Dunning and Maggie Wall

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St Serf’s Church, Dunning

On our way home from our short break in Blairgowrie we stopped in the small Perthshire village of Dunning. We’d visited before to see the 9th century Dupplin Cross which honours Constantine, King of the Picts. It’s housed inside St Serf’s Church, which is dedicated to a 6th-century Pictish bishop also known as Servanus. Legend has it that he used his pastoral staff to slay a dragon in Dunning – aye, right! Because of Covid restrictions the church wasn’t open, but we knew that – it wasn’t what I wanted to see.

About a mile outside Dunning is this memorial, inscribed “Maggie Wall burnt here as a witch 1657”.

So who was Maggie Wall? She is said to be the last witch executed in Scotland, but this is a mysterious story. There is no official record of a Maggie Wall burned at the stake as a witch, and historically the last witch burned to death in Scotland was Janet Horne in Dornoch in 1727. Research has uncovered no confirmation that Maggie Wall ever existed –  although six alleged witches were executed near Dunning in 1663, Maggie  wasn’t one of them.  Nor does anyone know for sure who built the memorial, or who regularly maintains the lettering.  Some people think it’s a hoax, but many people are drawn to visit the memorial and leave small tributes such as painted stones or even a golf ball. I left a small, gold-coloured mirror from my handbag.

Maggie Wall Memorial, Dunning
Maggie Wall Memorial, Dunning
Tributes
Tributes
Tributes

I’ve wanted to visit this site for years, ever since I first became a Glasgow Women’s Library tour guide. Maggie features in our East End Walk when we stop outside a pub on the Gallowgate, the Saracen Head, known locally as the Sarry Heid. The original Saracen Head was built in 1755 on land that used to be the kirkyard and burial grounds of Little St Mungo Church. It was a fashionable hotel, in which William and Dorothy Wordsworth stayed in 1803, but as the city moved west its reputation and standards declined. It was later converted to shops and dwellings then demolished in 1904, but the name survived.

The current pub has been here for over 100 years, but what does it have to do with Maggie? The Saracen Head claims to be Glasgow’s first (and possibly only?) pub-museum and one of the advertised exhibits is Maggie’s skull. (I have not been inside to verify this).

How did the skull of a woman who cannot be proved to have existed end up here? The cynical might say it could have been uncovered when the original building was demolished in 1904 – after all it was built on the site of an old burial ground and human remains have been uncovered there. But why Maggie Wall? Maybe this mythical figure represents all women who were executed as witches? It certainly makes a good story.

Back to Dunning before I finish – for a small village it has a lot of history with 108 listed buildings. It was the site of both an Iron Age fort and a Roman camp with the name probably deriving from the Gaelic Dùnainn meaning little fort.  For centuries it lay on the main route between Stirling and Perth, but in the nineteenth century it was bypassed by the railway and in the twentieth by road, the busy A9, so now it is a quiet little place. Here are a few things which caught our eye.

A tree was planted to commemorate the burning of Dunning during the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. The original tree blew down in 1936 and was replaced in 1937 “the year of the coronation of Their Majesties King George VI & Queen Elizabeth”.

Commemorative tree
Commemorative tree plaque
Commemorative tree plaque

The fountain at the centre of the village dates from 1874 and was gifted by Alexander Martin, a former Dunning resident, who made his fortune in New Brunswick as a confectioner.

Drinking fountain and Tron Square
Drinking fountain

Rollo Park was presented to the parish of Dunning in 1946 by John 12th Lord Rollo of Duncrub “to commemorate over 550 years of friendship between the families of Dunning and the family of Duncrub.” I’m not sure what the figure above the inscription is – could it be St Serf’s dragon? Whatever it is, it holds a large R for Rollo. Behind it you can glimpse a mural for Dunning’s 500th anniversary in 2011.

R for Rollo
Recreation ground inscription
Dunning 500 mural

Finally, a few random shots of this pretty village. I was impressed with the modern extension to the old school building which is a lot more interesting than the boxy structures we get in Glasgow.

Kirk Gate House
Sunflowers
Aye stone
School buildings, old and new
Dunning, Perthshire

We enjoyed our short visit to a village of dragons and witches – not many places can claim both!

