Gretna Green
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 BGYGBRBR.
Part of the Gretna tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 8 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=1540
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1996 — Gretna Green (register-of-tartans, record)
Designed in 1996 by Lochcarron for Tartan & Tweeds of Gretna Green. Gretna Green became famous for runaway marriages when 'irregular' marriages were banned by law in England in 1753. Couples were able to run to Scotland and become legally married by proclamation in front of two witnesses. This form of marriage was recognised worldwide. From the middle of the 18th century these marriages were in such demand that the blacksmith, conveniently situated on the crossroads at Gretna Green, became known as the 'anvil priest', giving birth to the anvil as the symbol of Gretna Green. Many couples are still married at the original smithy while many others, although married elsewhere, visit Gretna Green to take the traditional Scottish oath. The Gretna Green tartan reflects the twin influences of this history and that of the powerful border clan Johnstone, so influential in this area of Dumfriesshire, on which this tartan is based. Sample in Scottish Tartans Authority's Johnston Collection. - 1996 — Gretna Green (Fashion) (tartans-authority, record)
Designed in 1996 by Lochcarron for Tartan & Tweeds of Gretna Green. Gretna Green became famous for runaway marriages when "irregular" marriages were banned by law in England in 1753. Couples were able to run to Scotland and become legally married by proclamation in front of two witnesses. This form of marriage was recognised worldwide. From the middle of the 18th century these marriages were in such demand that the blacksmith, conveniently situated on the crossroads at Gretna Green, became known as the "anvil priest", giving birth to the anvil as the symbol of Gretna Green. Many couples are still married at the original smithy while many others, although married elsewhere, visit Gretna Green to take the traditional Scottish oath. The Gretna Green tartan reflects the twin influences of this history and that of the powerful border clan Johnstone, so influential in this area of Dumfriesshire, on which this tartan is based. Sample in STA's Johnston Collection.
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
- 1996 (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: 1540
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 5119
Thread count
DB/4 G4 LY2 G60 DB40 R4 DB4 R/4
One full sett is 236 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) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
| LY | #DCBC32 #DCBC32 | oklch(80.0% 0.150 95.2) |
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/s8/db2g2ly1g30db20r2db2r2~x2/