On this date in 1727 George II was crowned King of Great Britain and Ireland. Hanoverian by birth, he was the last British monarch to be born outside of the British Isles. He was also the last British monarch to lead an army in battle when in 1743 he participated in the Battle of Dettingen, an engagement in the War of Austrian Succession.  

In 1745 supporters of the Stuart claim to the throne, led by Charles Edward Stuart ("The Young Pretender" or "Bonnie Prince Charlie"), rose up in what would be the last Jacobite Rising. In this doomed attempt to depose George of his throne the Jacobites would win battles at Prestonpans and Falkirk and capture cities such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester. It would be George’s son, Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, who would finally quash the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the last pitched battle to be fought on British soil. In the wake of the rising Cumberland's reprisals would be brutal, earning him the epithet of “The Butcher”.
 
The Jacobite Risings are the subject of our big build of 2017, designed to coincide with Scotland’s Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology. Last weekend we unveiled its full 16 metre square extent at the Great Western Brick Show and are pleased to announce that it will soon be on display once more at a venue in Scotland. Stay tuned for the big announcement!
 
This scene was built by James Pegrum as part of a series of models on British history. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to see them first.

On this day in 1745 the Battle of Prestonpans was fought between the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stewart, also known as Bonny Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender, and those of the Hanoverian British Government, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir John Cope. The battle was a resounding and somewhat unexpected victory for the Jacobites who completely routed Cope's army, killing or capturing and estimated 2,100 men while losing fewer than 100 of their own. Following Prestonpans the Jacobites would march south as far as Derby, capturing Carlisle and Manchester, before deciding to return to the Highlands where they would eventually face defeat on Culloden Moor.

Having raised his banner at Glenfinnan on 19th August, Charles Edward Stewart and his Jacobite army had marched south, taking the cities of Perth, Stirling and Edinburgh with little in the way of resistance. Despite taking the cities they failed to capture the castles at either Stirling or Edinburgh, or indeed the Barracks at Ruthven, but these held only minor garrisons who could do little to effectively counter the Jacobites in what was essentially hostile territory. Cope had taken an army north with the aim of reaching Fort Augustus and over-awing the Highland clans. However, he overestimated the size of the Jacobite force and fearing an engagement at Corrieyairack, diverted his men to Inverness. Cope then marched his army to Aberdeen from where it sailed south, landing at Dunbar just to the east of Edinburgh on the same day the city fell to the Jacobites.

Cope was now keen to engage with the Jacobites, with intelligence suggesting they numbered but 2,000 but poorly armed men. His own army numbered around 4,000 and while they were mostly fresh recruits and lacked combat experience, they had cavalry and artillery in support. Meeting Charles' advance guard on September 20th, Cope decided to stand his ground and drew up his army facing south, with a boggy ditch to their front, and the park walls around Preston House protecting their right flank. It was a strong position as a frontal charge favoured by the Highlanders would flounder in the bog and be defenseless against the musket and canon fire of the government army.

The Jacobites knew this too and if it weren't for the knowledge of a Jacobite Lieutenant Anderson, the battle may have turned out quite differently. He was the son of a local farmer and claimed to know a path through the bog. At 4am the next morning, under the cover of darkness and the morning mist, the Jacobites made their way three abreast along this route to the far east of Cope's position. From there they were able to charge down the government army who were taken completely by surprise and thrown into a panic. While the government were briefly able to deploy their canons the battle became a rout in under 10 minutes. Out of the 2,300 men in the government army, only 170 troops managed to escape, including Cope himself.

The battle was a pivotal moment in the rising, handing Charles Edward Stewart a major victory and perhaps emboldening the Jacobites to strike south towards London. The defeat was a humiliating one for the government and now, taking the situation with the seriousness it deserved, they recalled their army from Europe. Consequently when the two sides met for the final time on Culloden Moor in the April of 1746, the government army would be quite different in character and experience to the one that fell apart at Prestonpans.

