A Sinister Neighbour: Gestapo HQ Berlin

My new novel, Fables & Lies: A World War II, arose from my fascination with the archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, who not only proved the ancient city of Troy existed but also discovered a fabulous cache of gold there known as Priam’s Treasure.  Schliemann smuggled the trove out of Turkey then ‘bequeathed’ it to the German people. During WWII, the treasure was kept in a Berlin museum. After the Soviets looted the city, Priam’s Treasure disappeared mysteriously for 50 years until the Russians admitted they had hidden it in Moscow’s Pushkin Museum where you can see it today.

Priam's Treasure in Berlin

My protagonist, Freyja Bremer, is a patriotic museum assistant raised on Nazi dogma. Through her love affair with Cambridge educated archaeologist, Darien Lessing, her eyes are opened to the rot beneath the Regime’s lies, as both strive to protect Priam’s Treasure and other antiquities from air raids. Intertwined is Freyja’s forced marriage to Kaspar Voigt, one of Himmler’s SS scholars, and her quest to discover what her husband’s twisted research entails. As such, Freyja’s safekeeping efforts and her journey to enlightenment form the spine of the novel. However, I also explore Himmler’s promulgation of the Aryan Myth to justify invasion, dispossession and murder.

My research revealed Priam’s Treasure was housed in the Pre and Early History Museum in the ‘Martin Gropius Bau’ building on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. It had the distinction of being located next to Gestapo Headquarters which intrigued me. What would it have been like for my characters to have worked next to such sinister neighbours?

A changing streetscape

Excited to visit Berlin to ‘walk the ground’, I hired a guide from Humboldt University to give me a tour of specific places I’d identified as relevant to my plot. I quickly learned many street names had altered over the years depending on which regime was in power. The East Germans changed Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse to Niederkirchnerstrasse in 1951, named after Käthe Niederkirchner, a communist resistance fighter against the Nazis.

In the late 1880’s, the short street boasted the elegant Prince Albrecht Palais at No. 9 and Martin Gropius Bau at No.7 which was purpose built in 1881 to house the Museum of Decorative Arts. Opposite these stood the Prussian Parliament House. In 1905, an extension to the Decorative Arts Museum was built at No.8. Later this annexe became the School of Industrial Arts.

After WWI, the Museum of Decorative Arts was moved elsewhere in Berlin. Martin Gropius Bau became known as ‘the Museum at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse’ which housed three collections – Pre and Early History, East Asian and the Art History Library. The ‘Schliemann Salon’ displayed Priam’s Treasure and other Trojan exhibits. The ‘Gold Hall’ was filled with magnificent Merovingian Frankish jewellery and Bronze Age troves such as the Cottbus and Eberswalde Hoards. In all, there were over 100,000 exhibits in the Pre and Early History Museum to pack and protect.

Martin Gropius Bau, venetian friezes,
Gestapo HQ, Berlin Wall death strip
(Clockwise from top left)

An ominous address

The cultured atmosphere of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse changed after 1933. No.8 was taken over as Gestapo HQ. The palace at No.9, since turned into a Grand Hotel, became SS House. The parliament building became The House of the Aviators. Goering also built his massive Aviation Ministry (which covered one city block) at the corner crossing at Wilhelmstrasse, an imposing eagle statue at the front. In fact, during the Third Reich, ‘Wilhelmstrasse’ became shorthand for the entire government quarter of ministries including Hitler’s New Reich Chancellery.

Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was an ominous address. Being taken ‘to No.8’ was a terrifying prospect. Dungeons were built underground. A ‘House Prison’ was erected in its gardens. Thousands of people were interrogated and tortured within its walls.

