon was taken on report by Grose to be 'Christus Maritus meus;' but since has been found to run, 'Chus tim o' nid'- 'Choose time of need.' The beautiful W rose window, the E window, and those of choir, clerestory, and N transept are fairly entire, but elsewhere mullions and tracery are wanting; and the whole of the roof is gone. 'The predominating forms,' to quote from Billings, `have all the graceful solemn dignity of the Early English style in its best day; and the Second Pointed or Decorated style has just come in to give richness and variety to the tracery of the windows. Some features, such as the depression of the upper window of the transept, are instances of the independent eccentricity of some of the Gothic artists. 'The Abbot's Tower, ¼ mile NE, is a strong square ruin, 40 to 50 feet high.
The parish, containing also Drumburn village, 3 miles SSE of Newabbey, in 1633 was also known as Loch-Kinderloch, from its ancient church having stood on the larger islet in Loch Kindar. It is bounded NW by Lochrutton, NE by Troqueer, E by the estuary of the river Nith, S by Kirkbean, SW by Colvend, and W by Kirkgunzeon. Its utmost length, from NW to SE, is 77/8 miles; its breadth varies between 15/8 and 4 miles; and its area is 15, 424¼ acres, of which 1709 are foreshore and 464¾ water. Loch Arthur or Lochend Loch (4¼ x 2¾ furl.; 250 feet) lies on the Kirkgunzeon border, and sends off Kirkgunzeon Lane. Glensone Burn or Newabbey Pow, which rises near this, winds 7¼ miles east-south-eastward to the estuary (for the last ½ mile along the Troqueer boundary), and is joined by Kinharvie Burn, running 25/8 miles northward, by Glen Burn, running 3¼ miles north-north-eastward, and by a third, running 7 furlongs north-by-eastward from Loch Kindar (6¼ x 2¼ furl.; 100 feet). Triangular Lochaber Loch (4¼ x 3 furl.; 300 feet) lies on the Troqueer border. The shore, 3 miles in extent, is low; inland, the surface rises to 1867 feet at Crifffel, 593 at Glen Hill, with its Waterloo Monument (a round granite tower of 1816, 60 feet high), 1335 at *Meikle Hard Hill, 1350 at *Cuil Hill, 1050 at *Lotus Hill, and 705 at Lochbank Hill, where asterisks mark those summits that culminate on the Colvend and Kirkgunzeon border. The predominant rocks are Plutonic; the Criffel group, which occupies all the southern and south-western district, being a mass of granite, intruding on the Lower Silurian. Coarse limestone, of little value, occurs in the SE. The soil of the arable land in the N is clay or moss incumbent on till; on the slopes at the skirts of the uplands is principally a mixture of loam and gravel; and on the carse lands is alluvial clay. About two-fifths of the entire area are regularly or occasionally in tillage; onethirteenth is under wood; and the rest of the land is either pastoral or waste. A rocking stone, 15 tons in weight, lies on the eastern base of Lochbank Hill. Old coins have been turned up in the vicinity of the abbey; and in 875 an oak canoe, 45 feet long and 5 wide, was found in Loch Arthur, its forward half being now in the Edinburgh Antiquarian Museum. At Ingleston is a moat, and in Loch Kindar an artificial crannoge. An establishment for the hatching and breeding of fish has been recently set up and carried on with great success on the property of Lord Herries, under the name of the Solway Fishery. Mansions, noticed separately, are Kinharvie and Shambellie; and 2 proprietors hold each an annual value of more than £500, 8 of between £100 and £500, 4 of from £50 to £100, and 5 of from £20 to £50. Newabbey is in the presbytery and synod of Dumfries; the living is worth £335. Lochend and Newabbey public schools, with respective accommodation for 95 and 130 children, had (1883) an average attendance of 47 and 02, and grants of £53, 8s. and £75, 9s. Valuation (1860) £5927, (1884) £8165, 18s. 3d. Pop. (1801) 832, (1831) 1060, (1861) 1063, (1871) 931, (1881) 906.—Ord. Sur., shs. 5, 6, 9, 1857-63. See vol. iv. of Billings' Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities (Edinb. 1852), and chap. xxvi. of Harper'sRambles in Galloway (Edinb. 1876).
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