Our model The Jacobite Risings: The Fight for Britain's Throne explores the history of the Risings and in particular that of the 'Forty-five'. It will next be on display at the Great Western Brick Show on October 7th and 8th, why not come and see it there?

Last weekend we attended the inaugural Awesome Bricks Show at Scotland’s National Museum of Flight. The show was attended by some of Scotland’s best builders as well as some international talent from Norway’s Are J. Heiseldal. For those who wanted some hands on action there was also a brick pit, train tracks and other fun actives, which all took place under the svelte shadow of Concorde!

Representing Brick to the Past was Dan Harris, who had along with him our fierce band of LEGO Vikings. Dan said:

“This show was an absolute joy. The museum makes a great venue and there was a really nice chilled out atmosphere among the displayers and visitors. I even got to play a few games of Ard Ri – the current score being Visitors 2, Dan 1; these kids are smart!”

We’re really hoping that the show is held again next year and becomes a permanent fixture in the LEGO calendar. Talk of next year is already underway and we will definitely be back!

All the models on display at the show are available for rent. See our commercial page or contact us for more information.

On this day in 1745 the standard of Charles Edward Stuart, also known as Bonny Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender, was raised on a hill near Glenfinnan.

Sailing from France Charles had initially landed in Scotland on Eriskay in the Western Isles on the 23rd July and made his way to Glenfinnan by sea and on foot via Loch nan Uamh. Here he was met by a small number of MacDonalds and remained there for several days as more clansmen arrived. By the 19th August he felt that he had enough support and as the standard was raised he announced that he was there to claim the British throne in the name of his father James Stuart ('the Old Pretender').
 
The Glenfinnan Banner, as Charles' standard would be know, is depicted as being a white square on a dark red background and the raising of it marks its first recorded appearance. Interestingly, the banner's pattern is identical to the Royal Navy's signal flag for the number nine, which raises the distinct possibility that it was a hastily found makeshift option plundered from the Doutelle signal box.
 
Another interesting fact is that among those present at Glenfinnan were a handful of government troops who had been captured in an earlier skirmish with some MacDonalds'. One of these, Captain John Sweetman was released and was able to rendezvous with General Cope's force at Dalwhinnie and report on the arising threat.

The Jacobites would leave Glenfinnan and march south via Corrieyairack, made easily traversable by General Wade's new road. They would set a course that would see them reach as far south as Derby before returning north to face defeat on Culloden Moor in April 1746. Charles went into hiding and left Scotland's mainland via Loch nan Uamh not far from the place where just eight months before he had launched his rising.

Our model The Jacobite Risings: The Fight for Britain's Throne explores the history of the Risings and particularly that of the 'Forty-five'. It will be next on display at the Great Western Brick Show in October, why not come and see it there?

While our models often focus on significant events and big buildings, we feel that one of the most important aspects of our work is the depiction of everyday life as lived by ordinary people and you can see this effort played out across all of our models. The Jacobite Risings gives us another great opportunity to do this, allowing us to re-imagine a little piece of 18th century highland life. The Highlands were reasonably well populated in the early 18th century, this being before the brutal reprisals that followed the “Forty-five” and before the Highland Clearances of later years. During this period the pattern of settlement was dominated by multiple-tenancy farms within which houses were usually clustered together in small townships, with ridged fields, which had grazing grounds beyond. This settlement pattern is now long gone yet these townships and their field systems are by-far the most extensive archaeological remains in the Cairngorms National Park, the area on which we have chosen to focus our build.

Luckily the National Park is also home to a resource that is of immeasurable use to builders like us – the Highland Folk Museum. When it was established in 1935 it was Britain’s first open air museum, though at the time it was located on the Island of Iona. It came to its present site in Newtonmore in the 1990s via Laggan and Kingussie.
 
