Standing Building Recording

Date January 2009 - March 2009

Event ID 607512

Category Recording

Type Standing Building Recording

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/607512

NH 7449 4499 A standing building survey, analytical account and comparative study were undertaken January–

March 2009 to inform future conservation. The small, originally T-shaped cottage was probably constructed in

the early 18th century, as part of improvements on the Culloden Estate. The T-plan layout and clay-bonded coarse rubble-stone construction, with turf gables and a thatched roof, closely parallels that of King’s Stable Cottage, also on the Culloden Estate, and probably part of the same improvement scheme. The two structures were found to be of almost precisely the same plan, detail (where these could be compared) and dimensions. King’s Stables Cottage was previously surveyed and analysed in 1999 (Addyman, DES 2000, 50). A brief assessment of traditional building methods and materials of the area has demonstrated that the construction methods used for both houses were comparatively sophisticated for their period. They were perhaps erected as higher status dwellings for senior estate staff or tenants.

Old Leanach saw many structural changes carried out up to the early 20th century. These included the addition of the buttresses against the N wall, the later demolition of the western part of the T-plan and extension to the E (generating the existing L-plan in c1860). The last occupant of the cottage died in 1912 and the Gaelic Society of Inverness subsequently maintained the building, erecting a low-pitched roof to replace an earlier, much steeper one. The NTS gained ownership of the building in 1944 and carried out several small-scale alterations and repairs. In 1978 the early 20th-century roof was replaced with a new steeper-pitched roof. However, cruck frame fragments belonging to the original roof indicate that the 1978 structure was not an exact replacement. It also remains questionable whether the original cottage was thatched with heather, as extant and documented since the 1920s, or if more traditional straw thatching had originally been employed.

The cottages of Old Leanach and King’s Stables are of particular historical interest due to their location on the Culloden battlefield. The project concluded that the existing structures, though each subsequently modified,

were probably in existence at the time of the battle in 1746, and that their remarkable survival is accounted for by their association with that iconic event.

A notable feature now confirmed at both buildings was an apparently semi-concealed ‘loop-hole’ at the re-entrant angle that might have provided a moderate degree of defence at the principal entrance, whose approach it commanded. There may originally have been no other window openings. Rather than being a serious defence this may have simply been a pragmatic precaution at a time when itinerants were commonplace.

Archive: NTS (intended).

Funder: The National Trust for Scotland

Amanda Gow, Tom Addyman, Kenneth MacFadyen and Tanja Romankiewicz – Addyman Archaeology