We only stay in castles… and other adventures in time travel.
Time is precious, spend it wisely.
This is the first post on my new blog, all about adventures in time travel, otherwise known as historical re-enactment in Scotland and beyond. The disclaimer first: I’m not a historian. I was rubbish at remembering dates (and facts to be honest), so I did science. This is my blog on discovering historic re-enactment for non-history experts and learning about it on the way. In 2 years I’m officially multiperiod now, dabbling in the 17th century, but mainly covering the Jacobite Rebellion 1745-16, with a dash of smugglers in the Early Napoleonic, and World War II home front.
Expect history, landscape, sewing, cooking, science, the odd watercolour and pony post (because they always creep in somehow) and we only stay in castles, so there may be some adventures too.
My interest in the Jacobite history began when I was training to be a primary school teacher. I realised that although I had an interest in history and had visited so many beautiful historic sites in Scotland, my formal history studies in school had not included anything before the industrial revolution. I was sketchy about what chronological order Mary Queen of Scots, Robert the Bruce and Bonnie Prince Charlie actually came in a timeline so decided to take an elective class on Scotland Past and Place (the trendy term for history and geography at the time). It was a great course featuring the Jacobites (and post landscapes) and now armed with historical skills required for a 3-12 year old (and a timeline of Scotland’s history), my adventures into the past began, armed with reference material of varying heft.
One wet holiday in Crieff, Perthshire, when I’d abandoned ideas of a profession in teaching and was going to be a scientist and make the work a better place, when wet welly-boot walks and all reading material was exhausted we were down to our final supplies of the chalet’s sparse selection of reading material from charity sales and left behind of sudoko puzzles, a hard back on fly fishing and a tartan bodice ripper. My brother got to the fly fishing book first, my sister the sudoko, so in desperation I started to flick through “Dragonfly in Amber” by Diana Gabaldon. It had a cover and blurb that made be balk, it looked like the worst of tartan tat, but there was absolutely nothing else for it… I was rather transported to familiar Jacobite historical and geographical stomping grounds in Scotland (and Paris) that I’d often visited, and just studied in my elective. The writing was rather better than I’d anticipated and I was utterly seduced by the landscape. That “Dragonfly in Amber” paperback did not stay in Crieff, but came home to Aberdeen, where I read the precursor “Cross Stitch” (when “Outlander” was published under a different title in the UK.
I have to say, that I started to get into Scottish history as I travelled around, dotting around like a butterfly, with no real direction and flitting where ever I fancied. I didn’t become a teacher but went back to do another post-grad, getting my masters in Environmental Science. As a biologist, I adore the natural world and love being outdoors, discovering the stories that are written in the landscape, from the epochs old tales of the geology and geography, to the complex shifting ecosystems above them, to our own human story played out in those landscapes. It was the Jacobite history that really caught my imagination, but I had no idea where that would lead.
I’ve been making a new shirt for the tiny Time Traveller and it’s time for tiny buttons and buttonholes.
In modern clothing we have a wonderful array of buttons in any haberdasher for buttons. For 18thC clothings, the go to button for shirts, shifts and underclothes were the thread or singleton button. They’re cheap, durable and easy to make yourself with very little in the way of materials.
Today I have been using:
Waxed linen thread (or linen and bees wax)
A wool needle with a large eye
A pencil (a dowel or anything round would do)
Optional:
Tiny Time Traveller in the back throwing brioche at your head
Materials for making thread buttons
I start by tying the thread onto the end of the pencil.
For an adult shirt I wrap the thread 30-40 times around the pencil. For the child’s shirt I’ve opted for 20 loops.
I gently ease the loops off the end of the pencil (this is the stage to be a bit careful). I pull the needle and thread through the centre of the circle of thread and create tiny mattress stitches to wrap the loops and create the button shape.
Once the button shape is created, I make a bar tack on the back and wrap it with thread to finish the button. I then snip any long threads.
Just like that, three linen buttons for collars and cuffs.
Brioche crumbs being thrown at the back of your head is strictly optional. (But we are stuck in a traffic jam in the Lake District).
They’re a really lovely little sewing project if you’re just getting started and I love that you can see the hands and heart of the person who made them in each finished garment.
Because we’d come home, I was really excited to go down to our re-enactment at NTS Preston Mill. Our re-enactment group were really excited to lend a hand on the mainland to stage photoshoots, with our young reenactor who portrays the Prince happy to dress as Betty Burke to stage photoshoots, with other reenactors happy to play civilian characters and redcoats if needed.
I can’t believe that over 2 days I did Benbecula to the NTS Preston Mill in East Lothian with a one year old
Jo did a great job of putting Betty Burke outfit together. I’d hoped we’d be able to still help on the mainland once Jo and her family were recovered from Covid, but she’d managed to make all the bits herself and do photos and a press call at Glenfinnan. The outfit looks amazing. You can read all about it in P&J articles available online.
From taking part in the project, we were given enough of the Betty Burke fabric to make a dress for ourselves.
I had a great time making up my Betty Burke dress. One Flora MacDonald had been released from imprisonment in London, she spent time in Edinburgh. A fabric printer reproduced material used in the Prince’s disguise and it was the height of fashion for women with Jacobite sympathies.
My first time wearing the Betty Burke dress.
I love wearing the dress and talking to the public about it. That’s how these stories stay alive, by talking, sharing and learning. I usually pair it with a navy petticoat.
It’s also great to dress up with a silk petticoat because it’s such a heavenly pattern. You may have spotted it’s the petticoat I sewed at Nunton in front of the fire place.
We recreated the moment of our engagement at the Prestonpans re-enactment of 2024
From chasing the history, we are creating our own. I look forward to the day when we can go back to the Hebrides all together, with my husband and the wee one to explore even more, because there’s so much more of the story to tell.
Back to Bonnie Prince escaping capture as Irish spinning maid, Betty Burke.
When the establishment discovered that Bonnie Prince Charlie had dressed as a woman to evade capture and escape, the Government propaganda of the time seized on the imagery of the Prince in women’s clothing to portray Bonnie Prince Charlie in drag as feminine and effete, undermining his leadership
Bonnie Prince Charlie as Betty Burke in a propaganda image
The legend reads:
Routed, o’er the Hills, the young Adventurer flies,
And in a Cottage, sinks to his Disguise,
Fled his gay Hopes, defeated by his fond Scheme,
His Thone is vanis’d like a golden Dream,
By manly Thoughts He’d charm His Woes to rest:
In Vain! Culloden still distracts his Breast.
To Jacobite sympathisers, Flora MacDonald became an icon of heroism and loyalty.
In propaganda images the prince is etched in drag, very comfortable in fine silk gown, but details of what the prince really wore have been passed down in descriptions by people who were really there and items still survive like his shoes (in a private collection now, but well documented), and most excitingly, a scrap of the calico dress sewn by Flora and Lady Clan). It doesn’t look like anything what you see in propaganda or portrayals on the screen.
Jo proposed travelling to Nunton House, on Benbecula to recreate the clothing in real time, with a small team of historical sewers where it really happened. We had a tame redcoat reenactor in the form of my husband, who could add colour to and photos and filming we did around the project.
One of the really exciting things Jo managed to do was to have dye analysis done on the scrap of dress fabric. It showed that the pattern wasn’t in black as it appeared, but was in purple. Over time it had oxidised to a black colour. We spent an enjoyable lunch planning the trip, roles for the project and trawling through online museum image archives to find purple pigment on surviving fabrics. She had it digitally recreated and printed by a specialist company and sourced the materials for the rest of the ensemble.
This is the pattern of Betty Burke’s dress that Jo had recreatedWe poured over the most enormous colour chart, comparing purples to exactant 18thC fabrics
Our family had a significant blow before the project with my husband losing his job, just before the baby’s first birthday and our wedding! He was lucky to have a wonderful new job within the month, but was a stressful time, we were both devastated that he would be unable to come to Benbecula. I wasn’t sure how I would manage a very busy one year old and all the travel and sewing on my own. Incredibly, my mum was able to step into the breach, so we would have a three generation adventure.
Then disaster struck Jo and family members came down with Covid on the eve of departure. We had no way of getting sewing materials, fabrics, supplies, measurements, practice toiles, project plans or anything up to Benbecula either. We travelled up in the hopes that tests would become clear in enough time to make a good stab at the project, or there could be some sort of contingency, but other sewers and supporters started dropping out. Nunton House and ferries were booked though and one other project supporter was still coming. We had to try.
We stayed with friends in Fort William overnight on the 22nd of June. In the most utterly glorious sunshine, we drove from Fort William and took the ferry from Mallaig to Skye, then from Uig took the ferry to North Uist. It really struck me the ease of travel that we had so we could revel in the incredible landscapes that were so variable and difficult in times gone by.
Waiting for the ferry at Uig
Nunton House is still an impressive landmark in the Benbecula landscape. It was very modern and imposing in 1746.