The museum is home to a recreated 1700s Township, which features 6 houses and a number of other period structures. These were built using traditional methods based on what we can infer from archaeological evidence and written accounts. The Township is curated by a number of specialist staff who dress in 18th century clothing and provide interpretative displays for visitors. One building even houses a loom which is expertly operated by the staff. The Township proved so useful that we in fact took several trips to visit it. It provided us with a wealth of information to work into our model and also helped us get a feel for the way life was lived during the early 18th century.

Our model is home to its own Township as well as a sprinkling of isolated buildings, such as steadings and shielings. Designing these buildings has proved challenging as their rounded shapes do not easily lend themselves to the medium of LEGO. However, we have come up with a number of innovative solutions, some of which we have been developing over the last couple of years, that meet these challenges perfectly. We have also created a number of scenes based around traditional activities, including waulking the cloth, peat cutting and shinty – the aim being to make our landscape come alive with day to day activity.

The Highland Folk Museum is run by High Life Highland, which is a charity formed in 2011 by The Highland Council to develop and promote opportunities in culture, learning, sport, leisure, health and wellbeing. It is open from the beginning of April to the end of October and is free to enter, although you can make a donation if you wish. It’s a great day out, especially of you have a family; find out more at:
 
www.highlifehighland.com/highlandfolkmuseum
 
Our LEGO Township will be next on display as part of our epic model, The Jacobite Risings: The Fight for Britain’s Throne at Swindon's Great Western Brick Show in October, why not come and see it there?

We have another show for your diary! On August 26th and 27th we will be on display at Awesome Bricks at the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune Air Field in East Lothian.
 
We’ll be there with our awesome LEGOfarne model, which was recently featured on the BBC and STV. Our Vikings are raring and there will be lots of other awesome displays and activities to get into. Have we overused the word ‘awesome’ yet? Anyway, why not come and join the fun!?
 
Reduced price early bird tickets are still available, but full price tickets cost between £9 and £14, while under 5s and National Museums Scotland Members go free!
 
Find out more and book your tickets at:

www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-flight/whats-on/awesome-bricks

Choosing a battle for The Jacobite Risings and deciding on how to depict it has proven challenging. There are after all no shortage of options, with Killiecrankie and Cromdale in the ‘89, Sheriffmuir and Preston in the ‘15, Glen Shiel in the ‘19 and Prestonpans, Falkirk, Inverurie and Culloden in the ’45 all being strong candidates. Even the Battle of the Boyne, which is generally ascribed to the Williamite War in Ireland, can be seen as part of the broader Jacobite efforts of the first rising. Given its importance to British history and its role in forging Scotland’s national identity, the Battle of Culloden would seem like the obvious choice. It’s location within the Highlands also makes it a strong contender, particularly as the “Forty-five’s” other major battles all took place in the Lowlands. Yet it is also marks the end risings and the end of realistic efforts to restore a Stuart to the throne and we wanted the model to feel like it was during the risings, to feel like events were yet to fully unfold.

This left us with a bit of a problem because, as mentioned earlier, the “Forty-five’s” other major battles were fought in the Lowlands and therefore outside of the area we wanted to create. It’s true that skirmishes and other encounters, such as the two sieges of Ruthven Barracks, took place in the Highlands, but these were limited in scale and peripheral to the thrust of the main campaign. In the Highlands, the major battles of the risings were Glen Shiel in 1719, Killiecrankie in 1689 and Cromdale in 1690. Yet these were also problematic, because as explained in our original blog, we are largely basing our model during the “Forty-five” and certainly, in terms of architecture and minifigure design, this is the period we draw our references from.

To address this we returned to our aim of representing a dramatic highland landscape and in particular the landscape of the area now designated as the Cairngorms National Park. The battlefields of both Killiecrankie and Cromdale are within the Park, the former in the south the latter in the northeast. While the area around the Haughs of Cromdale undoubtably holds a subtle beauty it is Killiecrankie that possess the drama we were searching for.
 
