In days without a king or during a royal minority, a guardian was elected to lead nobles and realm. David II was born in 1329, the year his father Robert I died. A hero father who cast a long shadow. David was too young to rule and it proved too dangerous for him to remain... Continue Reading →
Dunlichity is a Parish church. There was an older building dating back to the 16th century but the faithful have worshipped here for much longer. The close-by loch and its fishing right belonged to the church. It is called Loch a’Chlachain, the lake of the church. Very still with a very remote feel to it,... Continue Reading →
In the days after Culloden the roads were full of refugees and the makeshift prisons full of Jacobites. More than three thousand were recorded, not just men, women and children as well. Not all of them had been fighting of course, some had just been a bit too sympathetic with the cause of Charles Edward... Continue Reading →
From the first Viking raids right up to the middle of the 17th century Gairloch was nothing but a big battlefield. First the Norsemen against then Scots, then the Mackenzies, the McLeod, and the MacDonalds among each other, fighting for power and ownership, retaliating attacks, avenging murders, killing rivals. Many died a brutal death here.... Continue Reading →
There are three holes in the gravestone of Donald Fraser of Erchite, remains of a funeral that ended in a shooting, the holes are the marks the bullets left. It must have been the second half of the year 1745. The tragic battle of Culloden had left its mark on Scotland and indeed the area... Continue Reading →
Kinneil church Kinneil the village is considerably older than Borrowstounness but it declined while Bo’ness prospered. The church dates back to the 12th century and was a landmark for ships entering the harbour until it was officially supressed in 1669 Kinneil House The Kinneil estate behind which the church and graveyards lie, towers prominently high, sixty... Continue Reading →
Forteviot This small village in Strathearn was rebuilt in the 1920s by Whisky money, the generous supplier being the 1st Baron Forteviot John Alexander Dewar of the Dewar family, eldest son of the founder of Dewar`s Scotch Whisky. In 1920 in the old graveyards of Forteviot another father's sons were buried. Two brothers who died... Continue Reading →
Torphichen was once headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller in Scotland, a place of power and influence. The sign of the order was the v-shaped cross, and its full name Order of Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. Their cross is still part of everyday life on St John’s Ambulances. They were a... Continue Reading →
Former glory, a term often applied to buildings, to countries, to people and it is hardly less appropriately used for graveyards. Where else to ponder about former glory but on a graveyard on a dreich day, the very place that changes things and signifies the end to almost everything. Bo’ness’s original name is Borrowstouness but... Continue Reading →
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