Nunton House – photo courtesy of Donald McPhee
In recent years Donald McPhee and his family have poured life into it again by renovating it into a very hospitable hostel. That means you can actually stay in one of the places that the course of history turned in. You will get the most hospitable and friendly welcome too.
What’s really incredible is that it isn’t about men bashing claymores or heads, or offering up nieces as pawns in their schemes, it’s about women who stepped up calmly when it was needed, putting their heads, hearts and considerable skills and bravery into helping.
While we waited to hear news from the mainland about the project, we were keen to start exploring. We were delighted to be joined by Carolyn Seggie, who was going to support us on the project.
Our first port of call had to be the house at Milton where it was believed that Flora MacDonald was born. No records of this remain, but it seemed a suitable start on the island, having looked across the Minch at New Year yearning for this adventure.
Three generations at the MacDonald’s memorial to Flora
The next stop was the utterly fantastic Museum nan Eilean, Lionacleit in Benbecula for some eachdraidh agus dualchas (Gaelic for history and heritage). The museum is just brilliant. Informative and beautifully presented displays on so many aspects of island life.
The Bonnie Prince Charlie interpretation held our interest for a long timeYou can pick up a leaflet on the Bonnie Prince Charlie trail
We were a bit limited by carrying a tiny person and the two adults with more limited mobility, but still gave things a good shot and loved driving round the island, with such great open vistas and wildlife.
Harvest – photo from Donald McPhee. You just get these scenes as old as time- the Benbecula landscapes are magic
Next day we chilled out for a bit in the morning.
Sitting out at Nunton – you can see the remains of what I think was the walled garden, and outbuildings, and animal pens
The wee one had a great time toddling round the island and around Nunton. He was not quite walking on his own but cruising, crawling and climbing everywhere.
One of the greatest treasures at Nunton is the incredible original fireplace.
The original fireplace at Nunton, sensitively incorporated into the main living area
I romantically would love to imagine Flora MacDonald, Lady Clanranald and perhaps her daughters sitting sewing the Betty Burke clothes at this very fireplace, but I’m not sure. It strikes me as a very, very risky public location, if the enterprise was being hidden from servants, visitors, callers and while redcoats and militia were patrolling and potentially in and out the house at any time. With such long hours of daylight, I would think it is more likely they used an upstairs parlour or bedroom.
I had to do some sewing at Nunton though- this is me sewing the silk petticoat for my wedding dress with my little helper
Next stop was the realisation on a childhood dream, a visit to the island of Eriskay.
The Prince’s beach
I don’t think the pictures show quite how beautiful and enchanted this island is. The Uists are an archipelago of islands linked by causeways. I had always envisaged a ferry crossing, or tidal causeway, not the solid tarmac bridge, so it was a little anticlimactic, but also wonderful to be able to just drive across.
Eriskay
Bonnie Prince Charlie first arrived in Scotland on the Island of Eriskay on 23rd July 1745. He landed off the French frigate Du Teillay at Coilleag a Phrionnsa, the Prince’s cockle beach. Ranald MacDonald, the Captain or chief of the MacDonalds of Clanranald was absent at the time so the Prince met instead with his half-brother, Alasdair MacDonald of Boisdale on Eriskay. Alasdair told him that he would receive no support from the local clans. Not the warmest reception. But he kept on and rose his standard at Glenfinnan.
Absolutely kicked myself for not having swimming things and a towel
Just along the beach was the site of the wreck of the SS Politician, a cargo ship that ran aground off the coast of the Hebridean island of Eriskay in 1941. Her cargo included 22,000 cases of scotch whisky. It was immortalised in the film Whisky Galore.
But that’s not the important thing about Eriskay, it’s these: Eriskay ponies.
Eriskay mares and foals
Eriskay ponies are among the last surviving remnants of the original native ponies of the Western Isles of Scotland but are classified as critically endangered by the Rare Breed Survival Trust (RBST).
As recently the middle of the 19th Century ponies of the “Western Isles type” were found throughout the islands, where they were used as crofters ponies, undertaking everyday tasks such as bringing home peat and seaweed in basket work creels slung over their backs, pulling carts, harrowing and even taking the children to school. By the 1970s though, numbers had declined to just 20 individuals. Elsewhere, the pony populations had genetic influences from other breeds being introduced to make them bigger and stronger, however, on the remote island of Eriskay due to difficulties with access and the extra cost implications for sustaining larger animals, other breeds were not introduced. This isolation left a perilously low stock of pure bred ponies. Dedicated enthusiasts rallied and now there are about 420 ponies in the world. They are very special. Genetic studies have also shown that they are one of the most genetically distinct and most ancient breeds of Mountain and Moorland ponies, and genetically distinct from highland ponies.
Eriskay mares and goals
So that’s why it was so very special for a horse girl to see real Eriskay ponies on Eriskay with their foals.
We were in a really difficult position on Benbecula with Jo and her family still with Covid symptoms but starting to test negative, and the wee one harder to manage away from home. I didn’t want to risk Covid with asthma that is prone to turn viral infections into chest infections, a very dependent little one, and my older mum, and a wedding to organise, and the potential of bringing Covid home, so we made the difficult decision to travel home early, but support the project as best as we could from the mainland, whether undertaking some group sewing on the mainland or helping arrange reenactment friends to stage photoshoots in period clothing.
The last stop before the ferry was to pay respects to Lady Clanranald
There are no records left about where exactly Lady Clan was buried. I took a moment of remembrance for her. She was a wife and a mother. The risks of helping the Prince laid heavily on her shoulders. As a new mum, it really resonated with me.
It is always written that Lady Clan had previously needed to be nursed through periods of hysteria by servants, so it’s surprising she helped as much as she did and kept her cool. This rankles with me. The term hysteria was and often is still used misogynistically to pathologize women’s emotions. It is a salient term that doesn’t actually mean anything, it covers anything about women’s health and emotions that are distasteful or problematic to be totally dismissed – mental health and wellbeing, hormones, any behaviours, views, or opinions deemed not to conform or fit. Clanranald’s alcoholism is mentioned factually and in passing, but he never receives the patronising and misogynistic treatment in accounts that Lady Clan does. She stepped up when stepping up was needed, kept her cool through danger and interrogation, and kept the family and the home going for her girls.
It was our turn to speed bonnie boat, over the sea to Skye again
On the other side of the more melancholic of the Skye Boat Song and Sing Me A Song Of A Lad That Is Gone is the absolute toe tapping Twa Bonnie Maidens. I sang it to the wee one on the ferry, and in my head all the way home to Aberdeen.
There are twa bonnie maidens, and three bonnie maidens
Come owre the Minch, come owre the main
With the wind for their way and the corry for their hame
They are dearly welcome back to Skye once again
Come along, come along wi’ your boatie and your song
My ain bonnie maids, my twa bonnie maids
For the night it is dark, the Redcoat is gone
And ye are dearly welcome back to Skye once again
There is Flora, my honey, sae dear, sae bonnie
And ane, that’s sae tall, sae handsome and all
Put the one for my king and the other for my queen
They are dearly welcome back to Skye once again
Come along, come along wi’ your boatie and your song
My ain bonnie maids, my twa bonnie maids
For the Lady Macoulain, she dwelleth all her lane
And ye are dearly welcome back to Skye once again
Her arm it is long and her petticoat is strong
My ain bonnie maids, my twa bonnie maids
The sea moullit’s nest I will watch o’er the main
And ye are dearly welcome back to Skye once again
Come along, come along wi’ your boatie and your song
My ain bonnie maids, my twa bonnie maids
And saft shall ye rest where the heather grows best
And ye are dearly welcome back to Skye once again
There’s a wind in the tree, a ship on the sea
My ain bonnie maids, my twa bonnie maids
Your cradle I’ll rock on the lea of the rock
And ye are dearly welcome back to Skye once again
Come along, come along wi’ your boatie and your song
My ain bonnie maids, my twa bonnie maids
Mair sound shall ye sleep as she sail o’er the deep And ye are dearly welcome back to Skye once again
It’s not quite as well known, but what a brilliant time. I absolutely love the Corries version. Again, it was a 19th century tune, first published by James Hogg in Jacobite Relics in 1819.
With the baby less than a year old, we had to make a difficult family decision about me going back to work. It had never occurred to me that I wouldn’t go back to my job – I desperately missed my colleagues, the work, and the families – but the logistics, child care, and finances just didn’t work.
At that time my friend, clothing historian Jo Watson, had found tantalising information about Bonnie Prince Charlie’s escape from Benbecula, over the sea to Skye watched over by plucky lass Flora MacDonald. This moment has been depicted so often in fiction, on screen, in mythology and in the propaganda of the time but it was hard to find the reality. The truth had been lost to time and fiction. Jo’s research was a way to change that. She’d found first hand accounts from the time, surviving fragments of fabrics, sketches and measured many of the prince’s items of clothing so she knew sizes. She wanted to recreate the clothing worn by the prince to bring it to life and to the public.
