Methven

Methven, a village and parish of Perthshire, Scotland, 74 m. W. by N. of Perth by the Caledonian Railway. Pop. of parish (1901), 1699. Only an aisle remains of the collegiate church founded in 1433 by Walter Stewart, earl of Atholl (d. 1437). One mile east of the village, Methven Castle, dating partly from 1680, occupies a fine situation in a park in which stands the Pepperwell oak, 18 ft. in circumference. At Dronach Haugh near the banks of the Almond, which bounds the parish on the N., the earl of Pembroke defeated Robert Bruce in 1306. At Lynedoch, his estate on the Almond, Thomas Graham (1748-1843), the Peninsular general, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, carried on many experiments in farming and stock-breeding. He formerly owned Balgowan House, about 3 m. south-west of Methven, where many years after his death the proprietor discovered, during certain alterations, the portrait of Lord Lynedoch's wife, the Hon. Mrs Graham (a daughter of the 9th Lord Cathcart), one of Gainsborough's masterpieces, now in the National Gallery in Edinburgh; 42 m. north-west of Methven, occupying a beautiful position in Glenalmond, is Trinity College, a public school on the English model, the first of its kind in Scotland, founded in 1841 through the efforts of W. E. Gladstone, J. R. Hope-Scott, Dean Ramsay and others, and opened in 1847. In 1851 Charles Wordsworth, the first warden, afterwards bishop of St Andrews, added the chapel. At Tibbermore, or Tippermuir, about 3 m. south-east of Methven, Montrose won the first of a series of battles over the Covenanters on the 1st of September 1644.