Raigmore Tower

Explorer Tom Old Leanach Cottage stands on Culloden Moor with a heather thatched roof and the ability to make visitors stop mid-sentence. It is tempting to call it the very room where wounded soldiers lay in 1746, but the National Trust for Scotland says a similar cottage stood here during the battle and the present one was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century. The truth deserves the better story. During the battle a cottage on this site served as a field hospital for Government soldiers. The surviving building later became a home, and its residents grew into some of the battlefield's first guides. The last resident, Annabelle Cameron, left in 1912. Hector Forbes gave the cottage to the National Trust in 1944, and by the early 1960s it had become the battlefield's first small museum. Now it hosts temporary displays about the battle, new research and people's connections to the ground around it. Its walls mix stone and turf, while the thatch uses heather gathered from the battlefield and worked by local craftspeople. Those details belong to the building visitors can see, without pretending every repair is eighteenth century. Step back from the cottage and look across the moor: the building's quiet size says more than a theatrical battlefield speech would. The Trust keeps the battlefield open throughout the year; the cottage and visitor centre have their own arrangements, so check current opening information before travelling. Paths may be muddy and livestock graze here. Treat the ground and its graves with care. My imaginary guide has put away his dramatic hat; there is enough real history in this small house.