I had the opportunity to support the project, to travel across to Benbecula and form a part of a team of historical sewers recreating the clothing the Prince wore, made in real time and in the house they were made in 1746.
It was a wonderful opportunity to chase the prince and Flora MacDonald’s story across this landscape to find the truth somewhere underneath.
You know the song. If you’re a Scot, it was probably sung to you as a wee one. A song as old as time, that tells the story.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing.
Onward, the sailors cry!
Carry the lad that’s born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Loud the winds howls, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air.
Baffled our foes stand on the shore.
Follow they will not dare.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing.
Onward, the sailors cry!
Carry the lad that’s born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Many’s the lad fought on that day
The Prince and his small party of supporters made the rough journey by boat to Scalpay on Harris to Stornoway on Lewis. Royal Navy boats patrolled for French ships that might aid the Prince. The whole trip was a catalogue of disasters, from getting lost in a bog (I scratch my skin off thinking about the midges, even though it’s early in the season in May, it doesn’t bare thinking about), to receiving short shrift from locals when help was needed. They were unable to find a boat to take them to Orkney, and had close calls with Royal Navy vessels that were patrolling the waters and ever closing the net tighter.
Well the claymore did wield,
When the night came, silently lay
Dead on Culloden’s field.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing.
Onward, the sailors cry!
Carry the lad that’s born to be King
Lmk Over the sea to Skye.
Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep,
Ocean’s a royal bed.
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing.
Onward, the sailors cry
Carry the lad that’s born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
There’s a bit to unpick from the song. Although it sounds as though it has travelled down hundreds of years, it was a 19thC creation. The tune is from an 18thC song which was collected by Anne Campbell MacLeod and words written and set to it by English poet Sir Harold Boulton in the 1870s. The tune and lyrics are so evocative and plaintive. You can’t read them without singing along, and perhaps a lump in your throat at the resonance of it all. It invokes the spectre of Culloden, loss, trepidation, the hope for salvation for the young prince all at the same time, and the knowledge that the Scotland that had existed before had already gone by the time the words were written and set to music.
Duntulm Castle on Skye with the Uists in the background on Hogmanay 2022
Robert Louis Stevenson had his own take on the tune, writing Sing me a song of a lad that is gone in 1892
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
Mull was astern, Rum on the port,
Eigg on the starboard bow;
Glory of youth glowed in his soul;
Where is that glory now?
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone!
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
Give me the lad that’s gone!
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.
Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun,
All that was good, all that was fair,
All that was me is gone.
The air is beautiful and melancholic. Stephenson adds detail of the geography of the journey, but speaks of a loss of innocence, yearning and the progress of time and loss. So poignant. (If it seems familiar, Outlander pinches bits of it for their theme song.)
Beyond the songs, I have to confess, until I was in my twenties, I knew nothing about the Over the sea to Skye stuff and Flora MacDonald, apart from the fact she helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape ‘over the sea to Skye’. I’d always assumed the Prince chased across the Highlands for a few months then took a boat from the mainland to Skye, then on to France. When I was doing my postgrad in teaching, I took an elective on Scotland Past and Place and we did Bonnie Prince Charlie on the history bit. I’d never done proper Scottish history in school (we did Romans, Vikings, WWI, WWII, Industrial Revolution, appeasement and the road to war, a tiny bit on the highland clearances). I knew Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie featured, but I had no cohesive timeline. I tumbled into Scottish history, then Jacobite history with pure joy and abandon. I’d read the course recommended reading list before I’d started to study, so could fully immerse myself in Scottish history for the whole reading week. I spent a few days in Edinburgh pouring over timelines and books in the Elephant House cafe, visiting Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood, and the National Museum of Scotland. It was here I met Flora MacDonald and learned that she didn’t help the prince to escape over the sea to Skye from the mainland, it was from the Uists and the island of Benbecula to Skye.
This is one of the first books from my ‘Jacobite Library’. The Allan Ramsay portrait on the cover is one of my favourites. She is so lifelike. The portrait holds youth and grace, but also eyes that have seen things.
And in the usual surreal style that my re-enactment journey has always taken, my quest to travel to Benbecula to find the Prince and Flora began at her end, when we spent that Hogmanay on Skye, just a short drive from the site of her grave. We visited the site on New Years Day which was bitterly cold with stunning views across to the snow covered Uists. It was totally deserted and we paid peaceful tribute the Hebridean lassie who saved a prince.
Flora MacDonald’s grave at Kilmuir Cemetery- ‘Flora MacDonald. Preserver of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Her name will be mentioned in history and if courage and fidelity be virtues mentioned with honour’
On 16th April 1746 the Battle of Culloden was fought between the Jacobite army and British government forces. In under an hour of combat, the battle was lost and the rebellion crushed. For the Jacobite army, exhausted from the abortive night march on the Duke of Cumberland camp in Nairn, cold and out of rations, it was calamitous.
Bonnie Prince Charlie was forced to make a swift retreat from the battlefield when it was clear that all was lost. According to Eric Linklater’s ‘The Prince in the Heather’ the prince fled the field on horseback with Lord Elcho (commander of his Life Guards), Alexander Macleod his aide de camp, his old tutor Sheridan, Captain O’Sullivan and O’Neil (both Irishmen), and Ned Burke of North Uist. The little group rode in a southerly direct to the Ford of Faillie, through Strathnairn to Stratherrick, to Gortleck where he stopped at a house belonging to the infamous Lord Lovat. The Prince hoped to reassemble troops at Ruthven but this plan was quickly abandoned in the face of such overwhelming defeat and imminent danger. A redcoat threat in the form of a party of dragoons approaching sent them on again, along the Wade road to Fort Augustus and as far as the charred remains of Invergarry Castle, which had been burnt by Cumberland. Ned Burke found two salmon in a salmon net and the party was finally able to stop and rest a while to recover and eat boiled salmon and an oatcakes.
They rode on then down the side of Loch Lochy, then turned left towards Loch Arkaig and on to the burnt remains of Auchnacarry (fired by redcoats) and the house of Cameron of Locheil. Locheil was gravely wounded in both legs after Culloden. The Prince, with only three companions remaining spent the night in a Cameron cottage nearby, tensely awaiting news. Perhaps the remaining forces could rally at Fort Augustus. It must have felt as though the world was crashing down around him as news started to arrive. His commander Lord George Murray resigned his commission in a letter written from Ruthven Barracks, blaming the lack of French support, O’Sullivan, the Prince and his staff. It seemed to shatter hopes that the Jacobites would or could rally at Fort Augustus. It could be that with French support, he believed he could fight again. They had been so close after all. After resting, they travelled through the wild and dramatic landscape towards the Sound of Arisaig. There must have been such debate about what to do next. Eventually it was decided that the Prince would make for the outer isles.
On the 25th April, 9 days after fleeing from Culloden, the Prince and a small handful of supporters made a daring voyage across the Minch from Loch Arisaig on the mainland to the Uists.
The Summer Hunting A Prince: The Escape of Charles Edward Stuart by Alasdair Maclean and John S Gibson is a fantastic read and gives a detailed account of the Prince’s travails after Culloden. You can find it at Acair books on https://acairbooks.com/books/summer-hunting-a-prince/
The Minch is the sea channel between mainland Scotland and the Hebridean islands. It’s is beautiful, but is it’s also turbulent, with strong and dangerous currents. Two days after the full moon in a violent gale, the Prince’s journey must have been a bitterly cold, stomach churning ordeal before safely arriving in Benbecula at Loch Uisgebhagh.
Word was received by Lord Clanranald at Nunton House that the Prince had arrived. His family and clan endeavoured to shelter the fugitives, but safety was relative. The islands were crawling with British soldiers, militia and navy, all hunting for the fugitive. The best plan was thought to be to head to the Outer Hebrides to Stornoway on the Island of Lewis, then to the Orkney islands, then to France.
On the 11th May they returned to Uist and the prince hid in a ‘miserable hut’ at Rarnish before making his way, sheltered by supporters to Corrodale on South Uist, that became his refuge for a time, arriving on the 14th May.
The Prince had a £30,000 bounty on his head, but in all the time he was at large after Culloden, he was never captured, betrayed or handed over. I’ve put that amount into google to find out what would that would be worth in 2026 money and it’s estimated between £8-9million. I’d probably trade my brother in for £30k today, but £8-9m and not one person close to the Prince betraying him says a lot about him and the impression he made on people he met. But that’s not to say that intelligence and counterintelligence wasn’t leaked to the British forces hunting the Prince. The Navy learned that three weeks after he’d been at Stornoway, he’d been within sight of their boats. And in a superb counterintelligence move, boats and companies of soldiers went chasing across to the remote island of St Kilda chasing the spectre of a Prince. It must have massively put the hackles up the British command.
They couldn’t stay too still for too long. On the 6th of June the Prince moved to the Island of Wiay off Benbecula. On the 13th of June British soldiers arrived to search the island! He wasn’t found, but it was a close call. On the 14th he went back to the main island and Loch Eynort, then to Loch Boisdale.
