Maggie Wall's Monument, Dunning, Perthshire, Scotland

Maggie Wall's Monument

This picture of Maggie Wall's Monument is for sale.

It comes as a canvas (from £50.00), or an unframed print (from £1.20).

Why not take a look at my other pictures of from in and around the Ochils.

Around a mile west of Dunning, in Perthshire, along the B8062, a stone cairn topped with a cross sits in an enclosure at the side of the road. A painted inscription reads "Maggie Wall burnt here 1657 as a witch".

There is no record of anyone named Maggie Wall being tried as a witch, and there is no record of the monument itself until 1866. 

It is thought that Maggie Wall did not exist, and that monument is a memorial to all witches murdered in Scotland during the witch hunts of the 16th to 18th centuries - no other such monument exists anywhere else in Scotland. During that time, around 3,800 people, mostly women, were accused of witchcraft, and around 1,500 of them were murdered as a result.

However, the forest around the monument was recorded as Maggie Wall's Wood in 1829. The name was likely taken from the surrounding woodland to represent all of the murdered women.