Murray of Atholl #3
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 BKBKBKGRGKBKR.
Part of the Murray of Atholl tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 13 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=3063
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1810-15 Also known as Atholl District tartan. There may be reference to this sett as early as 1619. James Logan suggested that the tartan derived from the Black Watch and that Lord Murray, who commanded the regiment, introduced the red lines. Logans count varies slightly from the one given here.
8 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1810 — Murray of Atholl #3 (register-of-tartans, record)
From the Cockburn Collection (No.13). Also known as Atholl District tartan. James Logan suggested that the tartan derived from the Black Watch and that Lord Murray, who commanded the regiment, introduced the red lines. Logan's count varies slightly from the one given here. In 'The Highland Textile' by James Scarlet this count is No. 348 and said to be sometimes called 'Murray of Mansfield'. See also #131 (original Scottish Tartans Authority reference). W and A Smith in their 1850 publication say: 'The genuineness of our specimen is confirmed by the description which Colonol Stewart gives of the philibeg of the 42nd, when that regiment was first embodied, He says 'Lord George Murray gave the Atholl Tartan for the philibeg: the difference was only a stripe of scarlet to distinguish it from the belted plaid.' - 1810 — Murray of Atholl - 1810 (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
From the Cockburn Collection (No.13). Also known as Atholl District tartan. James Logan suggested that the tartan derived from the Black Watch and that Lord Murray, who commanded the regiment, introduced the red lines. Logan's count varies slightly from the one given here. In 'The Highland Textile' by James Scarlet this count is No. 348 and said to be sometimes called 'Murray of Mansfield'. See also #131 William & Andrew Smith in their 1850 publication say: "The genuineness of our specimen . . .is confirmed by the description which Colonol Stewart gives of the philibeg of the 42nd, when that regiment was first embodied, He says "Lord George Murray gave the Atholl Tartan for the philibeg: the difference was only a stripe of scarlet to distinguish it from the belted plaid." A reference in a Harris Tweed article reads: "In 1846 the Countess commissioned the sisters to weave lengths of Tweed in the Murray family tartan. She sent the finished fabric to be made up into tweed jackets for the gamekeepers and ghyllies on her estate." This tartan was also used by the Transvaal Scottish and the South African Scottish and also - according to a photogrpah found in the effects of J D Scarlett - a unit called the Victorian Scottish Volunteers. - 1810-15 — Murray of Atholl Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- 1812 — Atholl District Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
- pre 1993 — Transvaal Scottish Regiment (Militar (tartans-authority, record)
The original count for this was R14 G42 RB20 with the following notes: "Found 1993 in book on display in Kinloch Anderson's showrooms in Edinburgh. Based on the Murray of Atholl." However . . . a check with Major John D Morison of the Regiment in July 2003 indicates that this was nothing like the true Transvaal Scottish which is as now shown, Murray of Atholl. The regiment was founded in 1902, under the name of the Transvaal Scottish Volunteers, at the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Boer War (also known as "The Boer War"). Lieutenant Colonel the Marquis of Tullibardine, heir to the dukedom of Atholl, worked closely with local Caledonian societies in this regard to ensure that membership was strongly Scottish. The new unit wore his family tartan, and its regimental march was Atholl Highlanders. It took the form of a large battalion with companies in major Transvaal towns. They may also have been called the Victorian Scottish Volunteers - photos of this tartan in the late J Scarlett's effects are labelled as that. - undated — Atholl (weddslist, record)
- undated — Murray of Atholl (weddslist, record)
- undated — Murray of Atholl (weddslist, record)
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
- 1810 (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: 3063
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 5089
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 281
Thread count
DB/24 K4 DB4 K4 DB4 K24 G24 R6 G24 K24 DB24 K2 R/6
One full sett is 318 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
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/s13/db12k2db2k2db2k12g12r3g12k12db12k1r3~x2/