Of course, Gestapo Headquarters and other Wilhelmstrasse ministries were targets for Allied bombers during the war. As a result, Martin Gropius Bau was under constant threat of becoming collateral damage. Despite this danger, curators persisted in packing their national treasures. During the Soviet assault, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse was part of the ‘Zitadelle’- the innermost sector containing Wilhelmstrasse which was to be defended at all costs. Ultimately, the Soviets bombarded SS House and No.8 with artillery but, even in the downfall, SS soldiers defended Gestapo HQ to the last, their blood staining the cobblestones.

The quest to save national treasures

Zoo Flak Turm

On the eve of the war, the Nazis issued a directive to all cultural institutions to sort their exhibits into three categories: priceless, most valuable, and less precious. Over time, space was found in bank vaults for the first two groups, but with the advent of RAF saturation bombing and American ‘blockbusters’, many of the irreplaceable and most valuable objects were sent to salt mines in western Germany. However, the director of the Pre and Early History Museum, Wilhelm Unverzagt, chose to secure his Category One exhibits such as Priam’s Treasure in a monumental ‘Flak Tower’ near the zoo which resembled a medieval fortress with three-metre-thick concrete walls.

My protagonist, Freyja Bremer, is one of Unverzagt’s assistants. She risks her life packing the collections while watching the museum take hit after hit. Freyja lives in a world of oppression where trust is a fragile currency. Threats from the Gestapo loom large in her life as much as the HQ’s physical presence next to her workplace. As Himmler made it a prerequisite for SS cadets to pass an exam on pre-history she grows used to ‘Black Angels’ attending lectures in the museum. There is no escaping interaction with her odious neighbours.

Through Freyja, the reader is taken into the world of Germany’s safekeepers and the destruction of Berlin’s cultural landmarks. Freyja also weathers the Soviet assault in the Flak Tower and witnesses a Soviet Trophy Brigade plundering all the exhibits she’s strived so hard to protect. At the same time, she’s drawn into the chilling world of Himmler’s research institute, the SS Ahnenerbe. Forced into marriage with Kaspar Voigt to protect her father, she is horrified to learn how prehistorians and ethnologists are subverting history to serve power.

A walk through history

Niederkirchnerstrasse stands today as a time capsule for various eras in Berlin’s history. No.8 and No.9 have been razed with only the basement cells remaining. A museum known as ‘The Topography of Terrors’ has been established to serve as a reminder of the oppression of the Regime. The Berlin House of Representatives now occupies The House of the Aviators. Only Goering’s Aviation Ministry remains pretty much as original due to the Soviets and then GDR officials using it as offices.

Ornate bas reliefs and columns

The street also holds echoes of misery from the German Democratic Republic. The Berlin Wall ran down the middle of the road cutting off Mitte in the east from Kreuzberg in the west. Martin Gropius Bau ended up in the ‘American sector’ during the period of the Four Powers. Checkpoint Charlie, the infamous crossing point featured so often in spy thrillers, was located nearby. Pseudo US soldiers now pose with tourists for photos there. A section of the wall with its death strip remains as a memorial.

Next to this wasteland, Martin Gropius Bau rises in its splendour. The West Germans reconstructed it in 1978 with further renovations occurring after reunification. It certainly wasn’t what I expected to find on my tour - a delight to behold – one of the most beautiful historic buildings in Berlin. I describe it in my novel:

Majolica mosaics

‘Although Freyja had worked at the museum for some time, she’d never grown accustomed to such sinister neighbours. She was always relieved to reach the refuge of the Martin Gropius Bau at No. 7. Three storeys high, the faux Italian palazzo was a confection of red brick, terracotta and sandstone. A row of Venetian glass mosaic friezes adorned its top floor. The blue, red and gold majolica human characters in each panel embodied nine different epochs of art. She saw the gleaming figures as her guardians.’

In addition to these magnificent friezes, each storey is demarked by terracotta reliefs depicting industrious craftsmen such as masons, spinners and carpenters. Above each are stone lozenges engraved with the names of famous artisans such as Schinkel, Schiller and Buhl. The entrance columns are ornately adorned with frolicking children and fruit such as pineapples. There are coats of arms including one with masonic symbols. The art epochs are exemplified by figures such as an Egyptian pharaoh, Japanese geisha, Roman Caesar and Grecian noblewoman. 

