Culloden Battlefield: Too sacred to picnic?
Interesting story at the BBC covers protests by the Circle of Gentlemen about people having a picnic on the Culloden Battlefield:
Anger at ‘war graves picnickers’
Signs are to be erected at Culloden Battlefield asking visitors to respect the site as a war grave following a complaint about picnickers.
A member of A Circle of Gentlemen, a society which recalls the Jacobite cause, said he was furious at the behaviour of some tourists.
Alasdair MacNeill said he saw a family picnicking on top of one of the grave mounds.
I haven’t been to the Culloden Battlefield yet – made it to the car park twice, but for one reason or another we didn’t get as far as the visitor’s centre, so I’m not sure what the context of this story is regarding the grave mounds.
However, I’m wondering if this is something of an over-reaction?
After all, with the battle having been 263 years ago, I think that makes it very different to war graves in Normandy – people with faces that are still remembered individually by the living today.
Having had a family picnic across a range of ancient sites across the UK – Neolithic settlements; Bronze and Iron age forts; Roman, Saxon and Viking towns; medieval villages; and a string of different castles – I’m now wondering if I may have left any observers apoplectic by daring to bring my children to appreciate their historical heritage?
Visitors should always respect the historical sites they visit – seek to leave them as they found them, and avoid damaging them – I think most would agree on that.
But is there really a need to instil further conditions on any such visits?
After all, the reaction of the Gentlemen has been somewhat snooty to say the least:
A place of national mourning desecrated once again by uneducated peasants!
Perhaps there should be a demand that all visitors to the Culloden Battlefield cry dutifully as well?
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There is no excuse for being snooty but I can’t help feeling that if people think it’s OK to picnic at Culloden they have failed to appreciate its significance. It may not be a war grave but there are numerous markers for the graves. It is a place for being reflective and respectful.
Anyone who has not been since the new visitor centre was opened ought to make the effort. It is a facinating and very thought provoking day out – and out of courtesy and respect, most people would hesitate to turn it into a picnic.
Like a lot of things to do with Culloden, my view is that this whole period of British history is much romanticised.
As someone whose forebears were present at the battle, and who has been a member of the NTS for something like 45 years, it bothers me little that people have chosen to have a picnic there – even if I agree it might perhaps have been rather more sensitive not to have done so on top of one of the mounds and using a headstone clan-marker as a headrest – there are plenty of other green areas there to choose from.
A vignette from my youth – I must have been about 6 at the time – I was taken there by my parents to see ‘our’ mound (a clan loyal to the Jacobite side), very close to the commemorative cairn. As we were leaving a gent dressed head-to-toe in tartan, who said he was visiting from Canada, asked where the Campbell mound was. I thought it sad then, and now, that it was well-away from the other clans and at that time one had to go over a rickety style and along a boggy, sodden path to get to it, unlike the rest of the site which was perfectly dry (it was a sunny warm day that day, too).
So I think people should be able to picnic there if they want to – although perhaps just a little more sensitive choice of precise location might be warranted.
Jesus allegedly walked the earth 2000 years ago yet a huge chunk of the world’s population still think that’s relevant today.
Time has no bearing here: these are graves of men who not only died in battle, but also of others who were murdered in cold blood afterwards. I can only assume by this attitude that you’d find it acceptable to find strangers parked upon the graves of your parents or grandparents, with their dogs, munching away at a picnic? Likewise the WWI graves of France are fair game for alfresco dining expeditions (after all, that was 90 years ago eh)?
I now consider myself thankful to possess an understanding of what it is to respect the dead, as I’m clearly not in the majority here.
At precisely what point in time does a massacre site and it’s graves become insensitive? Perhaps, by precisely the same token of the effluxion of time we could also apply an identical attitude to those who perished in the concentration camps of World War II at some point in the future. After all, in time their faces will also no longer be within living memory.
