The City of Glasgow Police War Memorials

We are happy to announce the publication of the City of Glasgow Police War Memorial booklet.

The memorials to the Glasgow Police are on display in the Glasgow Police Museum, and Research Group members John and Margaret Houston have been researching the names listed on the memorial.

We are please to publish their research,and we would like to congratulate them on their hard work.

The research has been published through online "print on demand" site Lulu, and is available in downloadable pdf format.

Please click here to download your copy of the Glasgow Police research.

Hello again!

We haven't updated the Blog for quite some time. You might have noticed...

As we do this in our spare time and family and work life takes up a substantial amount of what is left we found ourselves unable to keep up with the On This days and Who's Whos. 

We have also been using Twitter and Facebook as a way of passing on our news, which has been quite successful in spreading the news of what is happening in the world of Scottish military history.  

But the poor old forlorn Blog deserves better than suspended animation so we'll endeavour to start using it again when we have some news worth sharing. 

This week we most definitely have news worth sharing; we have got three new rolls of honour to launch and since they are all related to Glasgow we thought we'd have a "Glasgow Week".

Every day until Saturday 23rd February we'll use Twitter and Facebook to try and share the following:

• A Glaswegian listed on the Glasgow Roll of Honour 1914-1918  
• A Glaswegian listed on the Glasgow Roll of Honour 1939-1945  
  
• A Glaswegian buried in Glasgow and recorded on the Scottish War Graves Project  
• A Glasgow war memorial  
• A Glasgow roll of honour  
• A Glasgow built warship launched on this day in history  
• A website relating to Glasgow's military or naval history  
• A video relating to Glasgow's military or naval history

Plus we'll send out anything else we find of interest relating to Glasgow and hopefully we'll get some interaction and be able to pass on other people's contribution to #Glasgow Week.

Bridge of Allan Roll of Honour

As we approach the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, attention turns to commemorating the servicemen and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice. New publications appear regularly, containing research into those who fought and died in the service of their country.

 

While this is highly commendable, several members of the Scottish Military Research Group (SMRG) feel this does a disservice to the countless Scots who served just as gallantly and after demobilisation returned home to a thankful family.  

 

We believe that those who returned from the war deserve to be remembered just as much as those who died on a foreign field. Many who survived came home with physical and psychological scars and for some their war did not end with the cessation of hostilities; they carried their wounds with them until the day they died, perhaps decades later.

 

As part of our commitment to remembering all those who served in the First World War we are transcribing and digitally republishing rolls of honour from ninety years ago which list the fallen and the survivors. While the current focus is on First World War rolls the SMRG also intends to republish rolls of honour from other historic conflicts.

 

The Bridge of Allan Roll of Honour 1914-1919 was published shortly after the end of the First World War and is a fascinating record of the service given by the men of one town in Scotland .

 

The roll includes soldiers, sailors and airmen. It mentions those decorated for acts of gallantry and those who died on land, at sea and in the air. There is no rank or class divisions in the list; all men are listed equally from the highly-decorated colonel serving as an Aide-de-Camp to the King, to the humble private who did his own bit in achieving the final victory.

 

This rare out-of-print roll of honour is now available to download from the Scottish Military Research Group by following this link: 

The Bridge of Allan Roll of Honour

Lloyds Bank Memorial Album

For a while now we've offered for sale a CD of the Lloyds Bank Memorial Album. This had been scanned and newly indexed, and enabled you to locate a specific portrait on a page.

We've now decided to cease publication of the CD and offer it as a digital download. This actually means the cost of the publication is lower, as you no longer have to pay for postage and packaging.

The album can be downloaded from Print on Demand service Lulu, by following this link:

Lloyds Bank Memorial Album 1914-1918

We hope to offer further downloads of other items in the near future - watch this space!

Registering for the forums

One of the most common emails we receive is from people who have newly registered for either the War Graves Project or the Memorials Project and haven't received their confirmation of account activation.

The way the forums are set up, we have to manually activate every new member. By doing this we avoid having any malicious members posting spam or offensive links. We usually get a large number of new members who are nothing more than spam, and while their links appear in the user profiles, by manually activating every member it means that their rubbish is not allowed to infect the main part of the forum.#

However, what this means is that the automated process does not complete, and so the email confirming that a new members profile has been activated is not sent out.

