Culloden radar survey may have found site of mass grave
A SECRET Jacobite Society heard yesterday – on the 272nd anniversary of the Battle of Culloden – that groundpenetrating radar may well have discovered a mass grave of Highlanders massacred after the battle.
History says that 16 of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s officers, found hiding in the dungeon at Culloden House, where the prince stayed the night before the battle in 1746, were taken outside by Redcoats and shot and buried by the “Brangas Tree” in the grounds.
The tree – an English Elm – complete with leg and neck irons, is long gone, as is a commemorative 5ft (1.5m) high stone with the inscription “Here lie soldiers killed by the English after the Battle of Culloden”.
Only a small grassy knoll remains where the tree once stood. Now a geophysical survey has shown three pits under the mound.
Yesterday Robert Cairns, chairman of the Lochaber Archaeological Society, which commissioned the research said: “We are very excited about the results. The mound has three distinctive pits in it so obviously it is quite significant. It is not something that you would normally find in the mound.
“We are planning to put in a small trench later in the year to see if there are any human remains in the largest pit. We are confident we will find [them]. Then it will become a war grave.”
Robert Cairns made the shock announcement to A Circle of Gentlemen, the secret Jacobite Society founded in 1747 the year after Culloden, the last battle fought on British soil.
David McGovern, 45, a traditional stone carver from Monikie in Angus, and a member of the group, said: “It looks like we have found the martyrs’ graves. History has always said they were buried there but now modern science seems to have confirmed it. We look forward to the results of the dig.”
Yesterday a tartan army with banners flying marched in the footsteps of their ancestors in remembrance, as always, on the Saturday nearest the fateful date. Hundreds, dressed in plaid, wearing their blue bonnets and armed with claymores and dirks, led by a piper, held a solemn service at the cairn in the middle of the battlefield.