Charlie and the amazing technicolour dream coat
Prince’s bonnie treasures go on show
A COLOURFUL tartan jacket once owned by Bonnie Prince Charlie is to go on display for the first time in 128 years – after being painstakingly cleaned and repaired.
The coat was worn by the Young Pretender as he led his Jacobite forces in the months before the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
It is now to star in an exhibition next year at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Made from wool tightly woven into blue, red, green and yellow tartan, the garment also has a crimson-coloured silk-velvet collar and cuffs ‘fit for a prince’.
The restoration and cleaning of the jacket, which has been in storage since 1889, has taken more than 160 hours of delicate work at a conservation laboratory in Edinburgh.
Danielle Connolly, the project’s textile conservator, said: ‘It would have been a very fancy jacket in its day. Bonnie Prince Charlie wearing it would have made quite an impact.’
The coat is thought to have been made in Scotland for the prince in the early 1740s, and worn by him at important events after he landed north of the Border in 1745.
It was given to a loyal Jacobite in Perthshire shortly before Culloden and was kept in the family for generations before being left to the museum in the late 19th Century.
The coat will be a star attraction in the first major Jacobite exhibition in 70 years, to run from June 23 to November 12 next year.
More than 300 rare objects will be on show, including Bonnie Prince Charlie’s silver travelling canteen, recovered from his baggage train abandoned after the Culloden defeat. The canteen includes everything a prince in exile would need for lunch on the move – such as forks, knives, a quaich and even a nutmeg grater.
Among Charlie’s other treasures are his highly decorated sword and a silver-inlaid targe – or shield – both given to him by the Duke of Perth around 1740.