The major monastic orders had a significant influence upon the landscape of Scotland. Recent research shows just how entrepreneurial they were and how they were responsible for the first real revolutions in agricultural and industrial matters.

Derek Hall examines the effects that their intensive sheep and cattle farming, lead mining, salt panning and coal mining have had on the modern landscape and suggests that the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrial revolution was based on the much earlier exploitation of these resources by the Scottish monasteries. He also produces new evidence of the extent to which the monasteries were involved in the care for the sick.

This is an important companion volume to James Bond’s award-winning Monastic Landscapes, which covers England and Wales.