It's HM Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee today ... and our time to speak out ...
I've been publicly here in Prestonpans Town Hall since the Museum opened on the evening of April 29th, greeting visitors, posing for selfies even, watching and listening to all that's going along; in fact I'd returned from Derby a few months earlier and had the chance to see the restorations in progress. I've two1745 contemporaries in the Hall - Foxie from HMS Fox who manned the redcoat cannons and Alex whose father was Minister at Prestongrange church. Archie away south in the Doocot at Bankton House where he was manservant in the home of Colonel Gardiner completes our raconteur quartet. Yes, we are mannequins but here in the 21st century we've access to myriad sentient competences, and we're going to speak out! And for the record we've been inspired by the autobiography of Klara shared by Nobel Prize Winner Kazuo Ishiguro. I keep a copy on my desk!
Already and for at least the next four years this Town Hall has been leased by the Battle of Prestonpans Heritage Trust to exhibit The Prestonpans Tapestry alongside related artefacts, paintings and documents that illustrate the history and cultural legacy of the Victory won close by on September 21st 1745 when my Highlanders defeated Sir John Cope's redcoat soldiers and dragoons.
Foxie, Alex and Archie were each content in 1745 to see the Elector of Hanover and his monarchical successors up to today's celebrant of Her Platinum Jubilee rule in preference to Scotland's Royal House, the Stuarts, for whom I was rightfully seeking to reclaim the three thrones. My ambition, and that of my many supporters, to restore my father as King James VIII and later to succeed myself as King Charles III, was ultimately unfulfilled as history vividly recounts at Culloden. But that was the conclusion of my campaign in 1745/ 1746; here in Prestonpans the history is retold at the very successful beginning!
Visitors' inevitable eye catching first stop on entering the Museum is the magnificent topographical diorama of the battlefield where my surprise Victory was won. I watched as the original battlefield board created in 2010 was repaired and recrafted, the shore of the Forth and the 1722 Waggonway added, and the splendid pottery models of Bankton House, 18th century Tranent Church and Preston Lodge and Preston Tower reinstated. No visitor can resist pausing, wondering why and where the Prestonpans windmill stood and relating their own knowledge today to the historical representation. Students from Preston Lodge High today can see where their namesake building stood until the 1920s but it only slowly dawns that today's school grounds and buildings run well east from that 1745 home of the infamous Lord Grange!
