Ramsay Tartan

Clan Ramsay

Ramsay is a territorial Anglo-Norman name, from Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, and the family came north with the Norman settlement under David I. Symon de Ramesie witnessed a charter to the monks of Holyrood Abbey in 1140 and received lands in Midlothian; the tradition that he arrived in 1124 in the retinue of David, Earl of Huntingdon, is stated as a possibility rather than a fact, so the 1140 charter is the documentary anchor. William de Ramsay of Dalhousie sat on Alexander III’s council in 1255 and a William Ramsay appears on the Ragman Rolls in 1296.

Sir Alexander Ramsay, newly made Sheriff of Teviotdale, was seized by William Douglas in 1342 and starved to death in Hermitage Castle. Another Sir Alexander held Dalhousie against an English siege in 1400, and a Ramsay fell at Flodden in 1513. John Ramsay killed the Earl of Gowrie in the conspiracy of 1600. The lordship of Ramsay of Dalhousie was created in 1619 with precedence from 1618, and the earldom of Dalhousie in 1633. The marquessate created in 1849 is extinct; the earldom continues, and with it the chiefship, which has never been dormant.

The Ramsay tartan

The Scottish Register of Tartans holds six Ramsay records. Four are clan tartans: Ramsay (Red), reference 3453, dated 1842; Ramsay (Angus and Mearns), reference 3451, dated 1856; Ramsay, reference 3455, dated 1896; and Ramsay Blue Hunting, reference 3454, dated 1950. Two more are classified as fashion rather than clan tartans: Ramsay (Orange), reference 3452, dated 1984, and Ramsay (Green Fashion), reference 5006, undated. There is no “Ramsey” spelling on the register, and no Dalhousie clan tartan — the only Dalhousie entry is a Canadian university tartan registered in 2025.

The best-known of these, Ramsay (Red), carries the 1842 date and comes from the Vestiarium Scoticum, which holds a Ramsay sett at plate 56. The Vestiarium was published that year by the brothers styling themselves Sobieski Stuart and was later proved a Victorian hoax; the sett is a real and widely worn tartan today, but its pedigree begins in 1842 and not before. We have not been able to read the register’s designer field for the 1856, 1896, 1950 and 1984 entries, so we name no weaver for them. A Wilsons of Bannockburn attribution would in any case sit badly with the 1856 and 1896 dates, since the firm’s pattern books belong to the period from about 1765 to the 1840s.

A note on honesty: Ramsay Ancient, Modern, Weathered and Muted are dye colourways of the registered setts, not separate tartans, and nothing of that kind is registered. The four clan entries, by contrast, are genuinely different threadcounts — the black-and-red Ramsay and the blue hunting sett are visibly different designs. No Ramsay sett predates the commercial era; the earliest is 1842, seven centuries after Symon de Ramesie witnessed his charter.

Clan facts

References

1. Ramsay tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Clan Ramsay — Wikipedia
3. Earl of Dalhousie — Wikipedia
4. Vestiarium Scoticum — Wikipedia