Atrium skylight, foyer dome, acanthus balustrades

Inside, the museum is no less wondrous. The rococo décor is a celebration of the Baroque with green acanthus balustrades and stucco ceilings festooned with garlands. In the foyer is a beautiful leadlight dome. Three double doors lead to a huge atrium covered by a rectangular skylight. In its heyday, over thirty exhibition salons surrounded the hall on the ground and first floors. Now it is an art exhibition space which has featured artists such as Wei Wei, Anish Kapoor and Paul Klee.

I admit I’ve become entranced by this amazing building with all its layers of history. If you are ever in Berlin – I recommend you visit. You won’t be disappointed!

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of A Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy. Her latest release is Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the ARA Historical Novel Prize.

Photos are my own or courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Researching my novels by Wendy Dunn

Researching my novels has always led me to fall in love with places. Hever Castle was my first love affair with a place – a love affair that continues to this day. I suppose this is not surprising considering the length of time my imagination lived within its walls. Dear Heart, How Like You This?, my first Tudor novel and published in 2002, took ten years to find a publisher. It was also the first novel I had ever completed.

Copyright and with thanks to Dr Owen Emmerson.

While I had proved to myself that I could indeed write a novel, getting it published proved another challenging story. Despite receiving a twice year although encouraging rejection, I was not brave enough to start a new project, so, as soon as another year of teaching was over for the year, I spent hours of my summer breaks revisiting my novel, which meant revisiting Hever Castle of my imagination. Hever Castle was a vital part of the fabric of my story. I imagined my main character, the poet Tom Wyatt, spending his growing-up years at Hever Castle, and falling in love with Anne Boleyn there. Having his heart broken there.

Living in Australia forced me to rely on the research of history books to build up in my mind my imagined Hever Castle. It did not take long before I burned with desire to see the castle for myself. I wanted to smell its air, walk its grounds, explore the interior of Hever Castle, climb its narrow, spiral staircase, listen to my footsteps crunching and echoing within the castle’s stone walls.

Eight years before my first novel found its publisher and two years before the birth of my last child, I got my wish. My husband and I took our children to England to visit their grandfather. One day, we left our three older children with an unsuspecting close relation, and we travelled along the winding roads to Kent.
‘It’s so small,’ I said to my husband on first seeing Hever Castle. Not an original observation, I must admit. But Hever Castle, for an English castle, is indeed small. Small, yet immensely beautiful. Tom Wyatt in Dear Heart describes Hever Castle as ‘enchanting’. I cannot remember now whether I wrote that before or after my first visit to the castle. I can only say truthfully, Hever Castle has deepened its enchantment on my psyche each time I have visited it.

Copyright VB.

In my eyes, few places in the world rival Hever Castle’s perfection when backed by the blue skies of an English summer, with green grass spread out before it.
Hever Castle is a moated castle built out of amber-coloured stones, stones usually heavily festooned with climbing, flowering plants in the warmer seasons. 

Copyright VB.

The lowered drawbridge takes its visitors through a gateway. Raise your eyes and you’ll see the niches with four stone saints protecting the gateway and its timbered courtyard. Originally built in 1270, the Gatehouse and walled Bailey are its oldest existing parts. Anne Boleyn’s ‘self-made’ grandfather, Geoffrey Bullen, purchased the castle in 1459.  Since Hever Castle was first built, the castle has experienced periods of great neglect, followed by extensive rebuilding. Such was the case when Geoffrey Bullen bought the castle. During the more settled period of the Tudors, a castle such as Hever rarely needed to be put to its original purpose, protecting all within and without from armed assault; rather those people high on the English social scale used castles like Hever to showcase their wealth. This happened at Hever Castle. Geoffrey Bullen was on the up and up, and he wanted the castle to assert his new status and wealth. He built for his family a fine Tudor home with large lattice windows within the castle’s walls. Nowadays, every room at Hever Castle seems filled to the brim with treasures of the Tudor age. The paintings are especially wonderful and set out for the visitor a feast for the eye, as well as for the Tudor lover, with their depictions of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, Mary I and – of course – Elizabeth I.