The geography of the Pass of Killiecrankie is dominated by deeply incised gorge, through which flow the waters of the River Garry. It’s slopes are littered with crags and densely wooded and in the shade of the often snow-capped summits of the Cairngorm Mountains. The gorge provided a strategic bottleneck in the main route through the Highlands, a fact that was well recognised by the Jacobite commander, John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee (also known as Bonny Dundee), who was camped with an army of some 3,000 men near Blair Castle, just to the north. Having heard that a government army of 4,000 foot, two troops of cavalry and three pieces of old artillery under General Hugh MacKay of Scourie was moving north from Stirling, Claverhouse moved his army to a ridge above the pass. As the government army moved through the gorge they were forced to climb uphill through woods to a position below the Jacobite’s ridge. For two hours the armies faced each other with the government artillery firing speculative shots. At 7pm, the setting sun blinding the west facing MacKay’s troops, Claverhouse ordered a charge and while the musket fire of the government lines caused much damage it failed to check the oncoming Jacobites. The government army was routed and their baggage train overcome, the Pass of Killiecrankie choked with fleeing men. MacKay made a last stand in which Claverhouse was killed, though it was not enough to prevent a Jacobite victory and the Williamite general was forced to retreat. Though Claverhouse’s death sent the rising in Scotland into terminal decline, the victory on the battlefield was complete, with around 2,000 government troops lying dead compared to just 600 Jacobites.

We decided therefore to base our battle on the geography of Killiecrankie even though stylistically our armies would reflect a later date. While this does remove our battle from real events slightly it does fit with our approach towards landscape, in which we must place buildings and features in a way that provides balance of interest, rather than attempting to place them relative to one another as they might appear in real life. Furthermore, we are still able to capture the essence of military conflict in the period while also showcasing the type of landscape on which the conflict took place.

National Trust Scotland run a visitor centre at Killiecranckie, where you can find out about the battle and get information on walks around the gorge. It's open daily from April 1st to November 5th and entry is free. Find out more here:

www.nts.org.uk/Visit/Killiecrankie
 
LEGO Killiecrankie will next be on display as part of The Jacobite Risings: The Fight for Britain’s Throne  at the Great Western Brick Show in Swindon on 7th and 8th October – why not come and see it for yourself?

Last week we attended Brick Live at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. This was a mammoth four day event, the biggest yet to be held in Scotland.

We were represented by our most northerly builder Dan Harris, who traveled south from his home in the Highlands with a car full of LEGO Vikings. The model on display was our Anglo-Saxon monastery which was originally part of last year's England 793, a model that is available for rent on its own or as part of our historical model collection.

Dan, who was joined in the Fan Zone by his friends from Tartan LUG, as well as a few new ones from further afield, said:

"It's been one heck of a show and I feel as though I could sleep for a week... I started to lose my voice sometime during day two and it's still not yet fully recovered! I had a great time with some great people and it was amazing to meet so many new faces. Scotland has a lot of hidden LEGO builders who seem to be only just discovering the wider community and the show seems to have been a great way of bringing them together. I'm really looking forward to seeing how things grow over the next few years!"

Dan's LEGO models can currently be seen at two other Scottish venues this summer, with the Caithness Broch on display at the Caithness Horizons Museum in Thurso and a model of Corgarff Castle at the real Corgarff Castle in Aberdeenshire. There will also be other chances to see the LEGO Vikings with the next two-day show, the appropriately named Awesome Bricks, being held at the National Museum of Flight on the 26th and 27th of August.

The National Park also contains the most extensive tracts of Caledonian forest in Britain, comprising of pine, juniper and broadleaved species. Over 300 kilometres square of this woodland has also been identified as being ‘ancient’, which is defined as land that is currently wooded and has been continually wooded since at least 1750.
 
