Cawdor, Culloden and Nairn: The Holly Tree and the Last Battle on British Soil

Cawdor Castle was built around a living holly tree, which testing shows died about 1372; the remains are still in the lowest level of the tower, and the earliest document for the castle is a licence to fortify granted in 1454 to William Calder, 6th Thane of Cawdor. Shakespeare made Macbeth Thane of Cawdor, but the play never names the castle and it was built long after the real king's time. Eleven kilometres away, the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was destroyed at Culloden on 16 April 1746 in a battle that lasted less than an hour, and the coast road runs on to Nairn and its beaches.