Priest
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern GKGBGKGKBGK.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 11 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=3383
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1830 — Priest (register-of-tartans, record)
Difficult one to Categorise - the Clergy were the only profession to have their own tartan so we here refer to it as 'Corporate'. It is well known that in earlier times the Highland clergy wore the Highland dress and carried arms. Many attempts were made to prevent them wearing tartan and to force them to wear conventional ministerial habit. These, however, had only limited success. The Clergy tartan is sometimes called 'The Priest's Sett', but in the Highlands is known as 'Breacan nan Cleirach' - the tartan of the Clergy. Wilsons called this Priest not Clergy. Logan gave a blue version that he named Clergy. This count was given to Life member Andrew Pearon by D.C. Stewart in October 1971. His letter read 'The Clark tartan you enquire after is probably that produced by Wilsons of Bannockburn in the second quarter of last century under the name of Priest. - 1830 — Priest (Corporate) (tartans-authority, record)
Difficult one to Categorise - the Clergy were the only profession to have their own tartan so we here refer to it as 'Corporate' - akin to a business tartan. It is well known that in earlier times the Highland clergy wore the Highland dress and carried arms. Many attempts were made to prevent them wearing tartan and to force them to wear conventional ministerial habit. These, however, had only limited success. The Clergy tartan is sometimes called "The Priest's Sett", but in the Highlands is known as "Breacan nan Cleirach" - the tartan of the Clergy. Wilsons called this Priest not Clergy. Logan gave a blue version that he named Clergy. PEMcD Jan 05. This count was given to Life member Andrew Pearon by D C Stewart in October 1971. His letter read "The Clark tartan you enquire after is probably that propduced by Wilsons of Bannockburn in the second quarter of last century under the name of Priest.
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Register of Tartans
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/register-of-tartans/data.csv
- data date
- 1830 (this record)
- licence
- Crown copyright
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Register of Tartans · Crown copyright
the living register — still published by National Records of Scotland - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Register of Tartans: 3383
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 246
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 246
Thread count
K/4 Y4 DP28 K32 Y4 K32 Y4 DP8 Y4 K16 Y/4
One full sett is 272 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| Y | #8B6E00 #8B6E00 | oklch(55.1% 0.113 90.4) |
| DP | #4B0B4F #4B0B4F | oklch(30.1% 0.125 325.4) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s11/k1y1dp7k8y1k8y1dp2y1k4y1~x4/