The collection of arms in the Great Hall includes the following Scottish pieces:- 2 Lochaber axes, 17thth century; 1 voulge, 16thth century; a number of basket-hilted broad-swords, 18thth century; 4 Highland targes and a dirk, all 18th century; Scottish pistols, 18thth century. A detailed record was made of the room, see Kirkdale Archive for full description. As part of a series of excavation on the Edinburgh Castle vaults in Kirkdale Archaeology carried out an exacavation on the Mons Meg vault.
NT A record was produced of a 5 x 1. The steps provided access to the E side of the battery presently occupied by the late medieval gun. The removal of the steps revealed aspects of the programme of landscaping in terms of the residual evidence of the steps , by which time the northern part of the inner curtain wall had been demolished leaving a grassy slope above the cliff. However, a truncated platform may be considerably older.
Skip to main content. Login Register. Background Colour Default Contrast. Close Reset. Edinburgh Castle, Mons Meg. Details Collections Images. Toggle Aerial View on large map. Correction Favourite. Digital Images. DP View of Edinburgh from the Castle looking north east with details of the Royal lodging, Mons Meg and the ruins of the wellhouse tower.
DP Oblique aerial view. July In , , , and various payments are recorded for the well-keeping of Mons and her carriage. On one occasion she is "ourelaid with reed leid" and her "quheles and extreis creischit wheels and axletrees greased with Orknay butter. In , among the "Towellis, Plenissingis furniture , Artaillierie and Munitioun within the Castell of Edinburgh, pertening to our Soverane Lord and hienes derrest Moder," our bombard again appears as " Ane grit peice, of forgit yron, callit Mons.
In , when King Charles I. Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, in his Historical Notices of Scottish Affairs, records that in October, , "the Duke of York having visited the Castle of Edinburgh, - for a testimony of joy, the gun called Muns Meg being charged by the advice of ane English Canonier, in the shooting was riven; which some foolishly called a bad omen.
The Scots resented it extremely, thinking the Englishman might of malice have done it purposely, they having no cannon in all England so big as she. In Maitland's History of Edinburgh, published in , we read: "Adjoining to the fourth or innermost gate of the Castle, on the ground, lies a huge piece of ordnance denominated Mounts Meg. In our venerable bombard, riven, rusty, and carriageless, was sent to England; but she does not seem to have quitted the land of her glories without a plunge, for in the Tower books of this date we find John Dick applying to the Board of Ordnance for compensation "for injury to his vessel and hawser on shipping the great gun at Leith for conveyance to the Tower.
In , on an application to George the Fourth, in which Sir Walter Scott was prominently active, Mons Meg was restored to Scotland; and in her march from Leith to Edinburgh she was "attended in grand procession, and with a military Guard of Honour, to her ancient quarters in the Castle.
In accordance with this wish, a new carriage was constructed at the Royal Carriage Department at Woolwich, and forwarded to Edinburgh in It is of cast-iron, and still supports the honoured remains of The Great Murtherer. The name of Mons borne by this bombard is generally attributed to its having been fabricated at the town of that name in Flanders; and this probability seems to gather strength from the circumstance of the great gun of Ghent resembling it so closely in model and construction.
Hall tells us besides how James II. At various periods of her career, the appearance of Mons Meg has been preserved by the arts of portraiture: by the sculptor, the modeller, and the engraver. An ancient sculptured stone, apparently of the close of the sixteenth century, which once formed part of a gateway in Edinburgh Castle, and is now fixed over the entrance to the Ordnance Office there, exhibits the figure of Mons mounted on one of her old "cradills.
The appearance of Mons, when forming one of the "Lions" of the Tower, may be seen in the model which is still preserved in the Tower Armories. The engraving at the commencement of this paper is from a drawing also preserved in the Tower; the one furnished by Lieutenant Bingham, R. On the technical accuracy, therefore, both of forms and figures, we may entirely rely.
It was next taken, with other disused ordnance, to the Tower of London in , as a result of the disarming acts against Jacobites aimed at removing weapons or spare cannon from the reach of rebellious folk. Margaret's Chapel. This gun figures frequently in the public accounts of the time, where we find charges for grease, to grease Meg's mouth withal to increase, as every schoolboy knows, the loudness of the report , ribands to deck her carriage, and pipes to play before her when she was brought from the Castle to accompany the Scottish army on any distant expedition.
After the Union, there was much popular apprehension that the Regalia of Scotland, and the subordinate Palladium, Mons Meg, would be carried to England to complete the odious surrender of national independence. The Regalia, sequestered from the sight of the public, were generally supposed to have been abstracted in this manner.
As for Mons Meg, she remained in the Castle of Edinburgh, till, by order of the Board of Ordnance, she was actually removed to Woolwich about The Regalia, by his Majesty's special command, have been brought forth from their place of concealment in , and exposed to the view of the people, by whom they must be looked upon with deep associations; and, in this very winter of —9, Mons Meg has been restored to the country, where that, which in every other place or situation was a mere mass of rusty iron, becomes once more a curious monument of antiquity" Notes to Rob Roy , Sir Walter Scott.
The gun is not called "Mons Meg" in any contemporary references until In , she first appears in record as "Monss", [7] and in the painter's account of she is called; "Monce in the castell," the only piece with an individual name.
In she was noted as "Muckle Meg. McKenzie records that this class of artillery was known as a murderer and Mons Meg was certainly described as such. Besides the Mons Meg, a number of 15th-century European superguns are known to have been employed primarily in siege warfare, including the wrought-iron pieces Pumhart von Steyr and Dulle Griet as well as the cast-bronze Faule Mette , Faule Grete and Grose Bochse.
Mons Meg at Edinburgh Castle in the s, showing details of the carriage construction. For a while in its early days the Mons sat on a plain box without any wheels. Evidently, when Mons Meg was removed from Edinburgh Castle in , her carriage had long since rotted away. A contemporary account describes her as lying "on the ground" near the innermost gate to the castle.
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