Bannockburn, Culloden, Killiecrankie: Why Scotland's battlefields shouldn't be protected forever

I really like history. Reading how people struggled with the issues of their time is truly instructive and gives fresh insight into current issues. I also agree it’s worth preserving old buildings, ruins and so on. No one is arguing that Edinburgh Castle should be turned into student flats but, if they were, I would be against it.

Caveats out the way, we need to talk about Scotland’s ancient battlefields or, as some prefer to call them, “fields”, and whether or not they should be preserved in aspic for eternity as revered and sacred places.

The latest row brewed up after Stirling Council approved a plan for a harness racing track within the “historic boundary” of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, when Robert the Bruce famously defeated King Edward II, aka “proud Edward” of Flower of Scotland fame. It’s funny, I’ve never thought of battlefields as having a “boundary” – it wasn’t exactly cricket – but I suppose I know what they mean.

The National Trust for Scotland, no less, said it was “shocked and disappointed” at the decision to grant planning permission, after they had pointed out that the trotting track would be “in the vicinity” of the place where the two armies met on the battle’s first day. “The development will destroy one of the few remaining undeveloped areas of the designated historic battlefield,” said Stuart Brooks, the trust’s director of conservation and policy.

‘Spiritual response’

It’s far from the only battlefield planning row. It seems like every few years a developer wants to build on the site of the 1746 Battle of Culloden, where Bonnie Prince Charlie’s dreams of taking the British crown finally ended, and there’s a bit of a stooshie about it.

In 2020, Raoul Machin-Curtis, operations manager at Culloden Battlefield, claimed people “have a spiritual response to this landscape. The big open space allows you to breath and respond to the layers of history that are here. It is fairly unspoilt at the moment but the minute you have too much modern intrusion, you lose that.” Well, some people may have a spiritual response but I’m definitely not one of them.

Lessons from history

Perhaps the most shocking example of battlefield preservation ideology was the attempt to stop the dualling of the A9, because the widened road would have impinged on the site of the Battle of Killiecrankie, a 1689 clash between Jacobite and government troops. Thankfully, after a public inquiry, the then transport minister Jenny Gilruth agreed in 2022 that the work could go ahead.

Given the number of deaths on that road and the improved safety of dual carriageways, it struck me as utterly appalling that, more than 300 years later, a savage battle might have continued to claim lives.

There are modern-day reasons why battle sites should be preserved – tourism being the main one. However, if there are competing claims on the land, these should be weighed in the balance. Just because thousands of people did their best to kill each other hundreds of years ago in a particular place shouldn’t trump all.

The veneration of such places is also a rather modern idea. For hundreds of years, many people would hardly have given it a second thought – a historic attitude we might do well to learn from.