Still possessing the dark timber from the Tudor era, the castle’s entrance hall leads to the inner hall, once serving as Hever Castle’s ‘Great Kitchen’ in the time of the Boleyns. Here, in pride of place upon a mantelpiece, is a replica of a clock believed given by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn on the morning of their wedding in 1532.

 Portraits abound in the castle, original Tudor art and copies of paintings from the period. On one wall, there is a Holbein painting of Henry VIII alongside portraits of Anne and Mary Boleyn from the Holbein school. On another wall hangs a portrait of Philip II, surrounded by important women in his life: his mother, Isabella of Portugal, his second wife, Mary Tudor, and his third wife, Elisabeth Valois, her portrait painted by the famous French artist Clouet, the same artist who painted Mary, Queen of Scots, during her youth in France. 


The Dining Hall was originally the Boleyn’s Great Hall. Over its fireplace, a rectangular tapestry depicts the arms of Henry VIII. Wall tapestries featured in the Tudor period not only as items of great beauty but because they also helped to keep the fire’s warmth within the draughty confines of their homes.
Affixed to the dining room doors are copies of locks that Henry VIII took on his travels around his kingdom. The king’s locksmith, a servant accompanying the king when he stayed at the home of a subject, would attach a lock to the door of the king’s sleeping chamber, as a protective measure against the king’s enemies. 



The room where Anne Boleyn supposedly slept as a girl has an attention-grabbing architectural feature: a half-domed ceiling. Huge bedroom furniture dominates this room, as does the bedroom furniture in each and every bedroom at Hever Castle. It also possesses one feature I love most about homes from the Tudor Period: window-seats recessed into castle walls, backed by lattice windows. When I viewed this chamber in 1994 (how long ago that is now), I saw not only several depictions of Anne Boleyn, but also for the first time her book of hours. There is a legend that Anne Boleyn – moments before her execution – gave it to her friend and kinswoman Margaret Lee to pass to Sir Thomas Wyatt. Knowing how Anne Boleyn treasured that exquisite tiny book, I always shiver seeing it again as if touched by a ghost. 



Hever Castle has inspired my imagination and continues to do so. I only hope to return there one day.

New Edition of Dear Heart, How Like You This?

 

Ancient Greece's Strongest Man by L.J. Trafford

Sometime around about the year 220 CE a philosopher named Philostratus was getting annoyed with the days in which he was living. Now since I turned 50 last year I am fully onboard with nostalgic winging. What the hell happened to alcopops? I used to knock back the cranberry flavoured ones as a student back in the 90s when Brit Pop was at its peak and I had my whole life infront of me, as opposed to wondering where the hell all those years went. Philostratus’ wallows in nostalgia, however, were not for sweetly flavoured alcoholic beverages nor a music scene he understands, but rather for the athletes of times past. ‘The athletes of today are inferior to those of earlier times,’ he whines and adds with a snort of disgust (I’m imagining). ‘the majority of people are irritated even by lovers of the gymnasium.’

 

Two lovers of the gymnasium post exercise.
Credit: Two men using strigils. Gouache painting by S.W. Kelly 1937. Wellcome Collection.

Philostratus then lists the names of those great athletes that no one around him can remotely compare to, ‘Milo, Hipposthenes, Poulydamas and Promachus’ That he reels off these names without any further explanation or description of their victories or even which sports they competed in shows how famous these athletes were. Which is quite something when you find out Milo lived a cool 800 years before Philostratus is writing, as did Hipposthenes. Poulydamas & Promachus won their victories in the 5th century BCE, 600 years prior to Philostratus gym hating times.