Whilst we can no longer claim that those who fell on April 16th 1746 on that blood-soaked moor are able to remembered within living memory by the same token young people today cannot possibly have known those who died in the fields of Flanders. Should that now be turned into ‘Flandersland – a fun day out for all the family’?
Is it right that because some of us feel little respect or connection to the fallen at Culloden Moor that they should therefore inflict their lack of respect on us all? Speaking subjectively, it gives me renewed hope to know that there are those amongst who still care passionately about our past especially in a World so determined to make a science out of an iconoclastic crusade wherever decency and academia can be found.
In understanding the terrible event that took place there in 1746, it is necessary to avoid taking sides in the historical dispute of the Royal Line of descent. Arguably, of far more relevance is that, like Hastings, Culloden Moor was a battle which changed the shape of the World. For example, many of those who fought there, on both sides, were in the front lines at Quebec as it was indeed the newly formed Highland regiments which broke the walls there having successfully and quite remarkably scaled the Heights Of Abraham against all odds. Contingently the Northern American colonies fell into British hands. In truth, there is fair argument that without the participation Highland regiments of Scotland the British Empire, for better or worse, is unlikely to have ever existed.
Now, without saying this was a good thing or otherwise, the monumentally important battle at Culloden in 1746 has huge bearing on this and a great many other contingent events in World history, at least in being able to make a fair case that the United States of America, as we know it today, would be highly unlikely to exist.
The event that occurred there, a dynastic civil war struggle, was the last battle to be fought on British soil, and thank goodness for that. The behaviour of The British Army following it’s victory shocked the World to it’s core and accordingly, no regiment in The British Army is permitted to bear the name of Culloden as a battle honour. It was very far indeed from an honourable victory. Approximately 22,000 people in the Highlands of Scotland are alleged to have perished in wanton acts of murder during the reprisals that followed. To some extent, this could possibly be justly compared to the recent ethnic cleansing in Former Yugoslavia. For this reason alone,Culloden is not anything that the National Curriculum wishes to dwell on.
My personal feelings are not enormously relevant. I do accept that. After all, I am one of the tiny minority of people in the modern World that respects other human beings, past and present. However, I bear no shame in saying that I not only respect those poor souls who lost their all at Culloden, be they from either side of the conflict, but I also hold a great deal of regard for those who feel that respect for the dead, wherever and whenever they died, is paramount as a benchmark of a civilised society. Arguing otherwise is, in my humble opinion, most unworthy of academic debate and greatly misinformed.
A Circle Of Gentlemen has at the very least brought the matter into the public domain and I thank them for that. Had they done it less forcefully, would we be discussing it here on this forum? I think not. Even Culloden Battlefield have, as I understood it, taken that which A Circle Of Gentlemen have protested about to be not only fair and correct but have also responded quite sympathetically. It pleases me greatly to see such a conciliatory approach to the genuine issue raised by this commemorative group and furthermore proposed signs reminding the public that this place is not a them park but a war grave does the guardians of the site at Culloden Battlefield much credit, too. This is surely a good example of an intelligent and constructive co-operation amongst those who feel in some way moved by this lamentable part of our cultural past.
Alternatively, let’s rename the place as ‘Cullodenland’ as soon as we possibly can and consider the fiscal profits of degenerating the war graves there. That way we can rest assured that all civil decency is removed from society and adorned with ignorance so that we too can aspire to the possibilities that our very own lives can be reduced to irrelevant trivia.
Tartan candy floss with Highlander blood sauce, anyone? All major credit cards accepted.
Michael Corby
SCOTLAND
“Alternatively, let’s rename the place as ‘Cullodenland’ as soon as we possibly can and consider the fiscal profits of degenerating the war graves there.”
This is, I think, what undermines the argument here.
On the one hand, a quite understandable respect for the dead and the history they represent – but then juxtaposed with a rather outlandish suggestion that anything but deep and pitied reverence must be the norm, or else.
The children of today may not know the faces of those who fell at Flanders – but there is a good chance their living relatives do – parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.
