Heritage body clears Culloden plan
● Campaigners say no room for ignorance over historic value
The guardian of Scotland’s historic sites said it does not object to a holiday park plan at Culloden.
Proposals to convert the Treetops equestrian centre at Faiebue, Culloden Moor, into a holiday park with 13 lodges and a 100-seat restaurant have been revived after being rejected by Highland Council last year.
The site sits around a mile from the Nts-owned part of Culloden Battlefield and within the historic boundary of where the battle was fought.
Historic Environment Scotland (HES) said the site was on the path of the British army as it advanced to battle from Nairn, but the area was “not central to events” of 16 April 1746.
The plan did not raise any “historic environment issues of national significance”, it added.
The response said: “The application has been accompanied by a report detailing the results of an archaeological walkover survey and metal-detecting. This did not recover any artefacts likely to be related to the battle, which confirms that the area was not central to the events of the battle itself and primarily provides landscape context around the battlefield.” The statement added: “However, our decision not to object should not be taken as our support for the proposals.”
The development was rejected last year on environmental grounds. National Trust for Scotland (NTS), which objected to the original plans on several grounds, including “development creep” of changing land use, said it would formally object to the revived plan.
Clea Warner, NTS general manager for the Highlands and Islands, said: “I can see nothing especially ‘new’ about this new submission. Nothing in this fresh application alleviates any of these concerns.”
NTS owns just a third of the full battlefield, with the remainder in private hands and therefore open for development proposals.
Andrew Mckenzie, former manager at Culloden Battlefield Centre said there was no doubt the site was on the Culloden Battlefield given the weight of historical research into the location of the encounter.
He said: “Ignorance is inexcusable when discussing developments upon Culloden Battlefield in 2020.”
Dr David Learmonth, from Group to Stop Culloden Development, said the plan posed a “profound, irreversible physical damage to the battlefield and associated archaeology”.