The net was closing in though. The islands swarmed with British soldiers, navy and militia looking for the prince. On the 20th June, news that the infamously ruthless Captain Caroline Fredrick Scott had made landing on the nearby island of Barra and was making to Uist increase the danger to the Prince. The soldiers were tightening movement on the islands and starting to search the islands systematically.
Help came from an unexpected source. The commander of an Independent Highland Company operating on Uist was Hugh MacDonald of Armadale, Skye. He was ambivalent in his role. He had kissed the hand of the Prince when he had met him by chance in Arisaig in 1745, but later joined the British forces. And here enters Flora MacDonald, whose name is as eponymous with the Jacobite risings as the Bonnie Prince Charlie himself.
Flora Macdonald was born in 1722 or 23 at Milton on South Uist, although the date and location is by no means certain as no records remain. Her father was a member of the minor gentry of Clan MacDonald of Clanranald, being tacksman and leaseholder of Milton and Balivanich, but died shortly after her birth. Her mother married again, this time to Hugh MacDonald, tacksman of Armadale, Isle of Skye. Flora was brought up by her father’s cousin, Sir Alexander MacDonald, chief of Clan Macdonald of Sleat. She was a Highland woman of gentle birth, speaking both the Gaelic and Scots. She was literate and bilingual, and at ease in company, as well as being modest and well mannered.
In 1746, she was visiting family on Benbecula when she was asked for her help in an audacious plan to save the Prince.
The life of Flora MacDonald is masterfully told by Flora Fraser in ‘Pretty Young Rebel’ – it’s a real must read for those interested in the ‘45, and indeed women’s history is the 18thC
Clanranald, who had helped shelter, clothe and support the Prince when he first escaped to the Uists, had been called by the Duke of Cumberland to Fort Augustus on the mainland to assist in tracking down the fugitive. Like many families, personal and public allegiances were complicated: Clanranald outwardly supported the establishment, but hid and helped the Prince on the run. Lady Clanranald, known as Lady Clan, was a staunch Jacobite and fervent in her support for the cateran Prince, visiting him often with vitals – bread and meats – and other supplies. Flora MacDonald was a familiar visitor to Lady Clan and her daughters at Nunton House.
Flora said she’d heard the Prince was on the Uists, but had no knowledge of his location until she was suggested to help in an escape by her step father Hugh MacDonald of Armadale.
Flora was staying at her step-brother’s house, alone or with a servant, as he was away. She was awakened by her cousin, Neil MacEachan, and urged to rise as his companions wished to speak to her. She must have felt a little dazed and alarmed being woken from sleep, but dressed quickly and went outside.
The Prince’s companion Colonel O’Neil explained Armadale’s audacious plan for Flora to travel to Skye with the Prince dressed up as her maid. The decision weighed heavily. Anyone assisting with an escape could expect swift and brutal retribution. Her reputation as an unmarried woman was also at stake. After airing her concerns about the plan, and coolly throwing off suggestions that the Prince’s companions might preserve her reputation by taking her hand in a handfast marriage, she agreed to help. It was then that she met the Prince for the first time.
Flora MacDonald would be issued a travel permit by her step father for herself and a servant to Skye. The Irish maid servant Betty Burke would be none other than the Prince in disguise.
There was a lot to arrange. Flora set off the next morning, first to get the passport of travel from her step father, then to enlist the help of Lady Clan at Nunton House. They would need provisions for the journey and also a full set of women’s clothes for the Prince. Standing at 5’10, he was tall for his time, no women’s clothes would fit him.
In her bid to travel from South Uist to Nunton House on Benbecula, she was arrested by militia and her step father was not amongst them. She was detained overnight until her step father was able to intervene, swiftly issuing Flora her passport and ensuring her release. The passport that named a man servant (Neil McEachan), Flora MacDonalds and her Irish girl Betty Burke. He also wrote a letter to Armadale as subterfuge saying the Bert Burke was a good spinster, who could be used to spin lint and wool on Skye if it would be useful. Neil McEachan had been with the Prince, and sent to get his passport and see how Flora was getting on and was surprised to find her detained but about to be released. She was to go on to Nunton and he would update the Prince and arrange for him to move to the Rosshinsh peninsula where they would try the escape.
Even today, Nunton House is a distinctive part of the Benbecula landscape, but back in 1746, it was very well appointed and modern home. Lady Clan was immediately recruited to help make plans for the Prince’s escape.
Lady Clan and Flora, perhaps assisted by Lady Clan’s daughters, sewed in secret a dress in calico with an inconspicuous flower pattern, an apron, a quilted petticoat and a mantle of dun camlet made after the Irish fashion (a brown wool cloak), and an elaborate cap. In the 4-5 days they had to sew, they had to work in secret, away from the eyes of servants. All the women were accomplished sewers. One can imagine them taking advantage of the long hours of daylight at midsummer, in a drawing room or bedroom, sewing away. They couldn’t deviate from regular routine or be seen sewing or with the materials. No time for fitting and adjusting as they went either. They also had to gather shoes, stockings and garters
On the 27th of June, Flora and Lady Clan set off for Rossinish to meet the Prince. They did not conceal baggage or try to hide. They travelled legitimately with passports and escorts accompanying to carry baggage. Lady Clan’s eldest daughter accompanied them and even the cook from Nunton came too in order to cook for the Prince before sending him off.
Accounts make it sound like a merry party, dining heartily on mutton before it was time to ready and depart. But the net closed tighter and tighter even while they ate and drank. News arrived that General Campbell had arrived and was within 3 miles of them. A short while later worse news came from Nunton. General Campbell and his men were at her house demanding she return or there would be recriminations, and that Captain Fergusson had spent the previous night in her bed!
Lady Clan and her daughter left immediately. They didn’t know the time that Captain Fergusson had on stopped for the night, pausing on his way to South Uist to hunt for the Prince. Flora took charge of readying the Prince for his journey.
The Prince readily dressed in the guise of Betty Burke, over his own clothes. He was reluctant talked out of carrying pistols. They readied themselves to depart in the evening.
So near and yet, more alarm. Militia men in wherries approached the shore where they had seen the smoke from the fire. Quickly dousing the fire, they hid in the heather above the shore and the wherries just sailed past without stopping.
Finally, they were able to set sail in the long boat at 8pm, avoiding detection, and the rest is in the song. Speed bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, over the sea to Skye.
It’s nowhere near the end of the story though. The Prince went on to evade capture for another couple of months, always moving on, running the gauntlet of the British Army until finally escaping to France on 19th September 1746. Flora was arrested in July of 1746, held and questioned and imprisoned in Scotland at Dunstaffnage Castle, and the dreaded Tower of London, but she became a darling of the Jacobites and the establishment alike. A story for another day.
Lock down restrictions came and went, and came and went. Testing and the hope of vaccination bringing the hope of ‘normality’ ever closer.
I finally bit the metaphorical sewing bullet and started to make the boyfriend kit. First a linen shirt.
The hand made buttons are really fun to make
Then my very first soldier’s uniform, for an officer of the 47th. It was slow and painstaking, carefully fitting at each step. I didn’t know anything about period construction techniques so did a lot wrong, like bagging out jacket and linings. Broadcloth should have been raw facing to raw facing.
There were also MILES of silver lace for the officer’s uniform
Cuffs were one of the things that nearly split us up, we were saved by lockdown. Minds were changed a lot over cuffs as we poured over period portraits and historic sources. (I do think he made the right choice, but don’t tell him I said that).
My dopamine hit was fiddling with detail on the pink gownIncluding a reversible stomacherShe’s SO lovely
We were also delighted to do an outside Jacobite day for the children where we did history, craft and living history activities.
(Please excuse his beard. He put himself on a charge)
And very soon, the vaccines started to happen. We had an 18thC date at Delgaty Castle.
I got my first vaccine that afternoon and cried
The horse went off to school with Riders of Storm. It was a great decision for both of us. It consolidated the ground work we’d done so she was really confident coming home under saddle. Kirsty McWilliam did an awesome job with her.
Mayfly did really well and came back very happy under saddle
We had lovely rides in the sunshine, a second Covid vaccine, then the long awaited reenactment season was back.
Braemar Castle
It was really strange. Extra risk assessments, flow tests and health declarations, no shared food (very strange when my focus was food), and nothing else to be shared either. Still lots of hand washing. And it was wonderful to be camping under the stars. I was sleepy the day after the Covid vaccine, but we were all giddy with being back out again. We all felt unfamiliar with face-to-face human contact. It took a while to get used to talking to the public again too, but it was really good once we found the flow of it again.
‘Everything is going to be okay’ – art installation by Martin Creed. Hopeful and uplifting. Very difficult to sleep next to.
I was able to get down to East Lothian for my first proper Edinburgh LDV outing with our WWII reenactment group portraying the Local Defence Volunteers at Cockenzie House.
