Bench series: Culloden
After a family funeral in Inverness this summer, we made a very brief tour of the battlefield at Culloden. It suited our sombre mood. The bench above, with its Gaelic inscription, is dedicated as follows to Gordon Thom:
Around the bench were memorials to the fallen, on both sides.
Culloden memorial
Culloden memorial
This is Leanach Cottage. A cannon ball is said to have been recovered from its turf wall more than a century ago.
I’m linking this post to Jude’s Bench Series which, for November, is looking for benches with a message.
The Glasgow Gallivanter 
We walked the Culloden battlefield when we were there in 1995 and took photos of the MacLachlan stones we found. My late husband’s family descends from the MacLachlan clan.
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It was the 80s when we first went. But I think you too would find it very different now – more commercial.
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That’s too bad. I hate it when people commercialize everything.
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Sorry about your loss. The desolation of this place is so fitting for a battlefield Memorial.
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Thanks, Donna.
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Very moving series of photos Anabel. It looks a mournful and desolate place – beautiful in a haunting way!
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Thank you – it was.
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Thank you ich habe ein Überzetzungsbrogram da kann ich soweit alles lesen.Wünsche ein gutes week-end und alles Liebe Gislinde
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Vielen Dank!
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Beautiful place, though certainly somber. Reminds me a lot of the battlefields I’ve seen that are peppered all across the United States. Vast, slightly rolling fields, sometimes with livestock, but rarely.
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Yes, I’ve visited a few Civil War battlefields and get the same haunted feeling especially when the landscape is much as it would have been. Manassass for example or the Sunken Road near Richmond. They stick in my mind.
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For me, it would definitely be Custard’s Last Stand. What a long, low place. Places like that definitely tend to carry the scars of memory, even when it might not be known by the people passing through.
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I haven’t been there. Another one for “some day”.
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Loved it.
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So glad!
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I’m catching up on reading blogs this morning. It seems fitting to read this one given the tragic events in Paris a few days ago. It’s a solemn reminder that violence and sadness are nothing new in this world.
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Yes, I had been going to publish it anyway but it does fit into the general sadness of 11 November, followed by Paris. It’s all equally hard to make sense of.
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The eerie quiet must have been deafening in such a place.
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Yes, it was eerie. Everyone walked about very quietly and respectfully.
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It looks so quiet there and yet such a battle happened eons ago. The little cottage looks homey to me-does someone live there?
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It is quiet – eerily so. No, the cottage is part of the site, I don’t think it would be habitable.
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We were there on a sunny, breezy day in June. As you say it is sad; spending time understanding the lead up and the tactics made the tour feel antiseptic until I stepped outside and realised how relatively small the area was and yet how huge and indiscriminate was the slaughter.
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Sometimes they can overdo the information! We were terribly boorish, we just had half an hour so went straight outside and skipped the exhibition. (The good thing about having a membership card.) Last time we visited (almost 30 years ago) the visitor centre was tiny and you were hit more or less straight away by the bleakness.
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The exhibition is very good so do catch it if you can
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Next time!
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It’s true, there’s a sense of lonelyness on the battlefiled. But I like it that follen on both sides are remembered.
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Yes, that’s a good point.
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Battlefields are strange places. As others have mentioned, sombre, desolate, sad. Thinking of all those men slaughtered. For what? Now the whole planet seems to be a battlefield, and not only soldiers are being slaughtered. Aside from that your cottage photo is absolutely beautiful, I’d be tempted to crop out that tree on the left-hand side, but otherwise a perfect composition 🙂
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Yes, it’s quite appropriate at the moment. Nothing is worth indiscriminate killing.
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What a desolate place, Anabel. The bench was a good find though.
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Desolate is an apt word. Battlefields always make me feel that. So much waste of life.
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I agree with you. I remember going to Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana and seeing General Custer’s grave with the grasses waving in the breeze. That was also really desolate.
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Hi Anabel,
I agree with you about the sense of sadness around Culloden. That’s what is in my memory of a visit there long time ago.
Have a great Sunday,
Pit
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Thanks, you too, Pit.
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This bench doesn’t look particularly comfortable. But then, nothing about Culloden looks comfortable.
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No. It has a pervasive sense of sadness about it.
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