Crichton is a small village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Midlothian Midlothian (; ) is registration county, lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area and one of 32 council areas of Scotland used for local government. Midlothian lies in the east-central Lowlands, bordering the City of Edinburgh council ar ...

, Scotland, around 2 miles (3 km) south of

Pathhead Pathhead () is an area of Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Scotland. Pathhead was an independent village before it was incorporated into the Royal burgh of Kirkcaldy. In Jan Blaeu's map of Scotland from the 17th century reference is made to the village of P ...

and the same distance east of

Gorebridge Gorebridge is a former Pit village, mining village in Midlothian, Scotland. Gorebridge has an annual Gala Day which always takes place on the 3rd Saturday in June. This is much like a town fair, with rides and games. The gala day has a tradit ...

. The second element of the name is clearly from the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

word ''tūn'' 'farm, settlement'. The first element is less certain, however, and could be from

Gaelic Gaelic (pronounced for Irish Gaelic and for Scots Gaelic) is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". It may refer to: Languages * Gaelic languages or Goidelic languages, a linguistic group that is one of the two branches of the Insul ...

''crioch'' 'border' or

Cumbric Cumbric is an extinct Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North", in Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the ot ...

''craig'' 'rock'.Bethany Fox, 'The P-Celtic Place-Names of North-East England and South-East Scotland', The Heroic Age, 10 (2007), http://www.heroicage.org/issues/10/fox.html (appendix at http://www.heroicage.org/issues/10/fox-appendix.html). To the west of the village is the 15th-century parish church, formerly a

collegiate church In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons, a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, headed by a dignitary bearing ...

, established by

William Crichton, 1st Lord Crichton William Crichton, 1st Lord Crichton (died 1454) was an important political figure in the late medieval Kingdom of Scotland. Life The son of Sir John Crichton of Crichton, William Crichton is first attested to as one of the Scots noblemen an ...

, the

Lord Chancellor of Scotland The Lord Chancellor of Scotland, formally titled Lord High Chancellor, was an Officer of State in the Kingdom of Scotland. The Lord Chancellor was the principal Great Officer of State, the presiding officer of the Parliament of Scotland, the K ...

from 1439 to 1453. To the south of the church is

Crichton Castle Crichton Castle is a ruined castle near the village of Crichton in Midlothian, Scotland. It is situated at the head of the River Tyne, south of the village of Pathhead, and the same distance east of Gorebridge. Constructed as a tower house in ...

, begun in the late 14th century by William's father John de Crichton and featuring a fine 16th-century Italianate courtyard façade. The civil parish has a population of 1,223 in 2011.Census of Scotland 2011, Table KS101SC – Usually Resident Population, publ. by National Records of Scotland. Web site http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/ retrieved March 2016. See “Standard Outputs”, Table KS101SC, Area type: Civil Parish 1930

References

External links

FamilySearch - Crichton, Midlothian, Scotland
Villages in Midlothian Parishes in Midlothian {{Midlothian-geo-stub

See also

References

External links