Date set for Culloden housing protest
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CAMPAIGNERS hoping to persuade developers to abandon plans for 16 homes on the boundary of Culloden battlefield are staging a protest at the site next month.
The Facebook group called Stop the Development at Culloden is encouraging members and supporters to turn up at the battlefield and march to the housing site at Viewhill Farm, NOW being advertised as Cairnfields, wearing traditional Highland dress.
They say the new homes will be built over the bodies of Highlanders who died on the windswept moor where the 1745 Jacobite Rising came to its tragic end.
The developer Kirkwood Homes has been tight-lipped about the protest but in a written statement said its plans to build the homes on the site were in accordance with the conditions set out in the 2014 planning consent.
An Inverness businessman and former boss of Tulloch Homes – David Sutherland currently owns the site.
He believed Kirkwood Homes had dealt with fears "quite sensitively" when putting forward their designs for the homes.
Mr Sutherland confirmed he is in the process of selling the site to Kirkwood Homes.
But Stop the Development at Culloden group leader George Kempick, who has been campaigning against the scheme for the last four years, said there was a strong sense of feeling among his members that the battle was not lost yet.
He said: "The most important thing people can do at present is to contact the developer, either by email or by letter.
"This will at least give them a taste of what they are in for, if they choose to continue with the purchase of this land from Mr Sutherland.
"We want them to be inundated. We already get the impression they are not happy."
In his letter to Kirkwood Homes, Highland campaigner Steve Maclennan wrote: "Your development will be like building on a grave.
"Would you or your workforce like to have houses built upon your family graves?
"Whether they be your mother, father, sister, brother, son or daughter. That is what this development will be doing. Somebody’s family member could be under the ground there and you wish to build on it.
"I would like to think that you as a company would have the decency to respect the dead and protect Scotland’s history by not building on this site and just leaving it as farmland."
Mr Kempick believes enough pressure could see the company back away from the sale.
He added: "We hope that they will basically say ‘we are going to walk away’, we are going to take a financial hit’."
And he said hopes of launching a "global fundraiser" to raise enough money to buy the plot were still being considered.
But he said the National Trust for Scotland, which owns Culloden Battlefield Visitor Centre and part of the battlefield, had a vital role to play if this was to come forward.
He added: "They would need to be the figurehead for such a massive fundraiser in order to buy it off Mr Sutherland and return it to farmland rather than a development site.
"But he could gift it, I believe he could gift it."
The protest is being planned for Saturday December 9.
Campaigners and their supporters will meet at the car park at the Culloden Battlefield Visitor Centre at 9.30am and march up to the housing site at Viewhill farm, leaving at 10am for a 30 minute walk.
When they arrive at the development site there will be speeches.
They will finish there at noon, have lunch and then reconvene at the city centre for about 1.30pm where they will hand out leaflets and speak to people about the campaign.
The calling notice on Facebook says traditional Highland dress "would be preferred".
The controversial housing scheme at Viewhill, Balloch, received planning permission from the Scottish Government in March 2014 after Highland Council rejected it.
Protesters hoped the site would lie undeveloped but their hopes were dashed by a follow-on planning application seeking consent for the layout and design of 16 houses.
The National Trust for Scotland said it was interested to meet the protestors.
Neither Kirkwood Homes nor David Sutherland were available for comment.