That puts remembrance into an entirely different perspective to any intellectualised understanding of the dead long buried without faces.
I saw a media presentation on Culloden at the Royal Armoury in Leeds many years ago – certainly it was made abundantly clear that the battle was indeed shocking.
But here’s the thing – Culloden, for all it’s retrospective importance, was one horrible slaughter among many horrible slaughters that line the history books, many barely spoken or remembered.
The important point, I would suggest, is that such battles be remembered as far possible, and even more so, that such memories be freely accessible to each and every generation – so that such memories, and the understanding of the events, the consequences, and their meaning, continue to be propagated.
If anyone had approached that family and demanded them down from that burial mound, I would have been livid – history is for all, not just a few who claim a particularly strong feeling for it.
I have taken my own children for picnics across the ages, and the joy of this is that I can freely share this with them. Whether they feel they understand anything from that is entirely up to them.
That’s the joy of history – nobody owns it, everybody is free to share it.
Ask for some respect by all means – but don’t claim to own what you do not, nor set conditions by which it should be shared – because in doing so, you seek to restrict access to one of the few things in live we can share freely.
And that is a far worse crime than any caricatured vision of modern consumer exploitation.
Was it wrong for the family to picnic on the grave mound? At this point I think the most important point was that they were there. Otherwise, how could they learn to care?
2c.
Great debate Brian and you are right to raise the questions you do. However, what I meant to express perhaps more clearly than I did previously was encourage you to visit Culloden with the family. Take time to understand what happended there; understand the futility of it all; the mixed emotions of feeling sorrow at their failure, yet not unhappy that they did.
It happended so long ago that the area could be thought of as just another Scottish moor. But I think where the new visitor centre has succeeded is in the way it has brought the past to life. You engage with the issues and you meet the people from both sides. These were people like you and me with hopes and dreams and it all ended here. It becomes very real and the futility and waste of it all becomes almost tangible.
Picnics are happy events to be enjoyed with the family. But there is also a place for doing family things that help our children understand and respect the past. These are the experiences that help make their own choices for the future.
So please do take the family to Culloden. Have a great day out, but do let us know if your views change on it being an appropriate picnic spot.
Iain, no need to apologise – I think you carry the sentiment of your argument well.
Reading the comments tonight I’ve already been thinking that, weather permitting, we should make our way to the Culloden Visitors Centre on Sunday.
An excellent idea gentlemen. Be sure to spend some time at the graves and reflect upon exactly what lies under them. I suspect you’ll find the experience worthwhile.
I make no apologies for my argument at all.
“don’t claim to own what you do not, nor set conditions by which it should be shared – because in doing so, you seek to restrict access to one of the few things in live we can share freely.”
I certainly did not as you infer, claim to ‘own’ history – an absurd and unqualified suggestion – albeit an interesting debating technique that appears to require little or no qualification beyond your accepted rights of free speech. If I did make such a claim please clarify where I made it and I will willingly defer.
If you cannot do better than to make such ludicrous and unfounded inferences then permit me to withdraw and reserve my intellect for those more informed as to the rules of academic debate.
It really might be worth considering a visit to the place before you instruct me on the rights and wrongs of this argument. There happens to be several suitable picnicking areas, excellent facilities for familes and a reasonably decent facility for eating at a new self service restaurant.
Let me make this simple so that you can understand it. Not only an excellent self service restaurant but also well serviced suitable picnic areas are plentiful. Cemeteries at Culloden are not. Get it?
Ok, I surrender.
Gravely concerned,
aye,
MC
“permit me to withdraw and reserve my intellect for those more informed as to the rules of academic debate.”
Clearly you were setting restrictions on how people should share and enjoy history, by creating the strawman of “Cullodenland” as an alternative to respecting the dead under the criteria you suggested. Rather than answer my reply, you seem to have engaged in an ad hominem strategy.
You may regard that as playing by the “rules of academic debate”, but I think you’ll find it more properly perceived as intellectual retreat.
The pointers on the available facilities are well made, though.