Historic Site sights in Scotland
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Betty Corrigall's Grave
Betty Corrigall was a local girl who was made pregnant and then abandoned by a visiting sailor in the late 18th century. Shamed and ostracised by the tight-knit community, she hanged herself – but as a suicide, she was denied a burial in hallowed ground. So poor Betty was interred on the high moors near the parish boundary.
Her resting place lay forgotten until the coffin was accidentally unearthed by peat cutters in 1933. Beside the main road, halfway between Moaness and Lyness, it is now marked by a simple white headstone and planted with flowers, the loneliest and most poignant grave in Scotland.
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Bannockburn
Though Wallace's heroics were significant, it was Robert the Bruce's defeat of the English on 24 June 1314 at Bannockburn, just outside Stirling, that eventually established lasting Scottish nationhood. Exploiting the marshy ground, Bruce won a great tactical victory against a much larger and better-equipped force, and sent Edward II 'homeward, tae think again', as the song 'Flower of Scotland' commemorates.
The Bannockburn Heritage Centre is due to reopen after a big refurbishment in spring 2014, in time for the 700th anniversary of the battle.
The battlefield itself (which never closes) will hopefully receive a bit of work too; at present, apart from a statue of the…
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Earl’s Bu
Earl’s Bu is the foundations of a 12th-century manor house belonging to the Norse earls of Orkney.
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Gilmerton Cove
While ghost tours of Edinburgh's underground vaults and haunted graveyards have become a mainstream attraction, few tourists have yet explored Gilmerton Cove. Hidden in the southern suburbs, the mysterious cove is a series of manmade subterranean caverns hacked out of the rock, their origin and function unknown. Advance booking essential through Rosslyn Tours.
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Bonawe Iron Furnace
Bonawe Iron Furnace is one of the region’s most unusual historical sights. Near Taynuilt, and dating from 1753, it was built by an iron-smelting company from the English Lake District because of the abundance of birchwood in the area. The wood was made into the charcoal that was needed for smelting the iron.
It took 10,000 acres of woodland to produce Bonawe’s annual output of 700 tons of pig iron. A fascinating self-guided tour leads you around the various parts of the site.
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