If you head about a mile out of the West Lothian Village of Torphichen Eastward, you’ll find a standing stone. As you head up the backroad through Cathlaw, as you drive down the hill, you’ll see it on your left. Standing alone in the hilly field. This is the Gormyre stone, One of Four Refuge stones surrounding Torphichen.

What is the Gormyre Refuge Stone?

The Refuge stone on Gormyre hill to the East of Torphichen. It was One of Four Refuge stones surrounding Torphichen Preceptory. One in Each direction – North, South, East and West. They all sat approximately a mile in each direction. These stones marked the boundary of the ‘Refuge City’, which Torphichen was in the Middle ages.

What was the Refuge City of Torphichen?

When the Knights of Saint John established the preceptory in Torphichen in the Twelf century, they brought to it, an Idea they had learned on their crusades to the ‘Holy Land’. The Cities of Refuge, as described in the Biblical books of Kings. It explains how there was Seven of these refuge cities outside the walls of Jerusalem.
These were places where people could go to seek justice within the grey areas of law that common law didnt have an answer for. Cases that required a Judge. Successful applicants would spend a period of Seven Years in One of these places as penance for their crime, before returning to society.

How did they work?

So, Imagine this modern day situation; You’re working in the field with a colleage chopping wood. The head comes off your axe and kills your colleague. Now, it wouldnt be murder, because you didnt deliberately kill them. But, it wasnt entirely an accident either, because it was your responsibility to make sure your axe was safe to use.
By Todays law, you would be convicted of Manslaughter. But they didnt have any Manslaughter law back then. The common law was ‘An Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth’. Like for Like. A life for a life. So, if you’d killed another person, the people could execute you. Lynch ,mob hunt you down and you swing.
However, if you could get yourself up to the refuge city andexplain your case to the presiding Judges there, you could get a trial. They would send out investigators to make sure your story rang True. If it didnt, and you were just trying to evade Justice, then theyd deal with you accordingly. But If your story rang true, you’d be sentenced to 7 years penal servitude where you’d live in the refuge city and earn your keep. Probably more like a forced labour camp in truth.

The Refuge Stones

So when the Kinights set up the same Idea in Torphichen, the Four stones were set out to mark the boundary of the refuge city. It also marked out the boundary of the Preceptory lands. Now, this wasnt just some bit of land that happened to belong to the Church. It was for all Intent and purposes, its own Provence. Like its own country. It had Immunity from Scots law and was subject only to the Kights and of course, the Vatican.
Although the preceptory Itself was mostly demolished and vastly down-sided in the 16th century, the stones stand as a monument to a great shift. A shift in society and formation of our current day justice system. You can find the other Three stones at Westfield farm to the West, Hingy to the Couston Stone North and the Witchcraig Stone to the South.
You may also find a Fifth in the actual Churchyard of the Preceptory Tower building in Torphichen Itself. But the Four mark the Boundary, with the Fifth being a kiinda centrepoint.