Maps

Unless an accurate map of the battle area is produced, the battle cannot be understood. Once available, all the various written sources make excellent sense. Two sets of maps were made within this research, each taking about 1.5 years full time labour. The first set was made directly from the Roy maps c1750, these being very accurate as to details and especially as they show the two great bogs, Halbert's and Milton before drainage occurred. What you need to do is excise all the additions made between 1314 and 1750 and then you have a very good map of the battle area at the time. This has to be done inch by inch around the map, consulting charter work, every other map of the area and especially the ground itself, a task, then, that requires numerous days [ several hundred] spent at the area until every last detail is understood; and many things were not easily understood. Although the Roy maps are brilliant [proved within 'Bannockburn Proved' at length] they were not triangulated because the process was not available then. Roy himself was responsible for this with a baseline constructed on Hounslow Heath, but that was later. This meant that the bogs which were so important to the understanding of the battle could not at first be made on a triangulated map. In the second set, this problem was overcome. So these are better geometrically and, further, have the advantage of many more fresh insights acquired after more investigation. The signal significant advance here is the provision of a justified map, a novelty. The first set were justified in about 100 pages of 'Bannockburn Revealed'; the second set were justified in a further 25,000 words in 'Bannockburn Proved'. An example of one of the maps will be shown eventually. The first set of 12 have an explanation under the map which is on a Royal Octavo page. No compromise was made in the second set where each map is A4 and the explanation is placed in the part of the map not being currently engaged; ie nothing is happening there at that time; a useful enhancement if you have all 12 maps. Beside the title page of 'Bannockburn Proved' there is a copy of the map with no armies being shown. A lower cost printed production is hoped for but at present individual copies take hours and many cartridges for all the colour to produce. There are 3 dozen maps, mostly in colour and 95 photographs in the book, all in colour.

A map of the battle area needs to show the streams, the slopes, the woodland, the bridges and fords, the villages and the roads. The reason why so many historians of the past made such glaring errors in showing these is that they spent too little time on the job. Academics have lectures to prepare and to give, meetings to attend, papers to mark and, nowadays, a host of actions which are time consuming and have little to do with the pursuit of the truth. Professor Barrow told me he 'walked over the area' for a couple of days in the early sixties. That is why he understood so little about the ground. And this ground really is exceptional: it is an important factor in the success of the Scots. He also spent his time with the 100 and 200 ft contours and that is also inadequate. An important mistake was made by Christison and Barrow in taking these contours on modern maps as markers. These are arbitrary numbers! If a feature is 98 ft high it will not show up at all! This is why the full effect of the escarpment along the north side of the Bannock burn was missed. They looked at maps and not the ground! And why neither understood that there is a bottleneck at Milton Ford where the escarpment is beginning, for the first time since leaving the Carse, to be ascendable, especially by a horse and cart. NB There were no bridges across Bannock burn until 1516. The main road from the south went across the only ford for a mile up and down the burn: at Milton, along St Ninians Main St and on to Stirling. And this was the main road of 1314 because in 1215 the church at St Ninians was built right beside it. Had the road been elsewhere the church would have been built beside it: otherwise you would need to transport materials from the road to the church, some distance away, an unnecessary labour. That the road did cross the burn at Milton Ford is crucial, for it tells us where the Scots made their defence on day 1 and where Bruce slew de Bohun. The idea that the advancing English used the Roman Road (wherever it was) in 1314 is mistaken. The Romans would have had a bridge and the OS map surveyed in 1860 [included with the Roy maps in BP] shows us where it probably would have been; but it was disused as soon as the Romans left at the end of the first century AD. Why? Because their bridge fell down and there was no commune to re-erect and maintain it. Romans did not use fords because they were unreliable and Milton Ford is unreliable: in very wet weather it is soon impassable to pedestrians. The Romans needed roads along which troops could be moved in any weather; they were vital for the security of the province against revolt. In 1314 if it was very wet, you waited at the side of the ford until the water level fell to an acceptable level. It was all you could do. How can you check this? Go and look ie do what academic historians do not wish to do: some at least are like medieval schoolmen who would rather argue about published papers than spend days and weeks getting dirty treading the bogs and streams in all weathers. NB The Bannock burn in the Carse, after wet weather - the weather just before the battle, see later- is a muddy, dangerous stream 40 ft wide and 10 ft deep, another insight which is new because historians do not go out in bad weather. If they had done they would not have fouled up the subject for so many centuries.

