Display the Silver Arrow on home soil
It was fascinating to learn from your interview with Gill Oakes that the Blairgowrie Players wll be presenting a play based on the history of the Rattray Silver Arrow. It will be staged in Blairgowrie Town Hall on October 8 and I wish the Players every success.
The playwright is Lord Robert Mercer-Nairne of Meikleour and your report refers to my intervention when he sent the arrow to Sotheby’s in London to be sold at auction. Readers may be interested in the background to this.
The Arrow, one of three sporting trophies gifted to the parish of Rattray, had last been competed for in an archery contest in 1727 since when it had been “stranded” at Meikleour House.
The last winner of the trophy was, as your account states, an ancestor of Lord Robert. The Mercer-Nairne family had become, by default, custodians of the trophy.
Although this was wellknown, some local people, especially in Rattray, wondered over the years, what does “our” arrow look like?
Things came to a head in 1979 when the matter was discussed by the committee of Blairgowrie, Rattray and District Civic Trust.
It was decided that Ian Farquharson and I should meet with the Marquis of Lansdowne, then head of the Meikleour family.
He gave us a most cordial welcome and it was clear that he took his role as custodian of the trophy very seriously indeed.
The outcome was that he brought the Arrow to an open meeting of the Trust and told his account of the Arrow’s history to a crowded room in the old Blairgowrie Queen’s Hotel.
He followed this up by inviting members of the Royal Company of Archers to take part in a grand archery competition held in the grounds of Meikleour House on June 3 of the same year.
The prize was the Silver Arrow which, afterwards, was of course handed back to the Marquis to be returned, he told me, to the strongbox in the vault of a Perth bank.
That was the last that was heard or seen of the Arrow until it appeared in Sotheby’s catalogue. The sale was aborted and the trophy returned to Lord Robert.
Since then, to his credit, he has lent the Arrow to be displayed on several occasions, including an archery contest instigated by local historian Neil Kennedy.
I think, though, that many people would love to see this unique Perthshire artefact on permanent display alongside the other surviving Rattray trophy, the Silver Ball.
It has a worthy place in Perth Museum but perhaps one day both will come back to home soil when Blairgowrie and Rattray at last get their long-promised local history collection. This photo of an osprey was taken by Blairie reader Dave Franks on a recent visit to Loch of the Lowes.
Dave said:“As we walked into the hide, we saw the male osprey circling the nest with a fish in its talons.
“A Belgian couple were there and managed to get some amazing photos of the male circling the nest, and then of the female feeding the chicks, which they waited three hours to see.
“How fortunate we are to have places like this on our doorstep.”
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