Welcome to
5 Atholl Crescent, Perth

The site of the building

5 Atholl Crescent, Perth is  the central property of a crescent of houses built in the 1790s. 

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This ground belonged to the Blackfriars — the Dominican Order of Friars Preachers, who founded their Perth friary in 1231. 

It was here, in February 1437, that King James I of Scotland was murdered — stabbed in the friary while attempting to escape his assassins, reportedly by hiding in a sewer. The ground here was a friary graveyard and, later, an orchard.

The friary was destroyed following John Knox's sermon at St John's Kirk on 11th May 1559, when the Perth monasteries were reputedly razed within three days.

The lands passed to King James VI, whose sale of the former monastic ground helped fund the founding of the King James VI Hospital — which, as feu superior, continued to collect rent from the owners of No. 5 until as late as 1965.

In 1792 Thomas Anderson purchased the lands outright, but later fell into bankruptcy and sold the ground to William Bisset, surgeon or druggist in Perth. On 9 February 1797, Bisset purchased seven lots of ground — the former Blackfriars lands — for £600, subject to a feu duty of £2 per lot payable to the King James VI Hospital at Candlemas each year, doubling every nineteenth year. This feu was redeemed in 1965, when it was bought out for £30 (fifteen times the annual feu). Bisset died on 25 January 1821. 

The architect of Atholl Crescent is traditionally held to have been Sir Robert Reid.

The building served as a family residence until 1923 before being a Nurses' Club and - between 1933 and 2025 - a masonic lodge.

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After over a hundred years, the building is being restored to a house.