Building record MHG2985 - Farmstead, Old Leanach, Culloden

NMRS Notes

NH74SW 21 7450 4499

For Culloden Moor, Battlefield (centred NH 742 450), see NH74NW 17.00.

(NH 7450 4499) Old Leanach (NAT)
OS 6" map, Inverness-shire, 2nd ed., (1906)

'Old Leanach (In Ruins)'. 'This name applies to the ruins of a farmsteading situated in the "Field of the English". The barn that stood here in 1746 to which the wounded Highlanders were carried and over whom it was burned by order of the Duke of Cumberland, has completely disappeared leaving no vestiges behind.'
Name Book 1869. <1>

The old farm house of Leanach a low thatched building was completely restored by the National Trust in 1960. The site of the barn was fixed at c.9.0m to the SW of Leanach. At this spot are some foundations but not thought to be of the old barn (Information from Mr N MacDonald, Warden, National Trust for Scotland, Culloden).
Visited by OS (W D J) 24 April 1962.

Old Leanach farmstead is shown as an L-shaped unroofed building with an attached short length of wall on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Inverness-shire, Nairnshire 1871-6, sheet xiii).
Information from RCAHMS (AKK), 19 June 1996.

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Excluded from Schedule as 'adequately protected as a category B listed building' on 22 August 2003. <2>

A full architectural survey of the cottage was carried out by Addyman Archaeology on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland in January 2009. The results will be used to inform future conservation works.
Comparison with the nearby King's Stable Cottage combined with analysis of the traditional building materials of the area suggests that both had been constructed by the Culloden Estate as part of improvement works in the 1720s. Both cottages also display features that could be described as atypical for the period suggesting that they were constructed for the use of estate officers.
Ten phases of construction were identified. Evidence for single stone, clay-bonded wall construction suggests that the cottage was built in the early 18th century. It seems to have begun as a T-plan structure almost identical in form to King's Stable Cottage. A single cruck frame survives embedded in the western gable wall. It is thought that the roof would have been thatched with straw using the clay-thatching technique.
The cottage was modified and subsequently abandoned at some time before 1867., The western end of the building was then demolished leaving an L-plan structure, and this is how it is depicted, "in ruins" on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map. The cottage was rebuilt and reoccupied in the early 1880s with further repairs taking place throughout the 20th century. <3>