Bannockburn

We visited Bannockburn recently, a place we had never been before, it’s not far from Stirling. The famous battle was fought there in 1314 although there’s no actual archeological evidence of the battle now, the geography of the battle was known as it was the bogginess of the terrain and Bruce’s knowledge of it which led to the Scottish victory. There’s now a visitor centre there, but the statue in the photo below of Robert the Bruce by Pilkington Jackson was placed there in 1964. I have to say that modern day sculptors seem to have lost the art of sculpting,  this one is really good.

Robert the Bruce , Bannockburn, Stirling, Scotland, battlefield

There’s also a rotunda below, with a massive flagpole which dates from Victorian times although the rotunda is much more modern.

Rotunda + Flag, Bannockburn, battlefield, Scotland

Inside the actual visitor centre we enjoyed a really informative talk by Callum, who certainly knows his subject. He used cards to explain where each army was and pushed them around as they moved around the battlefield. There were also animated films which Jack thought were a bit amateurish looking, but I really liked them, there were two dimensional  figures which had a feeling of puppets the way they moved, I thought it was quite artistic.

Bannockburn Tableau, Bannockburn visitor centre

The articles on display are all reproductions as there are no archaeological finds in the area at all. As the soldiers in the Scottish army weren’t actually paid they were given permission to pick over the battlefield and take anything away that they wanted, it would have been picked clean, anything which had been missed would have sunk into the bog over the centuries.

This is the view down to the area where the battle took place.

Bannockburn Today

If you happen to be interested in the battle there’s a good You Tube animation of it below. The narrator is somewhat strange, there are some mistakes in pronunciation of basic words such as Scone which should not be pronounced like the baked scone, but should rhyme with ‘boon’ and incursion doesn’t have two ‘s’ sounds, plus the spelling is all American, but I suppose that’s me nit-picking.

 

Robert the Bruce by Fiona Watson

Robert the Bruce  cover

The Pocket GIANTS publication on Robert the Bruce by Fiona Watson is a slim volume at just 114 pages but if you’re at all interested in The Bruce and Scottish history then it’s a must read for you. It’s a well written explanation of the hinterland of the Bruce family and Robert in particular although what we think of as The Bruce was the seventh Robert in the family.

I believe that the author has since written a much longer book on the same subject but this one is ideal if you just want a better understanding of the politics of the time. If by any chance you get the opportunity to go to a lecture given by Fiona Watson (as I had last May) then you should definitely go, she has such enthusiasm for her subject and brings the people to life in a very human way. There definitely won’t be any students sleeping through her lectures I’m sure!

Annan, Dumfries and Galloway, South-west Scotland

Last Saturday we drove down to Annan in Dumfries and Galloway, the south-west of Scotland. It was a glorious day, a bit too hot really for me it was about 70F I suppose.

Annan Bridge, Scotland
Jack was going to a football match there so I decided to take a stroll along the riverside walk along the Annan which flows through the town. It has a lovely ancient red sandstone bridge.

River Annan, Dumfries and Galloway, ScotlandBridge

Just a stone’s throw from the bridge is the remains of Robert Bruce’s motte and bailey, it seems just to be a few lumps and bumps in the ground from a distance anyway, I couldn’t get any closer. I was interested because I had just finished reading Nigel Tranter’s book Footsteps to an Empty Throne and this is where the first battle of the Wars of Scottish Independence was fought.
Bruce's Motte and Bailey, Annan
I had the river all to myself with just a few swans and a heron for company, sadly the heron flew off before I could get a photo.

River Annan (south)

They are obviously proud of the Robert the Bruce connections in Annan and had this statue put up on the Town Hall, but Bruce also had a manor/castle at Cardross near Dumbarton where I grew up, although nobody knows exactly where it was. In fact that’s where he died.
Statue of Bruce at Town Hall

Below is the town hall from another angle, if you lok closely you’ll see it’s desperately in need of being weeded of budleias and various other plants.
Annan Town Hall, Dumfries and Galloway

I enjoyed my walk around Annan and Jack enjoyed the football because Dumbarton won – unusually!

The Steps to the Empty Throne by Nigel Tranter

 Bruce Trilogy cover

The Steps to the Empty Throne by Nigel Tranter was first published in 1969 and it’s the first of a Bruce trilogy. I do think though that Tranter was a bit generous with what is known of the history regarding Robert the Bruce, at one point Bruce comes to the aid of William Wallace at the end of a battle, something which almost certainly didn’t happen. In the early days Bruce was known for not being where he should be – when it came to battles. I suspect this was because he had had quite a close relationship with Edward I of England – before Edward became known as ‘The Hammer of the Scots’.

Scotland had always been an independent country but when King Alexander III fell off his horse and died at Kinghorn in Fife (see his memorial at the location here) and then his daughter (The Maid of Norway) – who had been his heir died, that left a power vacuum and that’s what this book is about. The Scots made a huge mistake in asking their neighbour King Edward of England to help to choose between the candidates. Edward decided that John Balliol should get the top job but he had decided to take over himself in Scotland and Balliol was really just Edward’s puppet. As you can imagine this didn’t go down well with the Scots who ended up getting rid of Balliol and signed a treaty with France, always England’s enemy. Edward took this as an excuse to invade Scotland and so began the Wars of Independence. As ever though the Scots were as much at each other’s throats as at war with the English.

A few battles are fought but the book is much more than that. Bruce is a widower but by the end of the book he has remarried so there’s romance too, despite Edward’s manipulations. There’s the difference between William Wallace’s guerrilla warfare and Bruce’s chivalric leanings which he had to give up when Edward’s dirty tricks led to Bruce’s defeat in battles. The manner of Wallace’s execution also enraged so many Scots – so the gloves were off. Bruce had always been keen to avoid being excommunicated by the pope, but inevitably that happens, he was reminded that the Scottish church had originally been a Celtic church and it had been obliterated by Queen Margaret (King Malcolm’s wife) who replaced the Culdees with the Benedictines that she had grown up with. Suddenly excommunication didn’t matter any more.

I’m really looking forward to the next one in this trilogy The Path of the Hero King.