Clunie is a small settlement in

Perthshire Perthshire (locally: ; gd, Siorrachd Pheairt), officially the County of Perth, is a historic county and registration county in central Scotland. Geographically it extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, ...

, Scotland, west of Blairgowrie. It lies on the western shore of the Loch of Clunie.

History

Near the village on a small hill are the foundations of an early defensive settlement. The fortifications on the site date back to the 9th century and even Iron Age material has been discovered at the site. There is also evidence of defensive structures nearby to this hill fort dating back to the Roman period. One notable use of this hill site was by Kenneth MacAlpin, the first king of Scotland, as a base for hunting in the nearby royal forest of Clunie. English troops occupied the site following their victory at the Battle of Dunbar during the First War of Scottish Independence. Clunie Castle, Loch of Clunie

On a small island (formerly a crannog) in the loch stand the remains of Clunie Castle, a tower house of the

bishops of Dunkeld The Bishop of Dunkeld is the ecclesiastical head of the Diocese of Dunkeld, one of the largest and more important of Scotland's 13 medieval bishoprics, whose first recorded bishop is an early 12th-century cleric named Cormac. However, the first k ...

. The current parish church in the village dates from 1840, designed by Perth architect William Macdonald Mackenzie, replacing a previous structure with a new bell tower. Within the grounds stands a

mausoleum A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be consid ...

with a romanesque doorway thought to be from an earlier 12th- or 13th-century church that stood on the same site. The church is now linked with those at Kinclaven and Caputh. There is a

cairn A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the gd, càrn (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehis ...

style war memorial in the village park which was erected in 1946 to mark two locals who lost their life in World War II. The cairn also displays nine names of soldiers from the area who died during World War I. Clunie village hall dates from 1912 and is still used by the local community for functions, clubs and events.

Notable people

Clunie is the birthplace of John James Rickard Macleod, co-recipient of the 1923 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine.

References

{{authority control Villages in Perth and Kinross