Cockenzie House
Cockenzie House was built in the 17thC in a 4 acre walled garden and is set with flower beds, fruit trees, a pond and allotments. During the Battle of Prestonpans, in 1745, General Cope had used Cockenzie House to store the government baggage train and supply wagons, defended by companies of the Black Watch and Loudoun’s. After the surrender to the Jacobites following their victory at Prestonpans, Cope’s baggage train, including his pay chest became spoils of war for the Jacobites. I would love to do an 18thC event there some time. But back to the 20thC… Cockenzie house was used as an orphanage during WW2. Really heartbreaking to think about. I really hoped the children who were looked after got so much love. I couldn’t really face taking research any further than that.
It was a really lovely event and I was glad to have so many school and education resources in the kit with me.
Mostly , it was just lovely to hang out in the sunshine after the event, with Chinese food, music and enjoying a return to more normal times
After even more pony rides at home, we were finally able to make a big trip down to Derbyshire to see my boyfriend’s dad and have a much needed holiday.
The sycamore gap on Hadrian’s Wall
We had a wonderful time exploring Roman sites Hadrian’s wall, Beamish museum and do loads of exploring around Derbyshire. On the way home, it timed perfectly for us to do at one day event at the beautiful National Trust for Scotland’s Preston Mill site.
Preston Mill
There has been a mill at the Preston Mill site from the 16thC. It’s quite astonishing how intertwined the mill is with the landscape, both serving it and shaping it. The mill that stand today dates from the 18th century, but unlike other mills where technology and industry saw the demise and disuse of cottage industry, it was still used commercially until 1959 to make oatmeal. The mill lade is directed from the River Tyne to the mill pond where sluice gates can be opened to direct water over the magnificent water wheel. The machinery all still works! But I’ll save more of that for another day.
We just had a single day, with drill and show and tells. Just marvellous. And unbeknownst to us at the time, there were three of us now.
We were very excited that in a little more than a month, we’d be back to East Lothian for the biggest event of the Jacobite re-enactment calendar: the big Battle of Prestonpans.
Back home, and back to work, it was exciting with so much to plan for. Despite 10 days off, the horse was super: responsive and delightfully well behaved. We had lovely hacking buddies and enjoying long summer rides in company were also really enjoying riding out on our own. Halcyon days of summer. And on Sunday morning, I woke up feeling sick. I’ve never been so delighted to see a positive test – and HCG test far easier to take too than a covid swab to the back of the throat and nose.
There is no innocence in pregnancy over 40. It was an anxious time. We weren’t without early scares either. Sewing officers uniforms for Prestonpans was a distraction, but I had to enlist help for cooking as I couldn’t stomach the smells from the hot watercrust pastry and fillings. Ironically gingerbread wasn’t a friend either – helpful suggestions of ginger for nausea were met with a not polite response from my olfactory system.
I did manage to get pies backed with assistance!
We tentatively planned for Prestonpans, as I muttered ‘pregnacy is not a disease, it’s just physiology’, but secretly not sure how I’d manage the 3 hour drive and camping. We needed x2 cars for all the equipment, food and camping gear. The boyfriend’s calm and attentiveness was a boon.
I drove down from Aberdeen to Prestonpans, eating grapes and dry crackers to keep the nausea down. I avoided heavy lifting for building the camp and drank a lot of water. (Thank goodness we were near the toilets).
Redcoat command
The boys looked absolutely magnificent. I made the uniforms on the left and right.
We managed a good spread too, now that we were carefully able to start sharing rations again. I love talking about the soldiers’ rations, officer’s mess and food seasonality.
Soldier’s Mess
I got through the day with rests and power naps. Although I’d brought my nice red clothes to be an officer’s wife. I felt too tired and sick to change after the mess was put together.
I felt very plain next to the boyfriend in his officer’s uniform
I don’t really remember much about the drills and battles, apart from thinking just how impressive they looked (and on current form, they probably could have won!).
After the battle, the boyfriend walked me up the small hill on the field. The light was beautiful. It was sunny with whisky clouds fleeting across the sky, the light almost dipping into the golden hour. The sparking light danced on the waves of the Forth, with clear views across to Fife and the sun backlit the crag with Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat about 10 miles away. He got down one one knee, and there, after the battle, with the clamour of the camps shifting from daytime noises to evening, he asked me to marry him.
Apparently I did not say yes, but affirmation was confirmed by squeezing.
It was a very merry celebration afterwards. Family’s notified, and many happy toasts that night, sneakily with me drinking Nozecco (as an alcohol free Prosecco, I highly recommend it).
I did regret the Nozecco next day. After a second night of camping, and the fizz, I had belly ache on top of first trimester bloating and morning sickness (which I had all the time). It was very touching that my now fiancé was so sweet and kind and walked me like a colicking horse. There was a lot of snoozing for me that day. I got food ready (again with help), chatted to the public, then napped through the cavalry charges, cannons and mortars right by our tent.
With the re-enactment season wrapped up for the year, apart from the Christmas dinner, we didn’t have any re-enactment events until after the baby was due. With Covid never far, we had a tiny winter wedding.
Comic-Con Aberdeen 2022
I managed to wear my 18thC clothes, including stays, all through pregnancy, with not alterations apart from adding a stomacher to the red dress. We had a fab time dressing up at Comic-Con Aberdeen and I even did my first cosplay completion 8 months pregnant.
Posing on the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones
Our next adventures as husband and wife, as a family of 3.
Content warning – Includes experiences of Covid19 pandemic – please skip this one if you would find it upsetting
My plan for this blog – The Time Traveller’s Guide to Re-enactment – was to share adventures in re-enactment from the perspective of somebody new coming into the hobby. Somehow time has rather got away from me. This is the beginning of 2026, and a lot has happened since my first outing with the Alan Breck’s Volunteer Regiment in 2018 and I haven’t nearly begun to keep pace. I’m going to backtrack a little to 2020 which was an enormous year for everyone, and also for my personal life. Whilst I’ll still talk about sites and events, I’ll be talking a lot more about what happens behind the the scenes. So today, I’m going to take you on to that really pivotal time where my world flipped on its axis and changed the direction of everything, I need to go back to 2020. If going back to that time is a difficult and upsetting time for you, please pass on this one, or scroll on down to pictures of the pink dresses.
The start of 2020 was wonderful personally. I was the happiest I’d ever been. Work was lovely – best people on the job and massively fulfilling. The horse was doing really well. I had a lovely boyfriend, we were having marvellous adventures together, and were planning on moving in together. We celebrated my birthday in February in an 18thC inn in Perthshire – so romantic.
Spent my birthday weekend at the stunning 18thC Falls of Dochart Inn at Killin
I also did my second cavalry camp with Riders of the Storm in Killiecrankie and had decided that it would be a great place to get the horse some training once I’d saved enough. The re-enactment calendar for the year looked exciting. Friends rallied round to support my boyfriend in moving up from Derbyshire to Aberdeenshire. It was just all lining up.
We’d been on holiday together, but we didn’t know how to live our working lives together. I worked weekdays and split shift 7-9am and 2-6pm with time during the day for doing things like the horse, hobby, and housework (if unavoidable) but he did shift work, sometimes starting at 6am and sometimes finishing at 2am, and often only getting shifts a week in advance. We spoke less than we did when he was in Derbyshire and operated a bit like ships that passed in the night.
Scary things were happening in the wider world . The pathogenic threat of Covid-19 moved closer and closer, morphing from an epidemic to a pandemic, from China, then Europe, then nearer. My sister was working in hospital and they were starting to brace. We’d been making sure the store cupboards were full and making sure that we didn’t let dry goods or the freezer run down for weeks.
It was getting very real. The week before they closed the schools, it was sounding bad. I was rerunning undergrad and postgrad microbiology, epidemiology, and modelling lectures – they’re been hypothetical pub discussions and exam questions before, not now. I was getting twitchy about making sure I had asthma medications in (I’m bad with any infections that go into my chest). We were watching the news more attentively.
We had a romantic date, a last café trip when we’d talked about the future, then I went into work and they announced they were closing the schools. I was terrified as things moved into horrible slow motion and we watched things shutting down. We smiled as we waved kids off, telling them be good for parents at home, then cried at home in private. We waved to family, friends and neighbours from a distance, and got that scary text alert to stay home.
Over a matter of days, that felt like a lifetime, things started to work themselves out. My boyfriend, working in Wetherspoons, got his message from Tim Martin advising 43000 staff to get jobs in Tesco. (It didn’t quite come to that). He was furloughed, and I worked at a Child Care Hub for the children of front line workers, mainly NHS staff.