And that is why they missed the pools of water that regularly form in the Carse which is unique in this respect. 34 pools of water some of them 100yds long and a yard deep have been counted there and many photos in the books show them. This is immensely important because the Brut y Tywysogyon written by a Welshman present at the battle writes about 'the battle among the pools'. Scalacronica and Barbour both describe the same thing. The Carse is not a marsh but a place that becomes pooled with water. Since the English camped in the Carse- this Carse-before the battle, and it is regularly pooled in this way and the Scots attacked the English in their camp, of course the battle was fought in the Carse. And it is this Carse for the others had bogs half a mile wide in them in which nobody could move, still less encamp. There is never a time when pools of water form on the Dryfield because, as its name tells us, it was ever dry. Any water that falls on the rounded hill that is the Dryfield is either absorbed or runs off into the streams at the sides.

One essential feature on the map of 1314 is the line of the Pelstream. If you cannot draw this, you cannot understand the battle. There is no alternative to taking the trouble to stand in the gorge created by the Pelstream between St Ninians and the Carse. It is obvious that until now no historian has ever done this for their maps are uniformly defective here as elsewhere. That gorge defines the line of the Pelstream in 1314. The gorge is about 100 yds wide and 100 yds deep, midway. The Pelstream etched out that severe cutting in the land. It follows that the Pelstream continued along the line of that cutting: straight out into the Carse along the line of the stream still seen today which eventually joins the Bannock burn below Kersemills. A huge volume of water etched out that Gorge and its force would carry it along the very same line towards the River Forth. Since the Pelstream rises on Gillies Hill fed by 9 springs as well as by the north end of Halbert's Bog, as Roy shows us, it was, at times, a formidable stream in 1314. By 1750, the Pelstream had been partly diverted to Stirling, as the 'Town Burn' and this has confused people as to its course. Watson (2001!), be it noted, drew the Pelstream emerging from the Carse itself like a rabbit out of a hat: of course she could not understand the battle with this mistake. Barrow never saw the Pelstream Gorge (and will not even now go and look) and took the Pelstream to be a tributary a foot wide and a few inches deep in ordinary weather which starts on St Ninians Main Street [not even the spring 100yds SW of St Ninians] instead of the main stream from Gillies Hill which crosses Main St at its lowest point. Why is it necessary to name names like this? Because they made mistakes and will not own up and so all their rubbish continues to be imbibed as if it were the truth by an innocent public who do not know any better. Worse, that rubbish is still taught in all our schools and universities. This is why these errors need to be exposed. When reputations are put before the truth the reputations need to be demolished. Worst of all, because of their errors, the battlefield gets lost because financiers are allowed to build on it. Soon it will be under concrete. Thus the failure of historians destroys our heritage. And what an inspiration the actual battlefield could be! If saved and preserved.

Another vital feature is Balquhiderock Wood which is, today, about 150 yds wide at its widest and half a mile long, standing on the slope made by the escarpment which goes all the way from Milton to the Carse and rounds to head towards Stirling and reaches as far as Viewforth. Balquhiderock Wood can be seen today and on every map right back to the time when maps first began to be made: Roy's maps c750. Since no one in the last 4 centuries has cut down this wood, then, with far fewer people and worse tools in the 4 centuries previous, it is inconceivable that that wood did not exist in 1314. Barrow forgot all about it and the mostly very steep slope 70ft high on which it stands. It is an important factor in the victory. Indeed, the Dryfield is today still surrounded by a steep slope to the south and east and north which is wooded. No medieval army in Europe could have ascended those slopes in 1314 against that Scottish army which was determined to win and which did win. That is, the Dryfield of Balquhiderock was a natural fortress which could only be penetrated at Milton Ford, on either side of which for a full mile, the burn is impassable to heavy cavalry, mainly because of the severe banks on one side or the other-only apparent to an observer on the ground. Maps are insufficient, contours unreliable, being arbitary. When woodland is such a natural feature of our landscape, so very difficult to remove [to make one large tree available for fuel takes an expert family with a chainsaw 2 days labour] and constantly seeding all around itself, it is foolish to assume that the ground was bare of trees, especially when every map of the area shows an increasing number of trees as we go back in time. But in 1314 we know there were serious woods in the battle area for the written sources tell us of the woodland of the New Park. The very existence of that quantity of woods, about a square mile west of Milton, means that everywhere else around would be seeded constantly and wooded therefore. Roy's shading shows this woodland in 1750. The shading is not high ground for there is no high ground. In this case, Roy has shown the slopes of the ground by parallel lines and this has allowed him to show woods by shading. Some other Roy maps such as Bute do not have this, are not done this way. There are no parallel lines of slope in the map of Bute. How can we be sure that shading in Roy's map of the Bannockburn area is woodland? Because if it were high ground it is in the wrong place; some ground just as high is unshaded and because in some places the map (SE of St Ninians) shows shading in two places where the lines of slope are the same and continuous ie if the shading meant high ground the slope between them would have to change. Numerous instances which show that the shading is trees are given in BR eg on the north side of the burn where the trees can still be seen today and there is no high ground whatever. Examination of the ground just north and often south of the burn between Milton Ford and the Carse shows remarkably steep slopes which would have been wooded in all ages because of the very danger to life by any attempt to remove them. Any map of the battle area in 1314 which does not show woodland other than the New Park is juvenile. To show a map without justifying it is juvenile.

