Fife and Scotland - the offbeat perspective

In 1745, Charles Edward Stuart aka 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' arrived in Scotland with a view to leading a Jacobite army into England, overthrowing the existing Hanovarian monarchy and restoring a Stuart monarchy to the British throne.

He summoned clan cheifs to join him in this quest and it nearly suceeeded with the Hanovarian King ready to abdicate his throne when the Scots army came within 130 miles of London. It was then apparent that while the Scots might succeed in taking London, the task of holding onto it for long was beyond their ability in the face of growing opposition. The Jacobite army retreated back into Scotland and where, in a severely weakened state, they were forced to fight better trained and equipped English forces led by the Duke of Cumberland at Drummossie Moor near Inverness.

Today, the site of this last ever battle fought on British soil is more commonly referred to as Culloden and where any hope of restoring the Stuart monarchy to the throne of Britain was quashed forever. It consequently represents one of the most important historical sites in British history with many thousands of visitors attending the site each and every year. The memorial cairn pictured on the right was built there in 1881.

Amazingly though, there is another historical site just a few miles away and where few tourists ever see and its quite interesting in that the 'Clava Cairns' were built more than a thousand years before the Battle of Culloden. Today, they lie in a quiet leafy glade in the corner of a field and just three miles from the Culloden site.

Although built around the same time as the Pyramids of Eygpt, and perhaps for a similar purpose, they are the product of a land with far fewer inhabitants and lesser resources. It's unlikely to have taken years to build but rather the concentrated effort of local people over several weeks. By way of scale, the central chamber area is about eight feet high and the diameter can be assessed from this.

There was little or no written language when the cairns were built so it is hard to determine why the cairns were built or by whom but the notion that they were intended as a burial chamber for a local chieftain or leader of the people makes sense.

Relatively few sites of this kind have survived into modern times in Scotland.

There are several of these structures on the same site and perhaps suggesting a dynasty. Several separate stones are present whose function might have been to proclaim name and purpose but alas, even if they were orginally inscribed in Ogham, an ancient dialect, successive years of weathering has virtually obliterated these clues.

Definitely worth a visit if you're already in the vicinity of the Culloden battlefield and if you want to see more of 'ancient Scotland'. There are no attendees or parking fees of any kind. What is particularly interesting about this site is how it dispells the Romanic mythology, written centuries later, about the 'primitive and barbaric tribes' they encountered while trying to conquer Scotland. By contrast, Clava Cairns seems to prove that the Scots of that period were capable of organised labout and where projects of this sort could be accomplished and probably with minimal notice in advance. It may be that similar abilities to organise at short notice largely prevented the Roman Empire from expansion into Scotland.

In Fife, there is a much smaller and simpler construction from the same period known as the 'Ring O Stanes' (Ring Of Stones).

Today it lies in the northern part of the Balbirnie Park within the 'new town' of Glenrothes and where it was carefully reassembled from its original site now part of the A92 'regional main road' between Dunfermline and the Tay Bridge. Indeed, it was the construction of this road that led to its discovery after remaining hidden for many centuries.

The site was carefully examined with artifacts removed to safer quarters before being moved and reconstructed about one hundred metres eastward and within the town's Balbirnie Parklands. It's hardly on the same scale as the Clava Cairns yet still illustrates a degree of similar culture and organisational capabilty albeit on a much smaller scale.

One local public bar, located at the North Neighbourhood Centre in Glenrothes is called the 'Ring O' Stanes' and in reference to this site.