Arbuthnot Tartan

Clan Arbuthnott

Arbuthnott is a territorial name, taken from lands in Kincardineshire recorded as Aberbothenoth. The earliest laird we can date is Hugh “Le Blond”, in possession about 1282, who appears in a charter granting lands to Arbroath Abbey; Philip de Arbuthnott is the first styled “of that ilk”. An earlier Hugh is said to have acquired the lands by marriage to Margaret Olifard, and is sometimes linked to Clan Swinton, but the sources hedge this and it should be read as tradition rather than record. The commonly circulated date of 1206 we could not verify at all.

What is unusual about Arbuthnott is continuity: the family is credited with holding the same lands for twenty-four consecutive generations, and Arbuthnott House in Kincardineshire remains the seat. The chiefship has never gone dormant. The present chief is Keith Arbuthnott, 17th Viscount of Arbuthnott, Lord Inverbervie, Chief of the Name and Arms of Arbuthnott, who succeeded in 2012.

On the spelling: the chiefly line and the peerage are Arbuthnott, with two t’s. Arbuthnot is a common and perfectly legitimate variant of the surname, and it is the spelling the cloth is usually sold under, which is why this page carries it. Neither form is an error.

The Arbuthnot tartan

The Arbuthnott tartan is modern and its date is not in dispute: it was registered with the Lord Lyon in 1962, and the pattern is built on Black Watch, with dark blue, black and green and a white guard. Two independent sources give the same 1962 date for the principal sett.

A second record from around 2003 is the same pattern woven at a larger scale — a change of scale, not a new design. A third record substitutes light blue for the dark blue; whether the register treats that as a distinct sett or as a colourway of the 1962 pattern we could not establish, and we would rather leave the question open than answer it wrongly. No weaver or designer is named in any source we could reach, so the designer is simply not recorded; given the 1962 date, an origin in the Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842 is effectively ruled out, but that is inference rather than record.

A note on honesty: Arbuthnot Modern and Ancient are colourways of one sett, not two tartans. No Arbuthnott sett predates the commercial era — this one is younger than the Second World War, and a family that can document twenty-four generations on its own land has no need of a borrowed medieval tartan story. The pattern’s debt to Black Watch is a matter of record, not a criticism; a great many clan setts were drawn the same way.

Clan facts

References

1. Arbuthnott tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Clan Arbuthnott — Wikipedia
3. Arbuthnott — The Tartan Dictionary