Since the road from Falkirk to Stirling went across Milton Ford, making a bottleneck there, that was the place the Scots defended. The defence was successful [as the sources say: see BR or BP] which means the Scots occupied the Dryfield the night before the main battle. The English camped in the Carse that night as Barbour and the Brut y Tywysogyon and Scalacronica all tell us. The Scots rose before dawn, descended Balquhiderock Wood, all on foot, lined up in 3 divisions, marched on the English lines on foot, got very close to the cavalry which were in the van, closed off the space between the Pelstream and Bannock burn [ the second bottle neck, 830 yds wide] and prepared to receive the cavalry charge by digging in their pike butts. 800 English knights charged the Scots lines but with little room to get up speed they had little effect. Other lines of English cavalry ran in behind and had no effect. Once halted by the sheer press of Scottish pike-held infantry, the English cavalry ceased to operate as such. Jammed in on either side by the muddy streams, swollen with rain and the tide, and unable to retreat and regroup because of other knights behind, they were pulled down and killed, along with their horses. The King of England was on the Knoll and was going to be captured. He was led off the field, people saw it and began to flee. Most Englishmen were killed fleeing, mainly in the streams where they got stuck and in armour could not get out. The lightly armed Scots killed them fleeing.

The Knoll in the Carse of Balquhiderock. A few historians who think themselves expert believe that the Knoll we see today is 'a partially removed pit byng'. NOT SO! The knoll can be seen on Thomas Jefferys's map of 1746 in the right place and of the right size and with the right shape. The knoll then. Mining began in 1904 and would not have been allowed unless the ground were returned to its former state on mining ceasing. Roy also shows the knoll in 1750. For the Mill Lade which drove the mills at Kersemills has a kink in it. That kink was to get the lade around the knoll. An unnecessary kink in a mill lade is unthinkable for it slows the water speed. Note the Bannock burn, not the Pelstream was the main source of water for the mills because the Bannock had a far greater volume from its far wider catchment area. Overflow went into the Pelstream. The mills date from after 1459 [BP p218, p47; Miller 1931 p9]. But a casual look at the slopes of the Knoll today tells us it is natural and has nothing to do with mining.

It is important to realise that very few people lived in the 6 sq miles of the battle area in 1314. The population of the area is worked out in independent ways by elementary maths in BP. It is nearly certain that there were fewer than 300 people in these 6 sq miles. Growth factors were worked out from the stats in the Statistical Surveys. If these are applied to a figure of greater than 300, the figures produced by 1845 would have been far greater than those actually achieved, a decisive result. Indeed, the number of buildings shown on the estimated map of the area in 1314 in BP is shown to be consistent with the calculations on the population of the area. Note: Bannockburn did not exist as a village, even in 1750, as Roy shows us. The village then was at Newmarket, half a mile up the hill to the south and east. In 1314 there would have been scarcely one house within the present area of Bannockburn village today. Why this happened is explained in BP.

Why is Balquhiderock Wood shown as it is in the best estimated maps of the area in 1314 in BP? Because that is one of the errors in Roy's map. The wood was not 100 yds at the widest but 264yds. Roy shows the first bend in the mill lade and the wood goes as far down the slope as this bend. The OS map surveyed in 1860 shows the same bend but does so accurately, being triangulated. So the woodland should be shown as far as the bend. And this confirms the obvious insight that in such a Carse, liable to pooling and flooding, woodland would occupy any ground not subject to pooling and flooding ie on sloping ground. Why did Roy get it wrong here? Because of no triangulation and because measuring on such a steep slope through trees is very difficult to do accurately. In fact, if Roy's map is rotated through about 20 degrees it will be found to be almost identical as to the lines of streams and lades, as the OS map of 1860. Why the rotation? Because Roy's map was made relative to magnetic north and not true north.

to be continued. 7.5.2007