Scotland’s first Jacobite Festival to feature musket balls from Battle of Culloden and Flora MacDonald letter
Musket balls from Culloden will feature in an event taking place at Inverness Museum as part Scotland’s first Jacobite Festival.
The festival, from August 16 to 25, includes activities at multiple locations to highlight the range of sites, attractions and collections which help bring an understanding of the events of the Jacobite period, from 1688 to 1746 - and beyond.
The programme includes a Jacobite Collections Day at Inverness Museum plus an online talk by two members of staff from the Highland Archive Service.
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The festival is promoted by Jacobite Scotland which highlights historical sites from battlefields to archives containing collections of documents.
It states: “From Inverness and the Isle of Skye all the way down to Edinburgh and the Borders, we have brought together a programme of independently-managed events which will shine a light on different aspects of this fascinating and significant period of our history.”
It says the activities of the Jacobites and their enemies, the supporters of the kings and queens who supplanted the Stuart dynasty, have left many traces.
People can still visit the battlefields, castles, houses and the streets where history happened while museums, art galleries, libraries and archives contain collections of documents, weapons, costume and art of the period and the centuries since.
The Jacobite Collections Day at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery will be held on August 20 from 11am to 12.30pm and 2pm to 3.30pm.
Visitors will have the chance to learn more about the surprising history of the Battle of Culloden, a large and dramatic oil painting by Peel Ross, depicting the horrors of the battlefield. It had been redisplayed after undergoing specialist conservation treatment.
Visitors can meet the collections team behind the re-display, and handle some real and replica artefacts from the museum collection including musket balls from Culloden battlefield and a letter written by Flora MacDonald.
An online talk, The Lives of Lord Lovat and Duncan Forbes, will be given on August 19 at 7pm by Highland Archive Service family historian Anne Fraser, and community engagement officer Lorna Steele-McGinn.
Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, and Duncan Forbes of Culloden were central to the story of Jacobite Risings and at the heart of many of the 18th century’s most tumultuous events.
The talk will cover their fascinating lives and dramatic deaths – one on the scaffold and the other of ‘heartbreak.
Tickets by donation. Book via Eventbrite. Details can be obtained by emailing lorna.steele@highlifehighland.com.
There will also be a Jacobite Document Exhibition at the Highland Archive Centre on August 21 from 2pm to 4pm.
The drop-in event provides the opportunity to look at documents from the centre’s collections relating to the Jacobite Risings including church records, letters, and battle plans.
The Jacobite Scotland and Trails web pages are developed and maintained by The Battle of Prestonpans (1745) Heritage Trust, a Scottish charity committed to understanding and interpreting the battle and its legacy, and protecting the battlefield site.
