Allt Coire Beag-ghleann

The website text produced for Beglan webpages on the Forest Heritage Scotland website (www.forestheritagescotland.com).

Introduction: The wee glen

Beglan, shortened from the Gaelic "Beag-Ghleann", was a township within the valley of Glenmore. Today you can walk amongst the remains of the farm, located on either side of a small burn within Glenmore Forest Park.

This glen has been farmed for a long time. It was also forested long before Forestry Commission Scotland owned it. In the 17th century, the name Alexander McCurle, Forester of Glenmore, is listed in tenant records.

The township of Beglan, however, may have been built late in the history of the glen; its first mention in records dates to around 1740. In the early 19th century this farm became the home of John MacDonald, the Duke of Gordon's gamekeeper, and woodkeeper for Glenmore.

In 1836, George, the 5th Duke of Gordon died with no son to take over. Lennox, the Duke of Richmond inherited the lands of Glenmore, amongst others, and the management of the estate changed. The eviction of tenants began, and the Duke looked to more profitable ventures.

The Duke turned nearby Glenavon into a deer forest in 1839. To achieve this, however, one of the Duke's valued tenants, a sheep farmer called James Shaw, had to be moved from the land. The Duke gave James other land instead, including the whole of Glenmore.

By 1842 all the people who lived at Beglan, including the MacDonalds, had left. All the small tenant farms were cleared to be replaced by Shaw's sheep farm.

Only twenty short years later, Glenmore too became a deer forest.

People Story: Flying the flag

James McIntyre of Beglan carried the Green Flag of Kincardine onto the battlefield at Culloden. James was the standard bearer for Colonel John Roy Stuart, one of the heroes of the unsuccessful 1745 Jacobite rebellion.

By the battle's end many regiments' standards were captured by the enemy. These coloured flags were symbols of the Jacobites' defeat. On Wednesday 4th June 1746, at noon, the hangman carried Prince Charlie's own flag to the Cross in Edinburgh and burned it.

James McIntyre, however, rescued the Green Flag of Kincardine from this fate. Every year on August 19th, in memory of the day the rebellion began, he walked to the top of Cairngorm and flew the flag. All his life he looked after the flag. On his deathbed he handed it to his trusted friend, John Stewart of Pityoulish.

]"John, I have sent for you thinking you are the fittest to take charge of what I myself got charge of forty years ago. It is my dear John Roy's banner. That bravest of men gave it to me on that fatal field of Culloden, with his command that nothing but death should separate us. I have kept it since hoping long that its true owner might have use of it, and for me, but am now going the way of the flesh. I can do no more."

James McIntyre quoted by Rev Forsyth (1900) in "In the Shadow of Cairngorm"

John Stewart handed the flag to the Duke of Gordon before he died.