It was intense and information changed everyday. We did extra cleaning on top of the lots of cleaning we already did, used alcohol gel on top of ramped up handwashing, we took temperatures twice a day and wore masks, played games, did Joe Wicks, became experts in google classroom, baked, made cards to send to hospital and revelled in the sound of our small group of children playing on the lawn, and eventually there were lateral flow tests. Covid skirted close. Parents working in the hospital would collect children. The children smiles and chattered while parents were grey faced under their masks. You could see the bruises from PPE masks (when they eventually got them). They were exhausted. What upset them most was people saying that covid wasn’t real. I watched a dear friend loose her mum in supported living where carers brought it in. Her frail dad also seriously ill, then widowed. It was a huge source of grief when confronted with the stories from frontline staff and loved ones that rules were broken and it was trivialised.
It was the very worst of times for so many, but also a time of proving for the boyfriend and I. I would go out to work, he would keep the flat going and cook meals, and we’d look after my horse together. He learned to bake bread. We had so much time together. We slowly learned each others values, spend so long talking and hanging out doing hobbies together. The re-enactment friends remained our linchpin to the outside world. We did a weekly Zoom, which was sometime chats, making videos, occasionally history, quizzes, birthdays, banquets, and even build your own adventures.
A birthday zoom
We made sense of what was going on with socially distanced challenges and friendships. I used the opportunity to do some flag training with the horse when we filmed a toilet roll toss.
While the rest of the world was swept along with Joe Wicks, hoarding toilet rolls, and deep cleaning, we immersed in hobbies. For the boyfriend, the minute artistry of painting tiny war games miniatures, for me it was the pink dress.
Barbara Haliburton – grandmother of Sir Walter Scott – painted in 1745
The pink dress had been on my mind since I first visited Abbotsford, the stately home built but Sir Walter Scott. As an enormous Walter Scott fan, swooning over Ivanhoe, Rob Roy and Waverley as a teen, then rediscovering them as an adult, I had gone round Abbotsford in sheer delight. What I instantly loved about the portrait of Barbara Haliburton in her pink dress was her direct stare and window into 1745. No romanticised wrapping gowns in this portrait, as seen in so many Alan Ramsay portraits (a contemporary artist of the time), here is a bang on fashionable sack-backed gown in silk. Look at those beautiful watteau pleats, the the drape of the robings, the style and styling of her fichu with ribbon over the stomacher, the cuff detail, cap, and the black ribbon around her neck. The fashion is vibrant and of its time. The colour is delightful. Pink perfection. And you can just hear the swish of silk as she passes. I fantasied about walking round the gardens of Abbotsford in that dress.
Abbotsford
I had made the big decision to buy a dress making form, realising that making 18thC dresses might be something I would want to do more of, and that draping and fitting is an essential element 18th clothing. I just had to try and make a sack backed gown. I’d found perfect pink shade of curtains in a charity shop to try my hand at making the gown. (I couldn’t justify silk until I had more experience in dressmaking and we had to watch the finances too). I tried to drape a bodice, watteau pleats and robings. It didn’t work. I capitulated and bought the JP Ryan sack-backed gown pattern.
JP Ryan robe à la francaise and pet-en-l’air – you can buy patterns at Vena cava design
Again the ‘advanced’ grading gave me fear, but there are so many excellent internet sources on making the gown, from blogs to videos, I decided to break it down and just do it step by step.
Making up the bodice for the sack-backed gown (in charity shop curtain lining)
It was delightfully easy to do the linings, and the front robings now I had a pattern.
The robings just went together (with shops closed, I used charity shop curtains from my fabric stash)
The watteau pleats cascade down the back. They look terrifying, but I enlisted the boyfriend’s help and we figured them out by folding paper. They are not terrifying. They are actually fun, and pretty.
Watteau pleats – very cute, very demureAnd voila – a short sack backed gown from a charity shop curtains and MANY joyful hours of sewingPerfect for delightful woodland walks on lockdown. (Nobody ever asked why we were floating round the local woods in 18thC clothes)
We slowly managed to meet up in small groups for things like outdoor socially distanced period picnics.
A picnic at The Pineapple
And going further afield for period dates outdoors
Drum Castle Oakwood
At this stage, I have to doff my large, ostrich feathered hat to the Battle of Prestonpans Heritage Trust. Throughout the pandemic they created excellent educational materials and lectures. The Jaco-bits series is a really informative and engaging watch. We were able to travel down to East Lothian to support them in making a commemorative education series.
Socially distanced drilling
With filming permission secured, detailed risk assessments, and signed health declarations. We were able to spend a day shooting a part of the much bigger tribute.
The resulting ‘Beneath the Thorntree’ was a moving tribute. I also did a video looking at food around the Battle of Prestonpans that formed part of virtual commemorations that year.
Food, glorious food. We filmed outside behind our flat, competing with home renovations and neighbour’s children
I have to say, those strange months were awful, but also beautiful and unlocked a new confidence as well as new skills.
As the daughter of a Jones, I have to bow my head in shame that I’ve reached the age of 21 (for many years now) without ever visiting Wales. My horse’s dad was North Wales dressage champion in his time too, so it seemed like too good an adventure to miss. What a wonderful opportunity to have a first visit to Wales and a first multiperiod event. This was also a very different type of reenactment for us, not cameos of life set against a background of the turbulent Jacobite risings, but an officer’s mess in between active campaigns. The Edinburgh City Guard and friends from Pulteney’s 13th Regiment of Foot joined together to explore how the other half lived.
Officers and Gentlemen in the mid 18thC
In the mid 18thC the British Army still operated on a system where officers had to purchase their commissions. The army and cavalry tended to attract 2nd/3rd sons who wouldn’t inherit family estates and therefore had to make their own way in the world. Most would have been from well off middling classes, but sons of the aristocracy would tend to join household regiments. In wartime the king could grant permission to raise extra regiments, where commissions were somewhat easier to come by.
An infantry regiment had three officers per company. It was very important for officer’s to maintain a personal and professional distance from their private’s. Fraternising with them was to be seriously reprimanded. They led from the front, in with their men, not from behind.
Whilst the life was easier and wages of officer’s were higher than private soldiers they didn’t cover the cost of commission or life on campaign. They would have to pay for private billets (the officers having the choice of the best available) and servants or a batman. They paid for their regimental, frock coats, books, pens, ink paper, toiletries (Castile soap is best for shaving), and would be expected to entertain and often partake in gambling and other recreational activities. And their horses, because infantry officers could be mounted even though their privates weren’t. Any one who has or has been around horses know that they cost a fortune, and this was also the case for the officer’s horses. They had to pay for shoeing, stabling, bedding, feed, care, saddlery and tack, horse furniture, grooms and coach hire. An expensive business and it had to be seen in a demonstration of conspicuous consumption of wealth.
Our challenge for the re-enactment was to work out how to portray this as a group. We decided the best way to do this was to make an officer’s mess. We wouldn’t be looking at a turbulent stage in a campaign, but, perhaps where regiments were billeted for recruitment and training. This would allow officers’ wives and children to be included in the party. It would allow us to have a go at recreating a greater number of dishes and culinary variety to what would normally appear on the battlefield mess tables. What a super source of creativity! We also had the very modern challenge of how to create and travel with food from Aberdeen via Derbyshire to North Wales for us, and other members also coming from across Scotland, England and Wales. From Aberdeen, we did a lot of cooking and freezing, organising cold transport and refrigeration relays en route. And we work how to involve and engage the youngsters in our group.
I made a new stomacher for my red dress and reset the sleeves (which I’d meant to do for years)And treated myself to some lace to make a new cap, which I stitched in the dark after my toddler had gone to bedMade my toddler a new coat with substantial seams and growth tucks to keep him warm in the variable Welsh weather (hope he gets a few years wear from it)
And there was some baking too
Hannah Glasse’s Chocolate Tart Another Way (and my signature gingerbread)And the official Edinburgh City Guard layered pie with pork and black pudding on the bottom, chicken and apricot in the middle and pork and apple on the top (I need to make more pastry next time so there’s more for decoration next time)
We even brought a ceremonial pineapple!
The ceremonial pineapple
The ultimate show of culinary affluence in the 18thC was a pineapple! Often to be found on offer on shelves of most major supermarkets, our modern sensibilities don’t really realise what an extraordinary commodity this was in the 18thC. We display here a rented pineapple. With the fruit being worth thousands due to how difficult they were to grow (requiring cultivation in glass houses with heated beds) they were a rare commodity and much prized. It was the ultimate in decadent hospitality and is a very conspicuous demonstration of wealth and status. (In a historic aside, Bonnie Prince Charlie tasted his first pineapple at at ball Blair Castle presented to him by ardent Jacobite supporter Charlotte Lude.)
We had to have Welsh cakes, being in Wales, and also salamugundy (an elegant salad arrangement), a roast with side dishes, breads, and fruits. The absolute piece de resistance was Mrs Johnston’s marzipan hedgehog, delightfully created with almond spikes and current eye, and artfully made decorative marzipan fruit sweets.
Mrs Johnston’s marzipan hedgehog (love it so much ❤️)The table groaned with fine dishes
This is a start contrast to a basic soldiers ration of:
Hard tack
1lb Bread/flour
1lb Meat or 9 1/7 oz Pork
3/7pt Peas
1 1/7pt Oatmeal/rice
3oz Butter
Which worked out 2000-3000 calories a day.