We usually check the list of members every couple of days, and activate any genuine new members and delete spammers at that time.

So...if you're a new member, and you're still waiting for your email confirming your account is active, we would suggest trying the following:

1. visit the forum and try to log in. You may find your account is already active.

2. If it isn't wait another day or so. We try to check every day or so, but occasionally we aren't able to.

3. If you're still waiting after a week or more, then please email us at scottishwarmemorials@hotmail.co.uk - let us know when you joined, and what your username is. We'll look into it and get back to you ASAP.

What we find is that sometimes people reply to the initial welcome email they get. We'd suggest you DON'T do that - that has your account details INCLUDING YOUR PASSWORD. While we have no intention of giving out your password for any reason, we usually have no access to these and have no need to know it. If you MUST reply using the initial email, please check the text and REMOVE your password.

One other thing - registering to use the forum is not the same as joining the Research Group. If you want to join the Research Group (and have access to any research material, and to find out first about any new projects we might have) then you can join us by visiting this page and clicking the email link and filling in your details. We'd love to have you on board!

Carbisdale. Scotland's forgotten battlefield.

Culrain in the Highlands is a quiet place. There is a small train station which serves a magnificent castle-turned-youth-hostel and not much else. You probably won't find yourself driving through it, you have to drive to Culrain for a reason. 

It is along a single track road about three miles from Ardgay. Ardgay (pronounced Ardguy) isn't even on the main road north now that the Dornoch Firth Bridge takes the A9 traffic away from the Kyle of Sutherland.

As you come out of Culrain station or drive past it, you wouldn't realise that the trees in the small field right beside you are on top of what may or may not be an arrow-headed ravelin; if it is then it makes it one of the few battlefields in Britain with earthwork defences still visible.

If you looked along the small road heading towards the hills and woods in the distance you wouldn't realise that it bisects the battlefield which saw the final defeat of one of Scotland's most famous warriors.

There is nothing there to tell you this is the battlefield of Carbisdale; no plaque, no information board, no monument. Now I know we don't like defeats in Scotland (especially ones where it was Scot versus Scot) but surely we could do better than this. The Great Montrose saw his end at Carbisdale on 27th April 1650 and there is nothing there to let us know it.

Luckily for me I had a look at the detailed Inventory of Scottish Battlefields entry for Carbisdale before I went so I knew exactly where to go and what to look for. Anyone turning up without a copy of that would be left scratching their heads. 

I'll not go into detail of Montrose's 1650 campaign through the Far North and the battle itself because it is all in the Historic Scotland pdf above. Instead I'll give you some photographs of the battlefield. Surprisingly few are out there already.

Being the middle of summer it was absolutely chucking it down with rain when I visited so I pretty much stuck to the roads when taking them. 

I'll start with a panoramic view of the battlefield taken from outside the community hall. On the left side of the road are the fields where Montrose formed up his troops. The hills behind them would have been where the Ross and Munro contingents waited to see which way the battle turned. On the right of the road is where the Royalist troops ran towards the woods and where they were cut down by Strachan's mounted troops. 

 

Facing south from the road looking across the battlefield. It is a field and there's not much more to be said about it.

The woods north-west of Culrain. On the right are the slopes of Lamentation Hill. The Danish contingent of Montrose's army supposedly made a stand in front of this wood.

The ravelin? It is hard to make out in these photographs but the ridges in the ground in this field form a 'V' shape with the point under the trees. This small field is beside the road running alongside the railway station. This photograph is taken opposite the community hall facing south.

Another shot of the ravelin field. This is taken from beside the bridge which crosses the railway line facing west. This hopefully shows the 'V' more clearly on either side of the trees.

Behind the community hall. There is a ditch here seemingly. It was too overgrown and certainly too wet for the light shoes I was wearing for further investigation on the day I was there.

Forgotten Faces of the First World War

We've been very quiet on the blog front recently. We've really got no excuse other than we've been working on various projects which will hopefully be of interest. We can't ay much more than that, but in the future we'll hopefully have lots of news for you.

In the meantime, we thought we'd show this short video. We've already mentioned this on our Faxcebook and Twitter feeds, but here it is on the blog for those of you who don't subscribe to either.

You may recognise some of the photos in the slideshow from our "Image of the Day" posts on the blog, but there are a number of images you won't have seen before. Hope you enjoy it.