The area now covered by the National Park was the scene of a number of pivotal events of the Jacobite Risings as well as a number of buildings that saw events unfold. These include:

• The Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689;
• The Battle of Cromdale in1690;
• The rising of the standard of King James VIII and III (the Old Pretender) in 1715;
• Ruthven Barracks in Badenoch built to suppress the Highlands it was sieged by Jacobites in 1745, captured and burnt in 1746 and would be there scene of the Jacobite army’s dissolution following Culloden;
• Corgarff Castle in Donside, which was burnt by Jacobites in 1689 or 1690, by redcoats in 1716. It was also raided by redcoats in 1746;
• Braemar Castle in Deeside, which was burnt by Jacobites in 1689 or 1690;
• Blair Castle, where John Graham of Claverhouse’s camped before the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 and which was besieged by Jacobites in 1746.
  

The National Park is also home to the Highland Folk Museum, which is home to a recreated 18th Century township and is a great place to learn about life in the Scottish Highlands. The museum also puts on events and we have been lucky enough to witness Jacobite and redcoat reenactors demonstrating the ways of 18th century warfare.
 
This history made the National Park the ideal place on which to base our mode, The Jacobite Risings: The Fight for Britain’s Throne, and naturally, we built a number of these events and buildings into our model. You can read about these in more detail in our previous and forthcoming blog posts (here and here), but we've decided to go a step further. Creating a landscape that looks anything like the Cairngorms has to pay some respect to its beautiful mountains – so we’ve built up and we’ve built high! The centrepiece of the model is a one metre tall mountain, complete with rocky cliffs, tree lined slopes and snow patches. Of course, this isn’t a scale model of a Cairngorms mountain, if it were it would need to be around 30 metres high, which would put a bit of a limit on our ability to take it to events. But at one metre, this is a big LEGO model by any standards and dwarfs the buildings and Minifigures that surround it. Building the mountain has been tough, with its creator James Pegrum, describing it simply as “...a nightmare”.

A second aspect of the Cairngorms’ landscape we wanted to recreate was its rivers, with the National Park containing the headwaters of three of Scotland’s largest, as well as many smaller ones. We wanted to show some river types that are unusual in other parts of the UK, so rather than choosing one of the big rivers such as the Spey or Dee, we chose some smaller but still famous ones. On one side of our mountain we have created the weaving form of a braided river, inspired by the spectacular landscape of Glen Feshie. On the other we have created a deeply incised gorge, inspired by the River Garry as it flows past Killiecranckie.

Finally, we wished to create some woodlands inspired by those found in the area and in particular those made up of species such as Scots pine and silver birch. Both species are common throughout the National Park and in places dominate its landscape. Because the former is coniferous and the latter deciduous, this meant harnessing a range of different techniques, as shown in the photos below.

We’re big fans of the Cairngorms National Park and thoroughly recommend a visit. It was voted one of the top 20 places to visit in the world by National Geographic Traveller Magazine, having “…everything from castles and distilleries to family attractions and endless outdoor fun”.
 
Find out more and start planning your trip now:
 
www.visitcairngorms.com
 
We’ll be tweeting photos of the National Park all week, follow us at @bricktothepast 

The Jacobite Risings: The Fight for Britain’s Throne will be next on display at the Great Western Brick Show in October, why not come and see the LEGO Cairngorms there?

Yesterday we attended the Brickmania LEGO show at Peterhead Prison Museum. We were there with our LEGO Vikings and were joined by some of Scotland's finest LEGO builders, including Alison and Callum Clayton, who recently featured in a Daily Record article about Scottish AFOLs  and Edinburgh based pros Warren and Teresa Elsmore.

Held in a room that once fed the prison's former occupants, the event was attended by an astonishing 2,000 or so people, with brick pits, building competitions and of course the exhibits of Tartan LUG's builders providing tons of entertainment.

Our man at the show Dan Harris said:

"This was a great event that seemed to fly-by! The quality of the exhibits and activities on offer was outstanding and I think visitors really appreciated all the effort that went into hosting it. My model was quickly surrounded by the great entries to the LEGO builders competition; there appear to be a lot of talented young builders in north-east Scotland!"

We look forward to coming back next year!