2-798-797 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

House at Duddingstone, where the Pretender slept on the night before the Battle of Prestonpans, 1845. In 1745, '...a band of about 2400 ill clad, worse armed, and half civilised Highlanders moved from Duddingstone, near Edinburgh, under the command of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, to meet about the same number of "regulars," horse and foot...commanded by Sir John Cope. Having marched about eight miles in a south-easterly direction, they halted between the villages of Tranent and Prestonpans, on the shores of the Firth of Forth...The house belonged to Colonel Gardiner, who led the troops of horse that were the first to fly. Finding himself thus deserted he placed himself at the head of a band of infantry and was killed by a fierce scythe cut, dealt by a Highlander, just beside his own garden wall'. From "Illustrated London News", 1845, Vol VII.