Battlefields & Witches
Day 15: Starting South by Going North
After the slower pace of the day before in Inverness, we once again set out as early as possible to continue our driving tour of Scotland. The goal for this evening was Aviemore, but first we needed to see Culloden, Cawdor and the sites in between.
Fort George
Fort George is the finest example of 18th-century military engineering anywhere in the British Isles, though the army base never fired a shot in anger. Today, the fort would cost nearly £1 billion to build and equip. Strategically located on a promontory jutting into the Moray Firth, the army base was designed to evade capture. Fort George was built on a monumental scale, making use of sophisticated defence standards, with heavy guns covering every angle.
The boundary walls of the fort housed:
accommodation for a governor, officers, an artillery detachment and a 1,600-strong infantry garrison
more than 80 guns
a magazine for 2,672 gunpowder barrels
ordnance and provision stores
a brewhouse
a chapel
The Jacobite Rising of 1745–6 proved to be the last attempt by the Stuart dynasty to regain from the Hanoverians the thrones of Scotland and England and Wales. Fort George was one of the ruthless measures introduced by the government to suppress Jacobite ambitions after the nearby Battle of Culloden. It was intended as the main garrison fortress in the Scottish Highlands and named after George II.
Lieutenant-General William Skinner was the designer and first governor of Fort George. He mapped out the complex layout of:
ramparts
massive bastions
ditches
firing steps
Defences were heavily concentrated on the landward side of the promontory – the direction from which a Jacobite assault was expected. Long stretches of rampart and smaller bastions protected the remaining seaward sides.
Later in the 1700s, when the Jacobite threat was over, the fort became a recruiting base and training camp for the rapidly expanding British Army. Many a Highland lad passed through its gates on his way to fight for the British Empire across the globe. Between 1881 and 1964, the fort served as the depot of the Seaforth Highlanders. Fort George is currently the home of the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS).
The Garrison Chapel
Cawdor Castle
The magnificent stronghold of Cawdor Castle stands on the east bank of the steep-sided valley of the Allt Dearg about five miles south west of the town of Nairn. It is an extremely popular visitor attraction, and with good reason. The castle itself has an unusual layout and a remarkable depth of character: and following recent renovation is in superb condition.
Visitors to the castle are able to enjoy an extensive tour which covers two floors of the central tower and the north and west ranges. It includes a series of impressive reception and living rooms as well as a number of bedrooms, service areas and more unique features such as the Thorn Tree Room and neighbouring dungeon. The rooms in Cawdor Castle have an unusually homely feel despite the grandeur of many of them, and great care has obviously been taken with the layout of the rooms and with the lighting to ensure that visitors see them at their very best.
Cawdor Castle is surrounded by an extensive estate, and visitors can wander at will through the walled garden, flower garden and wild garden. There is also a picnic area, a 9 hole pitch and putt golf course, a putting green, a duck pond and an extensive area of natural woodland through which you can follow a series of waymarked nature trails of different lengths from three quarters of a mile up to five miles.
One name often associated with Cawdor Castle has not been mentioned in this story. Macbeth was King of Alba from 15 August 1040 to 15 August 1057. In Shakespeare's play named after him, written in 1606, Macbeth encounters three witches who hail him as "Thane of Glamis" and "Thane of Cawdor", and tell him he will "be King hereafter". The origins of this story date back 200 years before Shakespeare's time, and in its original form referred to the Thanages of Cromarty and Moray. The names were changed to Glamis and Cawdor by a historian writing in 1527, apparently because they sounded better, and it was this version of the story on which Shakespeare based his play. The truth is that Macbeth died 130 years before the title of Thane of Cawdor was first granted, and over 300 years before the first stone was laid at Cawdor Castle. He has, perhaps sadly, no connection whatsoever with any Thane of Cawdor, or with Cawdor Castle.
Culloden Battlefield
Visit the powerfully moving site of the final Jacobite Rising – the last and most harrowing pitched battle to be fought on British soil. Explore the interactive visitor centre, view fascinating artefacts from both sides of the confrontation, and experience the battle in our immersive surround cinema.
On 16 April 1746, the final Jacobite Rising came to a brutal head. Jacobite supporters, seeking to restore the Stuart monarchy to the British thrones, gathered to fight the Duke of Cumberland's government troops. It was the last pitched battle on British soil and, in less than an hour, around 1,500 men were slain – more than 1,000 of them Jacobites.
The richly researched, stimulating and sensitive Culloden Visitor Centre, which stands beside the battlefield, features artefacts from both sides of the battle and interactive displays that reveal the background to the conflict. It stands as a monument and a guide to a pivotal day in history. Discover how a bloody fight that lasted only an hour changed life in the Highlands forever.
A visit to Culloden is a poignant experience. Headstones mark the graves of hundreds of clansmen who gave their lives for the Jacobite cause; a 6m-high memorial cairn honours the fallen; and an eerie silence often falls across wild Drummossie Moor – there is no escaping the emotions Culloden evokes.
Clava Cairns
Two parts of the Clava Cairns complex can be visited. Set within a beautiful spot within a small wood, Balnuaran of Clava comprises:
two passage graves
a kerb ring cairn
a central ring cairn and standing stones
Milton of Clava, a short distance to the south-west, includes:
the remains of a medieval chapel
the remains of another cairn and possible standing stones
The Clava Cairns comprise part of one, if not two, Bronze Age cemeteries. This landscape was an important place for ritual and burial activities in the Bronze Age. Later burials at the site suggest continued significance for over a millennia.
The three well-preserved cairns at Balnuaran each have a central chamber. But while the two outer cairns have entrance passages, the chamber of the central one is enclosed. Each cairn is surrounded by a ring of standing stones. Many of the stones used to construct the cairns have cup marks on them – these may have been reused from another place, perhaps an earlier sacred site.
The Clava Cairns are a type-site for a group of around 50 similar cairns found only in the region of the Moray Firth and Inverness. The form of these burial monuments uniquely combines aspects of ring cairns, passage graves, and stone circles.
The cemetery at Clava suggests that midwinter was an important time of year for the society who built them. The three prominent cairns form a line running north-east to south-west. The passages of the two cairns are also aligned towards the south-west, suggesting that the builders had their eyes on the midwinter sunset. The standing stones also suggest a focus on the midwinter sunset – they are graded in height with the tallest facing the setting sun in the south-west.
Considerable thought must have gone into the planning and construction of the graves. The midwinter solstice would have marked an important turning point in the year - many similar monuments across the British Isles have a similar alignment with movements of the midwinter sun. Such sites can tell us about beliefs of past societies and how they understood their world.
The cairns’ burial chambers were cleared out long ago, but we can tell from similar monuments that only one or two people would have been buried in each cairn. It would have taken a large number of people to build the Clava Cairns, indicating that these were perhaps resting places for important individuals.
The row of three large cairns we see today was built about 4,000 years ago, around 2000 BC. There may once have been two more. A thousand years later, the cemetery was reused: new burials were placed in existing cairns, and three smaller monuments, including the kerb cairn, were built. The remains of a chapel of an unknown date can also be traced on the ground nearby, at Milton of Clava.
Food!
