Tag Archives: historian

Download a Neil Oliver Audio Walk in Kilmartin Glen to your mobile phone

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Neil OliverBBC Radio Scotland and the Open University have collaborated to produce an Audio Walk in Kilmartin Glen. The presenter is Glaswegian Neil Oliver, arguably – but who would argue? – the most galvanic historian to hit the television screen for a long time when he emerged from the team on the first series of Coast. The extent to which his personal contribution underpinned the series was recognised when he effectively became the lead presenter in the following series.

You can download and print off instructions on the walk and you can download the Audio Walk itself to your mobile phone. Argyll’s Kilmartin Glen is a site of primary archaeological and historical inportance to Scotland – as well as beng a very beautiful and mysterious glen where it’s past never seems far from the surface. This audio walk is an imaginative and mobile information source for locals and visitors alike.

The photograph of Neil Oliver above is a screenshot from the television series Coast, reproduced here under fair use conventions.

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Homecoming Scotland 2009 gets a return of an unexpected kind – the stolen Glenfinnan Stone

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GlenfinnanThe historic Glenfinnan Stone is a foot across and has a hole cut into it allegedly to support the standard of Bonnie Prince Charlie when he raised it at Glenfinnan on Monday 19 August 1745, launching the second Jacobite rebellion.

In 1989 the stone vanished from where it had always lain, on a mound near the monument at Glenfinnan at the head of Loch Shiel.

The stone and its disappearance was mentioned to presenter Ben Fogle in a episode of the BBC’s Countryfile programe by Iain Thornber, a local historian from Lochaline in Morvern, across from Argyll’s Isle of Mull and in the same land mass as Glenfinnan.

Two weeks after the transmission of the programme the BBC received a letter which they passed on to Iain Thorber. It was from a woman who had seen the show while on holiday in Skye but was herself from Hartlepool. She had the stone in her rockery there but had not known what it was or where it had come from.

It has emerged that the stone was taken from Glenfinnan and domesticated in a rockery somewhere in Scotland, from where it was passed on to the Hartlepool lady for her own rockery. After making contact with Iain Thornber when she found out about the stone on Countryfile, she has voluntarily returned it.

The West Highland  Museum in Fort William, custodian of several Jacobite relics, will house the Glenfinnan Stone until, according to Iain Thornber, arrangements for its secure display in its own place can be made with the Roman Catholic Church which owns the Glenfinnan site.

The photograph of Genfinnan above is by Flaxton and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.