Is it Blindwells or can we call it Charlestoun?

'T's been a long wait, but the future looks likely to start happening some time soon

Great news from Hargreaves that work might well be starting at the former opencast coalmine known as Blindwells. It's an area destined to have maybe 3,000 new homes over the next 50 years ... and it's got special significance for the 1745 Battle Trust enthusiasts. In the fight to save the battlefield itself over the last decade the route The Prince and Highlanders took at 5am on September 21st 1745 has not been forgotten. They travelled along a route through the marshy ground known as the Riggonhead Defile. It gave them a dawn advantage over Johnnie Cope as the sun rose. That Defile or Trail runs across the area that became the opencast coal mine.



Hargeaves' Master Plan for the area recognises these strong associations with the battle in 1745, and it's taken the opportunity of unavoidable drainage needs there to create a Loch, The Prince's Loch, in the NW corner.

The 1745 Battle Trust is ambitious in four other important respects:

[1] it wants the main avenue south/ north to be known as the Riggonhead Defile/ Trail/ Avenue;
[2] it wants to raise an equestrian statue to the Prince, which would be the first in Scotland, close by the Loch, perhaps using the % for the arts involved;
[3] it proposes that the community's name in future might be Charlestoun rather than Blindwells; and finally
[4] perhaps most ambitiously, it is evaluating whether the NW corner might be an excellent location for the 1745 Battle's Living History Centre that will also exhibit the two tapestries.

So, it's obvs why the Battle Trust is excited that home building work may be coming very soon .......