Officers, wives and families at the Officer’s MessWe had a great time dressing in our best and enjoying the sights and sounds of the multiperiod
We had a great time researching and setting up our Officer’s Mess. Such a super event for all ages. It was so surreal to be in our 18thC focus with WWII vehicles driving around, medieval pennants and horses near us, with Napoleonic soldiers marched by Zulu war and Cold War reenactors and Roman Cavalry drilling and everything in between. I’ve never experienced anything like it.
My little one was absolutely enchanted by the baby European eagle owl and tried to teach it how to fly and flap its wings
It was one of the most fun, and interesting events I’ve ever done and was so welcoming and well organised. We’ve come away bursting with ideas and things to try for next time!
I sit starting this blog, between proverbs of portent. I’m not quite sure where to start. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ and ‘mighty oaks from acorns grow’, but this is a story of the oak gall. From the diminutive oak gall wasp, with some subtle chemistry as enigmatic as alchemy, we can draw a substance that raises and fells empires. Ink.
I had wanted to make oak gall ink since some of my earliest days of reenactment. In 2019 I started to scour local oak trees for illusive oak galls, tree after tree with unblemished branches were examined with no success and eventually I found some tiny round spheres sifted from piles of acorns of the forest floor and I hoarded them like gold until I had a tiny handful. I squirrelled them away in the most 18thC receptacle (a salsa dip jar) and they sat waiting through a global pandemic, a pregnancy, forgotten in early motherhood, then languishing in the back of a cupboard through an 18thC wedding, then gradually by degrees they were quite forgotten. Then whilst out playing with acorns with a toddler I discovered the motherload. In amongst the glorious autumn bounty of plump, shiny acorns in their delicate cups, strewn with seeming abandon in the leaf litter were enormous gnarled, knobbly knopper oak galls which I collected with a verging on obsessive fervour. It wasn’t a meagre handful either, I filled my pockets.
I collected handfuls and handfuls of these wonderful knopper galls
You may well be scratching your head saying what on earth is an oak gall?
Oak galls are growths or swellings on the stem and twigs which from in response to invasion. This is often by oak gall wasps who lay their eggs in the oak tree although there other microorganism invaders who can also cause the reaction. As a larvae develops, a protective gall or oak apple forms around the larvae. Different microorganisms yield different sizes and shapes of galls, from perfect round spheres that look like unripe cherries, to great knobbly creations that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Grimm’s fairy tale. The wasp larvae pupates, hatches out and continues its role in balance with the ecosystem and complex biodiversity of the oak tree. Don’t be afraid of the little oak gall wasp. It isn’t an angry yellow and black jacketed creature that stalks our picnics and terrorises outdoor gatherings. It doesn’t appear to harm the tree. They are tiny, non-aggressive and do not sting.
What makes oak galls such an important commodity for making ink and textile dyeing is the tannins. They are particularly high in a tannin called gallic acid, which can be used as a mordant (a substance that helps dyes adhere to fabrics) and a natural dye. Most dyeing requires a pigment and a mordant, so it is incredibly useful that the oak gall plays both roles. When the gallic acid reacts with iron salts a deep purple pigment which is very useful for ink.
With my mother load of oak galls, I set about gathering the materials I would need to make ink and write. After researching quill pens, I opted not to try and make my own. It is an extremely skilled and fiddly job to temper and cut quills. I managed to order some quills which were quite beautiful and I hoped would write.
The other thing you need to make ink is rust. I had thrown a pot scourer in a jar of vinegar to make rust before the world went into lockdown in 2020, but later it was thrown it away in a flurry of nesting activity.
I spent the winter last year ferreting through boxes and containers to find rusty things. Horse shoe nails were very rust resistant, and it seemed like pot scouters now came in stainless steel and plastic coated. I had resorted to messaging most people I knew with garden sheds or a penchant for DIY to ask if they had any ‘rusty stuff’ without success. I was about to give up (in fact I think I had), when exploring on the coast, I found a pile of magnificently weathered nails perfectly rusted by the sea spray. I handled with a great deal of care, not wanting to injure myself on shards of rusty nails, and managed to get them safety into rust jar #2 with vinegar to make my coveted solution of iron oxide. I had feared it would take weeks to produce an earthy red liquid, but with the already highly eroded nails it looked like dark black tea in a matter of hours.
These iron nails corroded with age and sea spray. The rust is iron oxide. Rusting can be speeded up with the addition of a mild acid. In this case ascetic acid or kitchen vinegar.
With regard to a recipe, I frustratingly found very generic information and a distinct lack of proper chemistry. The aim is quite simple: extract the tannins from the oak galls and react with iron oxide to create a purple black ink.
Some people who’d made ink in living history experiments had crushed galls in blenders or coffee grinders. This made sense as the smaller the surface area the more tannin could be extracted. I nearly broke my blender trying this. Don’t do that. So I opted instead to boil the galls to get the most tannins possible from the unground galls. I left a couple of handfuls of galls on the hob on a low boil while I did toddler bath and bedtime. By the time we were done, I had another concentrated brew that had the reddy tones of well stewed black tea. When it had cooled, I put it through a sieve and was left with about a cup of liquid, very similar in volume and appearance to the contents of the rust jar.
I gave both the oak gall solution and rust solution jars a thorough shaking before I made the ink. I stretched a scrap of white linen over the jar and slowly started to pour the oak gall solution over my makeshift filter which dyed it brown like vellum. The magic happened when I started to add the rust solution. Where the oak gall solution and iron oxide met, there was a colour change to intense purple black. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I’d expected a strong dark brown, but it was proper midnight black ink.
You can see the white linen has been dyed by tannins in the oak gall solution, but where the rust solution has been poured over the top, the iron salts have reacted with the tannins and produced purpley black ink.
I had gum arabic in my art supplies, so decided to add some. It acts as binder, improving flow, adhesion, and preventing bleeding. It also enhances the ink’s transparency and lustre so it would write better. I only wish I’d tried writing with it before and after I’d added the gum Arabic so I could compare and contrast.
I couldn’t believe how well it had worked but the truth would really be in the writing. I expected it to be much harder to master the quill pen, but it was a joy. Despite getting black inky fingers which took a few days to scrub clean, it was a joy. I was able to write straight away. I’m delighted because it gives me so much scope for developing living history resources and improving my copperplate. By far the greatest joy has been the wonderful sound the the quill pen makes as it scratches against the paper. What a joy.
The oak gall ink writes beautifully
Why, oh why don’t we use oak gall ink now? The simple reason is that it is corrosive. The acids eat away at paper, damaging and degrading it.
Expect a lot more written living history props over the next year!
A tale of two re-enactments September 2023 and July 2024
Part 1
I can only just begin to articulate how excited I was to hear that we were going to be setting up a full living history camp at the National Trust for Scotland’s beautiful Leith Hall in Aberdeenshire where we could commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Prestonpans. Only an hour from home (practically in the back garden in re-enactment terms), it was a childhood favourite for history and natural history, and a lovely site to undertake projects as an NTS Conservation Volunteer as a adult. As soon as we heard we’d be at Leith Hall, we had to make a family visit to start planning our living history. Hooray for National Trust Membership for fantastic family days out, as well as their important work preserving and sharing history and heritage sites.
The hall was built in 1650, on the site of the medieval Peill Castle, and was the home of the Leith-Hay family for three centuries.
Leith Hall
In 1745, Andrew Hay of Rannes fought with and was a friend to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Andrew took part in the long march to Derby and was the first Scot to enter Manchester. At 7ft 2in, he must have been an imposing sight to his enemies. After the cause was lost at Culloden, Andrew hid at Leith Hall, later escaping to France. A number of artefacts gifted by the Prince to Andrew are on display at Leith Hall. He returned years later and was eventually pardoned by George III. There are several Jacobite items in the castle and the pardon is on display in Leith Hall’s military exhibition.
The grounds at Leith Hall are lovely, with woodland walks and a walled garden. There is a really nice tea room too and we enjoyed an Earl Grey before the tour. Look out for boxing squirrels and don’t miss the military museum at the top of the house if you’re able to visit.
Lovely gardens to explore at Leith Hall
After a good visit, I was really excited to potentially have the opportunity to discuss the Jacobite rebellions in and around the north east, to try and imagine what it would have been like for the people living here and explore that a bit in the living history. It’s so exciting when a re-enactment is on your home patch.
Love a good notebook
Our little one was now toddling and wore his first shoes at Leith Hall after a barefoot summer, and learned a new word ‘baa’. He spent the re-enactment weekend striding around bleating at sheep, toddling around camp and napping between skirmishes. My friend Suz came along to help as Mr Time Traveller’s Guide to Re-enactment was only able to come on Sunday. We were able to travel from home everyday, which made it a little easier than trying to camp on my own.
I think I am looking back with rose tinted spectacles a little, but we had a lovely weekend bleating at sheep, toddling around, and napping through the skirmishes with ear defenders.
