IT is – perhaps not surprisingly – a chapter in the thousand-year history of Durham Cathedral that is rarely discussed south of the border.
But in Scotland the fate of the “Dunbar Martyrs” in the cathedral is something of a cause celebre.
Last night a campaign to have an estimated 1,600 Scottish casualties of a bloody civil war 360 years ago properly remembered finally came to fruition.
During Evensong, a memorial plaque to the Scottish prisoners captured at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 was dedicated within St Margaret of Scotland’s chapel in the cathedral.
But whether a mass grave of Scottish prisoners lies beneath the cathedral remains open to conjecture.
The Battle of Dunbar took place during the Civil War when Oliver Cromwell’s English forces defeated a newly recruited and unprepared Scottish Army.
Captured prisoners were marched 100 miles south with many ending up imprisoned in Durham Cathedral. At this time and throughout the Commonwealth, the cathedral was empty and abandoned, its Dean and Chapter dissolved and its worship suppressed by order of Oliver Cromwell.
During the hard winter of 1650-51, many of those incarcerated at Durham died of malnutrition, disease and cold. It is said that the prisoners burnt most of the cathedral’s wooden furnishings in order to keep themselves warm.
Amateur historian and human resources manager George Wilson, from the coastal town of Dunbar, south of Edinburgh, has spent three years campaigning for the memorial. He and Roy Pugh, from the Dunbar Local History Society, attended Evensong as guests of Durham Cathedral.
Yesterday was the patron saint of Scotland, St Andrew’s Day, and the Very Rev Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham said: “I am glad that we are at last honouring those who died in and around the cathedral during their imprisonment.
“The desecrated cathedral was, like them, a victim of the Civil War, so it is right that we should recall this bitter episode in Anglo-Scottish history.
“As we do this, we give thanks for the gift of reconciliation, and remember those who today continue to suffer cruelty at the hands of others.”
At the battle English Parliamentarian forces under Cromwell defeated a Scottish army commanded by David Leslie which was loyal to King Charles II, who had been proclaimed King of Scots in 1649.
In 1650, according to the Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland, about 3,000 Scots were killed at the Battle of Dunbar and 10,000 taken prisoner.
While the numbers are impossible to verify, it is suggested that about 4,000 were marched south, with 1,500 dying or disappearing en route. Anything between 300 and 1,600 are said to have died at Durham. The rest were shipped as slave labour to North America.
Towards the end of 2007, to coincide with the launch of the campaign to commemorate the Dunbar Martyrs, Historic Scotland, with the agreement of Durham University, funded a geophysical survey of Palace Green. It was hoped that this might provide clarity on the final resting place of the dead, but results were inconclusive.
The memorial says: “In memory of Scots captured at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 who were imprisoned in this cathedral. Many hundreds died during their imprisonment.
“Their burial place is unknown.”
