Members of Largs Probus Club were this week treated to a whirlwind tour of nearly 900 years of Paisley Abbey history - without having to leave their chairs.

The speaker, David Davidson, was well qualified to tell the story; he is a guide at the abbey and its depute session clerk, while he was also a GP in the town for 30 years and a first cousin, several times removed, of Paisley’s greatest poet, Robert Tannahill.

Dr Davidson told how just 12 monks established a Priory on the site in the mid-12th century, having been brought north from their monastery in Shropshire by Walter fitz Alan, a Breton knight.

The fitz Alan family were to play a major role both in the history of Paisley Abbey and the Scottish royal lineage. They were granted the hereditary office of High Steward in Scotland, and ‘Steward’ mutated into ‘Stewart’, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Building work began in the 1160s with the Priory being founded in 1163. Not everyone was happy with Walter and his monastic plans, and Somerled of the Isles led a naval force up the Clyde resulting in the 1164 ‘Battle of Renfrew.

Somerled was killed, the fitz Alans went from strength to strength, and Paisley Priory - it was not granted Abbey status till 1245 - took shape.

The first, 12th century, phase of building created what was probably a fairly simple structure in the Norman and Romanesque style. The second phase developed the building into something more ambitious, and the third phase of the 1300s basically entailed bringing it back into some sort of order after being badly knocked about by the invading English forces.

By the mid 1400s things were on a fairly even keel, money was available, and Paisley Abbey became a suitably grand and impressive edifice - until 1497, when a catastrophic fire destroyed the building.

The Abbey sat in ruins for three hundred years, with the threat of total demolition very real in the late 18th century.

(Image: Newsquest)

Some attempts at restoration were made during the 19th century. Peter MacGregor Chalmers took on the challenge, but the First World War stymied his work, and it wasn't until the 1920s that Robert Lorimer created the magnificent building that we see today.

When you enter the abbey through the south-east processional door, you are walking through the same door that the Cluniac monks would have passed through nearly 900 years ago.

Dr. Davidson drew attention to the connections between Paisley Abbey and the town of Largs, from pre-Reformation days when the church and its lands in Largs belonged to the Paisley monks, and more recently the Clark family, of Paisley thread mills fame, with John Clark gifting the Clark Memorial Church to the town.

It was apt that Paisley member Frank Scott delivered the vote of thanks.

Largs Probus Club will next meet on Wednesday, July 17 at 10am, when Julie Bennet will speak on 'arranging holidays'.