Appin Murder Cairn & James of the Glens Memorial
TWO SEPARATE MONUMENTS at South Ballachulish, about 250m apart: (1) THE APPIN MURDER CAIRN, a Scheduled Monument (SM113) at the actual murder site, a classic passer-by cairn ('visitors to the spot each added a stone to the heap'), rebuilt from scratch by the Stewart Society in 1911 and again reconstructed in 1996; its plaque reads: 'This cairn is erected on the spot where Colin Campbell of Glenure was murdered on 14th May 1752.' (2) THE JAMES OF THE GLENS MEMORIAL (Stewart Monument), a granite block crowned by a quartzite boulder marking where the wrongfully convicted man was hanged, erected 1911, reading: 'Erected 1911 to the memory of James Stewart of Acharn, or "James of the Glen", executed on this spot Nov. 8th 1752 for a crime of which he was not guilty.' (Note: one Geograph caption transcribes the execution year as 1757, apparently a transcription slip - Wikipedia and every other source checked here gives 1752, the same year as the murder and trial.)Context & sources
Found via a Historic Environment Scotland full-text search for 'murdered'; also flagged independently via Wikipedia's Keppoch murders 'See also' link, since both are well-known Lochaber-area cases. The Appin Murder (Scottish Gaelic: Murt na h-Apainn) inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Kidnapped' and its sequel 'Catriona'. On 14 May 1752, Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure ('the Red Fox'), the government-appointed factor overseeing forfeited Clan Stewart of Appin lands after the 1745 Jacobite Rising and responsible for mass evictions, was shot in the back by a concealed marksman in the wood of Lettermore near Duror while riding to conduct another eviction, in the presence of three mounted companions; he died saying 'Oh, I am dead! Take care of yourselves!' The chief suspect, Alan Breck Stewart, fled and was never caught. James Stewart of the Glens, de facto chief of Clan Stewart, was arrested two days later, tried before a Campbell-dominated jury and a Campbell judge (the Duke of Argyll), convicted despite thin evidence, and hanged at South Ballachulish - widely regarded, then and since, as a notorious miscarriage of justice carried out to punish the wider Stewart clan rather than the actual killer. His body was left on the gibbet for years as a warning.
- Wikipedia, 'Appin Murder'
- Highland Historic Environment Record, MHG522, 'Appin Murder Memorial Cairn, Ballachulish Pier' (full plaque text, Scheduled Monument status, restoration history)
- Highland Historic Environment Record, MHG22819, 'James of the Glens Memorial, South Ballachulish'
- Geograph, 'James Stewart's monument (Appin Murder)' (photo and transcription)
Needs an in-person visit
- Forest Enterprise, 'Report on the Reconstruction of the Appin Murder Cairn' (1996) - held by Highland HER, linked as a digital document but not fetched here; would give the fullest account of the cairn's physical history.
- Town
- Ballachulish
- County
- Highland
- Country
- Scotland
- Coordinates
- 56.6853, -5.2158
- Year
- 1752
- Condition
- Legible
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