Best paper in Scottish Local History winners announced

Two historians share the honours in a new prize for Scottish history writing

Two papers about 17th-century Scotland have won a new prize for Scottish history writing sponsored by Birlinn Limited. John Harrison and Allan Kennedy (History Scotland’s consultant editor) were each awarded a £100 prize, after the judging panel repeatedly reached deadlock. Their papers, about a 1674 climate crisis and Oliver Cromwell’s Inverness garrison respectively, were judged the best published in the journal of the Scottish Local History Forum in the previous twelve months.

The ‘Drifty Days’, the subject of John G. Harrison’s paper, refers to a period of heavy snowfall and heavy losses amongst sheep flocks which sent agricultural rents tumbling. Such was its severity in the Borders that it entered local folklore. John, a professional historian from Stirling, used digital records to investigate whether, in fact, the effects of this event were experienced right across Scotland, making it a national climate crisis. The paper also asks how people, from the government to the poor, responded.

Allan Kennedy’s paper, ‘Cromwell’s Highland Stronghold: The Sconce of Inverness’, examines how Cromwell’s English Commonwealth garrisoned and governed Scotland in the years of occupation between the defeat of Charles II at Worcester in 1651 and the Restoration of 1660.The pentagonal fort built at Inverness, which became known as the ‘sconce’, was imposing, formidably equipped with artillery and home to as many as 1,000 English soldiers at its peak. Allan argues that the garrison played an essential role in the town’s development.

The winning papers can be read at: https://www.slhf.org/