Old Photograph Holy Pool Strathfillan Scotland

Old photograph of the Holy Pool in Strathfillan, Perthshire, Scotland. The Holy Pool, opposite Stathfillan Manse, was famous for its connection with St Fillan. Until the middle of the last century insane persons were bathed in the pool. The tradition of bathing insane persons in the pool is still known locally but the pool is said to have lost its power when a wild bull was thrown into it.

St. Fillan was the abbot of a monastery in Fife before retiring to Glen Dochart and Strathfillan near Tyndrum in Perthshire. At an Augustinian priory at Kirkton Farm along to the West Highland Way, the priory's lay abbot, who was its superior in the reign of William the Lion, held high rank in the Scottish kingdom. This monastery was restored in the reign of King Robert the Bruce, and became a cell of the abbey of canons regular at Inchaffray Abbey. The new foundation received a grant from King Robert, in gratitude for the aid which he was supposed to have obtained from a relic of the saint on the eve of the great victory over King Edward II's English soldiers at the Battle of Bannockburn. The saint's original chapel was up river, slightly north west of the abbey and adjacent to a deep body of water which became known as St. Fillan's Pool.



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