Carmichael Tartan

Clan Carmichael

Carmichael is a territorial name from the Southern Uplands of Lanarkshire, where a church dedicated to St Michael stood on the site of an older hill fort and gave the district its name. Robert de Carmitely resigned claims to the patronage of Cleghorn church in 1220, and Robert de Carmichael is named in a Dryburgh Abbey charter of 1226; some accounts begin instead with William de Carmichael around 1350. The Carmichael lands formed part of the Douglasdale territory granted to the Douglases by Robert the Bruce in 1321, and between 1374 and 1384 Sir John de Carmichael received a charter for them from William Douglas, 1st Earl of Douglas. In 1414 the barony of Carmichael was confirmed to the chief, running to more than 14,000 acres across the parishes of Carmichael, Pettinain and Carluke.

Two separate losses are often conflated. The earldom of Hyndford, held by the senior line, became extinct in 1817 on the death of the 6th Earl, and has never been revived. The chiefship is a different matter: it fell dormant in 1965 when Evelyn George Carmichael died leaving two daughters and no sons, and was restored sixteen years later, in 1981, when Richard John Carmichael was recognised as 26th Baron of Carmichael and 30th Chief of the Name and Arms. He died on 30 June 2025 and was succeeded by his son, Andrew Carmichael of Carmichael, as 31st Chief. Many reference sites have not yet caught up with that succession.

The Carmichael tartan

There is one Carmichael design. It is held as two slightly different cloths, with the same colour sequence and structure and only minor proportional differences, which the records themselves describe as the same named design recorded twice. Its provenance is unusually good for a clan tartan: a Carmichael sealed a sample into the Collection of the Highland Society of London in the first decade of the twentieth century, sources giving 1905 or 1907. The chief confirmed it in 1981, the year the chiefship was restored.

A note on honesty: that 1905–07 sealing is the earliest evidence of any Carmichael sett. Carmichael does not appear in the Vestiarium Scoticum, and no Carmichael tartan is attested before the commercial era. Carmichael Modern, Ancient, Weathered and Muted are the same sett in different dye shades — colourways, not separate tartans.

Clan facts

References

1. Clan Carmichael — the clan society
2. Clan Carmichael
3. The chief — Clan Carmichael USA
4. Carmichael setts and provenance — The Tartan Dictionary