Scotland, UK , , , , , ,

68 Comments »

  2. I love the idea of Maggie as a symbol for all the women persecuted as witches. I’d like to say we’re more civilised now, but of course those who are afraid and full of hate will always create an “other” to be their victim.

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  4. Hi Anabel, It is hard for me to understand how certain people were named witches and burnt. Interesting about whether Maggie Wall existed or whether all of it is a hoax. A fascinating post. We just returned from our Fall camping trip. Not a witch in site. At least I did not see any.

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      • It’s so hard Anabel – sorry to hear that. My dad who is 87 (still lives independently) can’t visit his sister who is 86 and in a nursing home. He is not finding it easy and the approaching winter is not helping his spirits either 😦

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          • Yes my dad was quite despondent when we Skyped yesterday – he fears new restrictions will come in and he’ll be a prisoner in his flat till the spring. Meanwhile our international borders are unlikely to reopen for at least a year here in Australia. We are relatively free to do as we like here in Western Australia but the state borders are also closed and it is upsetting many people though keeping us “safe”.

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              • I know it’s so confusing – the long term effects of the virus for some people seem devastating even if they weren’t that ill to start with. Clearly it’s not just like a new flu but how long can countries remain shut down for? Really it is a very hard one to call and like you am glad I’m not the one having to make such tough decisions!

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      • It is the same here as cases are going up once again and they are asking everyone to limit social contacts to a minimum but we can still get around though the government is saying that we should avoid travel between our various regions but they aren’t putting up physical barriers so we can still do it…so we have kept our plan to go away next week for a week to hiking in two parks.

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  10. Mysterious Maggie! Folklore, legends, myths… How did and do historians decipher it all? It’s amazing to me how people and facts of the 1600s and 1700s have been documented, but other things are unknown or made up. Fascinating, yet tricky stuff!

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  11. Hi Anabel – fascinating village … with lots of interesting snippets of life … especially your Maggie – lots of ‘history’ linked in to her – great reading thank you . I agree the school building has melded well … all the best – Hilary

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  13. I have to paraphrase because I cannot remember the exact wording but someone once said (in relation to journalism), when the facts interfere with a good story, ditch the facts. In this case I agree. I’m all for witches, fairies and dragons, so I read this wide-eyed and believed every word!

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  14. A very interesting post and an intriguing story about Maggie even – if she didn’t really exist then someone like her probably did. The village looks very pretty and I like the drinking fountain 🙂

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  16. I think a skull would put me of my nip of Drambuie. Just the other day Les and I were discussing the treatment of “witches”, as you do on a Sunday morning, and in Massachusetts it was a fallacy that they were burned at the stake. Don’t quote me on that. Amazing how reading one article follows onto another totally obscure subject!

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  18. Interesting place. The east coast of Scotland burned a lot more witches than the west, probably due to closer sailing and trade ties with Europe. I suppose witch burnings and general hangings were the TV of their day, light entertainment.. Even in 2020 its remarkably easy to manipulate mass hysteria and condition people to think in a certain way, Governments, religions, the media and private individuals do it all the time. All you need is a bogey person or certain groups that other folk don’t trust. Scary how easy it is.to achieve now the internet is here.

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  19. Loved learning about the story of Maggie – and at least the history checks out to the extent that witches were actually burnt in Scotland (unlike when people claim that witches were burnt in England later in the early modern era, or that the Salem witches were burnt at the stake. Drives me nuts every time, as you probably know!), even if no such woman actually existed. I think the memorial is a lovely idea, especially if it represents all women who were persecuted for their alleged “witchcraft.”

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  22. Well that was quite the education! Despite spending the first 17 years of my life in Fife, I don’t know that I have ever been to nearby Dunning – at least I have no memory of having been. I am definitely intrigued by the dragon and witch stories and confess I had never heard of Maggie Wall either.

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  25. Anabel – I am so impressed that everyone – including Maggie – would have been accounted for in a census hundreds and hundreds of years ago! That’s some impressive record-keeping, and even more impressive that Maggie seems to have found her way out of the count 😉 However you read it, it’s a bit of a delicious story. Cheers – Susan

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