Culloden Cairn
Culloden Monument

 
Culloden Monument
Culloden Cairn

     The spot where the fiercest fighting of the battle took place is marked by a cairn.  It was erected in 1881 by Duncan Forbes, the last resident proprietor of the Culloden estate and a descendant of the Lord President of the Court of Session of '45 fame.  The cairn (20 feet high by 18 feet in diameter) is built of rough stones mingled with soil.

     At the same time as he erected the cairn, Mr Forbes had slabs of stone placed on the spots where tradition told the various sections of combatants were interred. The Highland dead appear to have been buried according to their clans - the Mackintoshes, Camerons, Stewarts, etc. - in separate trenches.  The headstone put up on each of them bears simply the name of the clan carved boldly on the slab.  And where clansmen were buried indiscriminately, the inscription indicates that.

     The relatively few Hanovarian dead were interred in the only arable land that existed on the moor at the time of the battle.  To this day, the place is known as "The Field of the English."
  
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