Fort George to host major historic re-enactments again this summer
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Fort George near Inverness will once more experience a friendly invasion this summer.
It is to host the hugely popular historical re-enactment weekend, the Celebration of the Centuries.
It is Historic Environment Scotland's (HES) largest re-enactment event.
The re-enactors will bring the mighty fortress to life with a living timeline depicting more than 2000 years of Scottish history.
It will give visitors the opportunity to go back in time and experience living history dating back to Picts and Romans, the big band era in the Forties zone and watch as stunt horse riders from the TV series Outlander dramatically tell the tale of the Highlander Lady saved from capture by the Redcoats.
Celebration of the Centuries is being held on Saturday and Sunday August 12 and 13, 2023.
HES describe Fort George as the finest example of 18th-century military engineering anywhere in the British Isles, though the Army base never fired a shot in anger. Today, the fort would cost nearly £1 billion to build and equip.
Strategically located on a promontory in the Moray Firth near Inverness, Nairn and the village of Ardersier, the fort was designed to be impregnable. It is built on a monumental scale, making use of sophisticated defences, with heavy guns covering every angle.
In its heyday the boundary walls of the fort housed accommodation for a governor, officers, an artillery detachment and a 1,600-strong infantry garrison.
It had more than 80 guns and a magazine for 2,672 gunpowder barrels, ordnance and provision stores.
It was built to counter any future Jacobite threat but the Jacobite Rising of 1745–6 proved to be the last attempt by the Stuart dynasty to regain from the Hanoverians the thrones of Scotland and England and Wales.
Fort George was seen as one of the ruthless measures introduced by the government to suppress Jacobite ambitions after the nearby Battle of Culloden. It was intended as the main garrison fortress in the Highlands and named after George II.
Lieutenant-General William Skinner was the designer and first governor of Fort George.
Defences were heavily concentrated on the landward side of the promontory – the direction from which a Jacobite assault was expected. Long stretches of rampart and smaller bastions protected the seaward sides.
In the 1700s, when the Jacobite threat was over, the fort became a recruiting base and training camp for the rapidly expanding British Army.
Between 1881 and 1964, the fort served as the depot of the Seaforth Highlanders, and today it remains an active military base being currently the home of the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS).
