Tag Archives: Wars of the Three Kingdoms

Perth Museum, Scotland

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We visited the new Perth Museum a couple of weeks ago, it’s mainly for local interest I think and was opened because what had been an Edwardian concert hall was no longer fit for purpose, so it lay there, rotting and unused. Some thought the building should be demolished, but it has been repurposed, successfully. The big attraction is the Stone of Destiny which has been taken from Edinburgh Castle, but we had seen that before so didn’t bother with it, you had to book a ticket for a time slot . I took the photo below of the Pullar’s dye works and cleaners. It reminded me that in one of her books Deborah Devonshire mentioned that they used to send their evening gloves to this place to have them cleaned, and it was so famous the address was just PULLARS, PERTH. I think the building itself is one of those Edwardian, on the cusp of Art Deco, designs.

Art Deco Pullars, Perth, Scotland

The St Madoes standing stone was dug up from a field where it must have lain for years undisturbed, hence it being in unweathered condition, I think some of the designs on it look a bit Mackintosh-ish.

St Madoes stone, Perth Museum, Scotland

The swords were all found locally, possibly gifts for a river god, but there were so many battles around the Perthshire area they could just have been lost in battle. When I read a book about Montrose fairly recently I was amazed by how many villlages in Perthshire Montrose had ridden into that I had visited. Places where battles had been fought in the Civil War, or Wars of the Three Kingdoms as it now seems to be called.

Swords, Perth Museum, St Madoes

More finds, including an amazing leather shoe.

metal stuff ,shoe, Perth Museum, Scotland

In 1633 King Charles I did actually visit Scotland, and they had a bit of a do for him.

King Charles 1, Perth Museum, Scotland

Below is one of the costumes from that dance. I imagine it was a bit more colourful back in its day.

River dance , Perth Museum, Scotlandgarment

King Charles’ surcoat apparently, below.  There must have been a contrasting silk fabric showing through the slashes originally I think.

King's surcoat, Perth museum, Scotland

These neolithic carved stone balls which must have taken ages to make are a mystery, they’ve been found in lots of places in Scotland, but what were they used for?

Stone Balls, Perth museum, Scotland

There was a ‘Unicorn’ exhibition on the top floor of the museum, but that had to be paid for separately and as neither of us are much into unicorns we didn’t bother to visit it.

Dunbar Battlefield (1650)

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DunbarRecently a friend and I did one of those FutureLearn free online courses on the Battle of Dunbar, one of the bloodiest of what used to be called the English Civil Wars and is now called Wars of the Three Kingdoms, featuring that dastardly killjoy Oliver Cromwell. It was Maureen’s idea to do the course, she has links with the Durham area of the north of England and as she’s keen on archaeology and local history, as am I. She was very interested when the news of human remains being found at Durham Cathedral broke, and it turned out that the skeletons belonged to Scottish prisoners who had been incarcerated within the cathedral after the Scots lost the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, so we decided that it would be a good idea to take a look at the actual battlefield.

Dunbar Battlefield

We chose a beautiful day to go there, Jack did the driving and as we got close to Dunbar which is in East Lothian, south of Edinburgh I was scanning the roadside, looking out for a sign pointing the direction to the battlefield. We had a book, and had looked on the internet but it was surprisingly difficult to find, but after some to-ing and fro-ing we got there – we think.

Dunbar Battlefield
I say we think as sadly there is no proper information board there. Other battlegrounds that I’ve visited pointed out where the various rivalling factions were gathered at the beginning of the battle. It’s really just modern memorial stones that you can see and we were left to guess.

Battle of Dunbar, Carlyle Stone 1

Over the centuries the area hasn’t changed too much, although there’s now a cement making factory on part of the land, a blot on the landscape. But we had a lovely walk as far as we could go before reaching a gate that we weren’t allowed to go past. The animals aren’t at all bothered by the industrial blot, we saw sheep, a deer and hordes of geese. It was a good day out.

Going back to that online course, I was really surprised that the few prisoners who survived the starvation and disease of their captivity in Durham were sent out to America as indentured servants, which in some ways was even worse than being a slave. A few managed to live into old age though and married and had families. I bet they were always thinking of their homeland though.