We were having a birthday too so I made an 18thC inspired cake for Pte Wilkes.
If in doubt, golden gilt
Suz had been a big help and moral support, and I was so excited the my husband would be able to take part in the living history at such a lovely site on the Sunday. We did have a tiny disaster because we left the food bag in Aberdeen. Thankfully with the site so close, I managed to get home and back before the public arrived. It’s hard when you’re concentrating on a tiny person and turning things around quickly.
The Edinburgh City Guard really is our extended familyThe Jacobites too – don’t they look smart
The highlight of the weekend was getting to meet author of the fictional Jacobite Chronicles- Julia Brannan. If you’re a fan of historic fiction they are real page turners and absolutely steeped in atmosphere. The books are so meticulously researched it is easy to immerse yourself in that 18thC landscape and the characters are so nuanced she creates an immersive reader experience. I found there were several spin off books I hadn’t read too and a readers group on Facebook. I was delighted.
I met author Julia Brannan at Leith Hall
Part 2
July 2024 we were back at Leith Hall, this time camping as a whole family.
It is really lovely to have the privilege of staying at these historic sites. As the visitors leave and the signs and billboards come down, cars leave the car park, swallows swoop and dip and the scent of climbing roses is heavy on the air, it is rather magical.
Having a two year old is definitely a level up from having a one year old. Our survival strategy has been keep busy and keep away from dangers. So we went for wonderful nature walks and played Pooh sticks in the little burn, as the azure flash of a kingfisher darted upstream. We climbed trees and followed a lovely trail of the Jacobite campaign around the small loch. How wonderful to have a little person who is so inquisitive and chatty now.
Pooh sticksA lovely moth that watched us pitch the tentsNothing better than a crackling campfire while the owls hoot and bats flit around the eves of the hall
This re-enactment had been an unexpected milestone for me. With my husband away for work, it was the first time since becoming a mum, that I’d been able to do the food myself without a sous chef. With morning sickness, I’d had to co-opt help, then a newborn, baby, then toddler. It doesn’t sound like much, but it really was a big deal for me. It was quicker and messier than I’d have done before, but no point fussing over a dusting of flour that can be cleaned up after bedtime. I had also loved reading Julia Brannan’s books while doing my 18thC sewing and cooking, and had been inspired by one of her characters to make 18thC lemon pound cakes alongside my signature gingerbread. A couple of pies and some cakes may seem a small thing, but I was very proud I’d managed to produce them for meals.
Hot water crust pies with pork, apple and black pudding and Phillipa’s lemon pound cake (inspired by Julia Brannan)
We (as, a mum, I am always ‘we’ now, with toddler in tow) spent a little time talking to the public about the life of women (and children) in the British Army in 1745/6, but most of the time avoiding the ‘booms’ from the musket fire. My little one isn’t particularly scared of them, but isn’t keen on the volley during the skirmishes, so a good proportion of the day was spent going on walks and climbing trees.
A little reenactor in his kilt, striding about the woods
My special treat on Saturday night was attending Dr Arran Johnston’s talk on his latest book ‘The Battles of Bonnie Prince Charlie: The Young Chevalier at War’. (Thank you Mr TTGTR for doing dad duty with a teething toddler). The Prince is such an interesting figure whom seems to have swung between deification and vilification in both factual and fictional portrayals. Arran takes a nuanced approach to thoughtfully consider the princes eventful and relative short military career giving real depth of insight into his character. It’s such a great read, and was fantastic to sit and hear about it in the history steeped setting of Leith Hall.
Dr Arran Johnston considers The Battles of Bonnie Prince Charlie (available from good booksellers)
What had started off as a light drizzle in the evening, progressed to a torrential, monsoon-esque deluge overnight. It was a little soporific lying under the period canvas tent listening to the rain, but it was so heavy, we did worry about getting flooded and whether the event would go ahead in the morning. Incredibly, as the sun rose, the lakes that had started to form on the lawn had started to soak away and the July sun began the job of heating the earth so the puddles began to evaporate. We did spend a lot of time splashing through puddles and rescuing earthworms.
When it rains, splash in the puddles
This family time, being out in nature and sharing the hobby together fairly feeds my soul. I got a little bit of living history chat between adventures with a toddler, and met Julia Brannan again, when she visited our event again this year. (Can’t wait for Anthony part 2!)
We toasted ‘The King over the Water’ on Leith Hall’s super Jacobite trail
But this event has subtly been a big turning point for us as a family. We’ve come to a conclusion as a family that my engagement with living history at events will be fairly minimal for now. I can’t take an active role as a sutler, manage the soldier’s mess and talk about the role of women in the British Army in 1745/6 the way I used to. My main job will be mum and toddler wrangler (which is utterly wonderful, but also bittersweet). I do love talking to visitors and we’ll still do what we can, but I’ll be more active behind the scenes. I’ll make clothing, uniforms, cooking behind the scenes and doing research, so that on the day, although I’ll be doing less, I’ll be doing different things behind the scenes. And dear reader, I’ll bring you along too, on Facebook, Instagram and with the blog.
I think Burns Night is one of my very favourite Scottish celebrations. Hogmanay is a blast, but I partied like it was 1999 IN 1999. I’ve done the Edinburgh street party for the bells, Stonehaven fireballs, some epic student house parties that saw in the sunrise on the darkest days, Highland ceilidhs and bonfires, secluded island retreats with friends, and more sedate nights with family arguing over Jules Holland’s Hootenanny (no thank), or the other side, or just going to bed because I’d be up for the horse and latterly a toddler. St Andrew’s Day feels new. It never used to be a thing. And it’s not really a thing. But a Burns Supper really is quite special.
If you’re not a Scot, you can probably take or leave Burns. He may capture your poetic heart, or his womanising may be distasteful, But for us Scots, it runs through our veins, through our being: cut us and we bleed Burns.
Our experiences will all differ a bit. I remember my Scottish granny reciting ‘Tae a moose’, and all children in Scottish school learning Scots poetry every year at school (although ironically I never Burns as a wee one). We often cringed at country dancing (dancing with boys, the horror), until you find yourself at a ceilidh a wee bitty older and your realised they were very good life lessons. The poetry and the music stays with you all your life. I remember Burns songs played on cassette tape, then CD, now on iTunes and Spotify. I taught kids Scottish country dancing and now my own wee lad is learning to burl (spin). And the marvel that is the Burns Supper of haggis, neeps and tatties. Even if traditional isn’t your thing, a haggis pakora is thing of beauty. It’s braw on a pizza, and even as a tortellini filling. Burns inspired art, craft and poetry at school (to learn and to teach), always stole my imagination too.
Ours was a hybrid home of Scots and South African tradition (although that side of the family has a fair share of Picts and Celts), and we didn’t do cranachan (parents weren’t big fans of that cholesterol laden treat), but did do the rest, and whisky for those old enough. I’ve actually only ever been to school formal Burns suppers. I’ve only ever been out to one at night, it’s always been an at home family thing for us. I’ve even enjoyed them on my own. In January, as the deepest, darkest days minutely lengthened, but you’re still in winter’s grip, it is wonderful together with such magnificently simple warming fare. It doesn’t take great wealth or ceremony to celebrate and that is the beauty of Burns. A grand supper or cosy at home for Auld Lang Syne.
Statue of Burns at the Birks of Aberfeldy
And on that night as you hear the songs they still conjure the feeling from times gone by when Burns has been by your side. Which lowland Scot hasn’t softly sighed to ‘My heart is in the Highlands’, yearning the mountains, glens and heather. Or in the tender throes of new romance filled our heats with ‘My love is like a red, red rose’.
My heart is in the Highlands…
I met and fell in love with my ain ‘Dainty Davie’ and after our first weekend as a couple, ‘Ae fond kiss’ came on my playlist as I dropped him at the train station in Stirling for him to travel south. It broke my heart. I walked down the aisle to Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott featured in speeches and for table names, but the music of Burns set us off of our married life together.
Dainty Davey
It’s not just big moments in life. There’s drama (‘Tam O’Shanter’ is brilliant to learn with kids), humour (‘Tae a louse), and the poignant pathos of ‘Ye Jacobites’.
It’s in friendships too, when we gather together with loved ones for a verse of Auld Lang Syne, it gets you in the guts because there is no better sentiment expressed. It’s resonated across cultures and continents. The Burns quotes, poetry, art and song that lights up social media today is a joy, so we can connect today even though we’re spread across the world.
Our son had haggis as a weaning and is excited about it tonight. He’ll put on his kilt and we’ll wear tartan. We’ll address the haggis, probably read off an iPad, and play Burns music. I will make cranachan, toddler permitting, but with dairy free yoghurt (because allergies and it’s a bit healthier). Maybe a wee dram after I’ve settled him to bed too.
Slàinte!
Where ever you maybe dear friends, I’ll raise a toast to you too. Slàinte!
Time Traveller's Guide to Re-enactment 