Clan Kinnaird
The Kinnairds take their name from the lands of Kinnaird in the Carse of Gowrie, Perthshire. Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Scotland records that in 1170, in the reign of William the Lion, Randolph — Radulphus, called Rufus — obtained the lands of Kinnaird by royal charter and took his surname from them. The name itself is Gaelic, ceann àird, the head of the height, and occurs independently as a place name in Perthshire, Angus and Stirlingshire; the surname comes from the Perthshire one. That 1170 date rests on a nineteenth-century gazetteer rather than on sight of the charter, and other accounts put the family’s earliest records as late as the fourteenth century.
George Kinnaird was created Lord Kinnaird of Inchture in the Peerage of Scotland in December 1682. The seat was Rossie Priory at Inchture, built for Charles, 8th Lord Kinnaird, to designs by William Atkinson; the Earl of Shaftesbury called it in 1839 an excellent house, large, comfortable and handsome. The greater part was pulled down in 1948 because of dry rot and only the west wing stands. Arthur Fitzgerald Kinnaird, 11th Lord, born at Rossie Priory in 1814, was one of the dominant figures of early association football. The lordship became extinct in 1997 on the death of the 13th Lord, his only son having predeceased him and the other heirs male having died without children. Kinnaird is an armigerous family with no chief recognised by the Lord Lyon, and the chiefship has not been restored.
The Kinnaird tartan
The Kinnaird sett is a modern design, dated 1984, with a sample held in the Scottish Tartans Authority’s Johnston Collection. No designer is recorded, and who commissioned it is not recorded either. It owes nothing to Wilsons of Bannockburn and nothing to the Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842. It is a late twentieth-century pattern, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise.
Two other tartans carry the name and are not Kinnaird family tartans. Bruce of Kinnaird belongs to the Bruces of Kinnaird in Stirlingshire, the family of James Bruce the Abyssinian traveller, and is a Bruce sett — a Kinnaird buying it is buying Bruce cloth. Pride of Kinnaird was registered in May 2018 by the parent council of Kinnaird Primary School in Falkirk for the school’s tenth anniversary, and the Kinnaird near Falkirk is a different place from the Kinnaird in the Carse of Gowrie.
A note on honesty: Kinnaird exists as one sett only. Ancient, Modern, Weathered, Hunting and Dress Kinnaird are colourways of that single 1984 threadcount, not five tartans, and nothing about the pattern is older than the 1980s. The crest and motto below come from the arms of the extinct lordship; with no chief there is no living grant of arms behind a Kinnaird clan crest badge.
Clan facts
| Chief | None. An armigerous family; the Lordship of Kinnaird of Inchture became extinct in 1997 and the chiefship has not been restored |
|---|---|
| Motto | Errantia lumina fallunt — “Wandering lights deceive” |
| Plant badge | Not recorded |
| Lands | Kinnaird, Carse of Gowrie, Perthshire, and Inchture; seat at Rossie Priory, largely demolished in 1948 |