Have you ever wondered whether or not there was some truth in the stories of monsters in Loch Ness? Here are all of the answers.
Loch Ness Monster Explained & Loch Ness Understood: The Co-Founder of the Loch Ness Centre Provides a Personal Perspecti...
The conversion of the Abbey into a visitor centre involved work on some historic fort walls dating back to the early eighteenth century. In the past absolute vandalism to this heritage had been permitted. The photograph at the top of the page shows an original bastion wall of the Hanoverian fort which was demolished in order to build the dreadful fifties wing of the school.
In the nineties preservation was much more strictly monitored and we required to demolish a small section of an interior fort wall to get access from the restaurant and to form an access passage to new toilets.
During this work, a 1.5" (3.7cm) water main was discovered which no-one knew existed. Considerable time, effort and exploratory digging took place in trying to find out what the pipe supplied, without success until finally the decision was taken to cap it off to allow work to proceed.
Nearly three days later, I was standing in the cloisters with Ron Mackay, my clerk of works and we could see the Prior, eighty-two year old Father John the Baptist MacBride shuffling along the cloisters. A diabetic, he had very sore feet and took several minutes to walk even one side of the Abbey's cloisters.
Despite his illness and age he was always smiling and had a good word for everyone he encountered. Eventually he came to where Ron and I were standing and wished us a good morning.
He began to start up the next side of the cloisters then seemed to remember something and turned back to us and asked, "When do you think you may have the monastery water turned back on?".
Knowing the organised chaos of the conversions, the monks had stoically put up with having no water for nearly three days.
Now we knew what the pipe was feeding!
On another occasion I had been having a meeting with the Abbot in his monastery office. We disappeared there occasionally to avoid being disturbed by day to day matters. After the meeting I had to pass through the Court of Arches (below) before returning to my office in the fifties' wing via the cloisters.
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As I turned into the south cloister I could see Father John shuffling towards the monastery and, strangely, he seemed to have a ghostly halo around his head.
As I got closer this resolved itself into a cloud of smoke. When I drew level with him he pulled a cigarette out of his mouth with one hand, waved a half bottle of whisky at me with the other hand, smiled serenely and chuckled, "Old Boys.".
When former pupils visited the school they often provided the monks with illicit cigarettes and alcohol. In this case they probably had no idea that Fr John was an alcoholic diabetic. That afternoon he drank himself into a stupor, missed both Vespers and Compline and looked decidedly under the weather the next day.
Another monk who amused us all from time to time was Father Benedict Seed, affectionately known as Benny. He looked after the Abbey grounds and had been the chemistry teacher. He hung on to his Chemistry Laboratory keys for years and, as I didn't need that room for the Enterprises we just left him with his domain. I later discovered that he had been manufacturing a supply of the most excellent sloe gin in the lab. Benny was also not averse to the odd game of golf and it was not unusual to see a golf ball running along the cloisters as he took to practicing his putting around the Abbey buildings. I think that when we added the carpet to the monks' refectory it improved his handicap no end.
Benny also used to say of the Loch Ness Monster eye witnesses, "People who say they have seen Nessie tell you nothing about the monster, but everything about themselves."
Monstrous monks eh?
2017 Update
I regret that the title of this chapter was more prophetic than I realised. In the new millennium, the BBC began to investigate child abuse at the monastery during the time when the school was open, thankfully before I became involved in their business activities.
During that period there was a paedophile ring operated by the monks. This included the lay teacher, William Owen, who set up the original Great Glen Exhibition. Many of the monks I came to know were involved in either sexual or physical abuse of the boys. Fr. Francis Davidson, more on him later, actually palmed off a known paedophile priest to Australia where he continued his practices and it is only now (2017) that they are trying to extradite him to stand trial. Davidson had to resign his university post in shame.
Fr. Benedict was recently prosecuted for violence towards the boys and Fr. Nicholas White is currently serving time in prison for sexual abuse he carried out at Downside Abbey. Fr. Edward Delapine used to beat the entire dormitory of boys if he heard a single sound coming from any of them after lights-out ... even if the boy who made the noise admitted to it.
I remember talking to the BBC journalist and criticised him for talking about my friend, Abbot Mark Dilworth's caning of children in the same breath as others' sexual abuse. I was deeply shocked when he told me that Abbot Dilworth beat the children so severely he hospitalised them. It just goes to show that you can never be sure about anyone.
Another paedophile priest, Fr. Moore, was sent to Fort Augustus to hide him away, very much in the way Fr. White had been sent. The Catholic Church and English Benedictine Congregation were complicit in concealing the activities of these priests for decades.
So, the chapter title, Monstrous Monks, is right, but not quite in the way I had intended it.
I do not intend to change the text of the book, but do think this footnote is justified. How dare these, supposedly, men of God, behave in such a despicable manner. There are more stories about them from while I was at the Abbey, in the following chapters.
