Down Memory Lane with Bill McAllister: Centuries of highs and lows for a Nairnshire-based clan
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April will see the 275th anniversary of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his enemy – and cousin – the Duke of Cumberland, arriving at Kilravock Castle on successive days to be hosted by the Provost of Nairn.
The prince spent a couple of hours there, but Cumberland spent the next night, and his boots are still preserved there, along with a silver-mounted coconut from which he drank a toast before the fateful battle.
Provost Hugh Rose was the bearer of a celebrated Nairnshire name, whose ancestors arrived either from Ireland or France 800 years ago.
Nairn minister Hew Rose, writing in 1684, claimed the Clan Rose descends from DeRos, a Norman knight who came to the area in the 13th century, and was granted the lands of Geddes in Strathnairn, while fellow incomer deBisset awarded the lands of Kilravock.
In due course, through marriage, DeRos inherited the latter estate, and when his great-grandson married the daughter of the Constable of Urquhart Castle, she brought with her a significant slice of Strathnairn land.
Kilravock means “church on a rock”, and a sixth-century chapel is thought to have been established there by a disciple of St Columba.
Six generations of the Rose clan lived there before, on February 18, 1460, the Earl of Ross granted a licence to build the Kilravock tower and keep. A Hugh Rose of Kilravock is identified as living in the tower in 1481.
A historian of the time labelled the Roses “Men of Peace from Nairn” for their lack of warlike behaviour.
Hutcheon Rose, the tenth Baron of Kilravock, nicknamed the Black Baron for his swarthy appearance, commissioned the building of the five-storey mansion house in 1553, apparently to accommodate 17 sisters and daughters!
Hutcheon hosted Mary Queen of Scots before her clansmen forced entry to Inverness Castle in 1562 and her son, James VI, was also later his guest.
The main staircase, corridors and west wing had been added before Robert Burns visited in 1787 and Queen Mary, the present queen’s grandmother, also stayed there.
In the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion, Clan Rose stayed loyal to the throne and Arthur Rose, brother of the chief, was fatally shot in a raid on the Inverness Tolbooth.
When, on the eve of Culloden, Jacobites planned a night march to Nairn to surprise Cumberland, they became lost in the thick Kilravock woodland and the effort fizzled out.
A JA Rose became Usher of the French National Assembly, and was the person who informed both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of the decision to execute them.
The castle has a pit-dungeon, used to hide fugitives from Covenanter persecution. Staunchly Catholic, the Roses underwent a rapid conversion after the Reformation and the ninth chief imprisoned the Abbot of Kinloss there.
This year is the 220th anniversary of the birth of Hugh Henry Rose, who became a Field Marshal and the first Baron Strathnairn. Joining the 93rd Highlanders in 1920, he was awarded the Legion of Honour by France for services in the Crimean War.
Elizabeth Rose was Baroness from 1946 until her death in 2012 and was responsible for Kilravock becoming a Christian Centre in 1967. In 1984 she transferred the castle and lands to the Kilravock Castle Christian Trust.
Her nephew, David Rose, was officially recognised as 26th Baron of Kilravock in 2013, and is the first Clan Rose chief not to live in the castle. Roses, however, still bloom in and around Nairn.
• Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