Of the names Philostratus mentions the most famous was undoubtedly Milo or to give him his full name, sort of, Milon the Croton. Croton was a Greek settlement in Southern Italy and Milo the wrestler was their most famous son.In a career spanning decades Milo totted up six wins in six Olympic games.
Milo turned up to compete for a record breaking 7th Olympics, but he won by default because nobody else turned up to fight him. Nobody wanted to.


Legendary status is often distributed postmortem, with the likes of Philostratus looking back on times centuries before their birth and deciding that things and indeed people were just so much better back then. Milo of Croton however was a legend in his own lifetime and for far more than those Olympic victories, impressive as they were, he was a man who cultivated his legendary status.
We see this in an event that took place after the conclusion of the Olympic games at a spot known as The Altis. The Altis is a sacred area that contains several temples, including the Temple of Zeus whose statue of the God makes it into the seven wonders of the world list but it was also where statues of Olympic champions were erected. As a many times Olympic winner Milo naturally had a statue, but unlike the other athletes Milo carried his own bronze statue into the Altis for installation. Legendary behaviour in front of his adoring crowd.

Some of the remains of ancient Olympia. Credit Annatsach, Wikicomms.

However, Milo did not limit his amazing displays of strength to the adoring fans who’d come to watch him compete at the Olympic games or any of the other multitude of athletic competitions that were staged in Greece, he was quite happy to impress/show off outside of competitions.


There was the time he carried a bull, yes a fully grown bull, on his shoulders. This is not something you see every day, if ever in your lifetime. I’m not entirely convinced that anyone in ancient Greece saw it in their lifetime either, especially after consulting with farmers son, Mr LJ whose immediate reaction to my recounting of Milo’s feat was ‘that’s rubbish.’ Like everyone else who has ever worked with cattle Mr LJ has thrown himself over a fence to get out of the way of a fully grown bull. Although his main objection to the tale is that bulls are far too heavy to be carried by a human.


Milo of Croton is no human though, he is a legend and the story of the bull and the wrestler is not yet done. Not only did Milo carry the bull on his shoulders, he also killed the bull singlehandedly, butchered it personally and ate it whole in a single day. I put this to Mr LJ and his response was a single word ‘nonsense.’ You don’t need to know anything about farming or indeed the length of time it takes to butcher a whole bull to know this is, as Mr LJ rightly identifies ‘nonsense.’


Aside from the implausibility of having captured and carried a notoriously angry animal that weighs between 500 and 1000kg (78 and 150 stone in old money), a fully grown bull makes for around 340kg of edible meat. You don’t even have to do the maths, although I have, to know this is not just implausible but impossible. 340kg is 749lbs, now translate that into quarter pound burgers and work out how many minutes there are in a single day. Milo would have to be eating 2.14 quarter pound burgers a minute to eat a whole bull, and that’s if he started with the eating at sunrise, which we know he didn’t because he had to first capture and kill and butcher the bull. We don’t even need to go into what that quantity of meat would do to the human digestive system because the story is clearly nonsene.


But that is by the by, Milo of Croton was clearly such a specimen of manhood and had acquired such a legendary status that people were prepared to believe any tales told about him no matter if they were nonsense.

A big bull for reference.
Credit: A West Highland bull, Etching by H.Beckwith, ca 1840, after W..H Davies. Wellcome Collection.

I have an inkling that Milo might well be responsible for the exaggerated embellishments of what was probably a true tale involving some feat of strength and a bull. He certainly wasn’t shy of showing off his skills and we find other, more plausible stories about his legendary strength that revolve more realistically, if less dramatically around fruit.

‘It was said that such was his grip that nobody could take a piece of fruit out of his hand once he had hold of it,’ so says ancient Greek travel writer, Pausanias. In Pausanias’ account the fruit is a pomegranate, others say it was an apple. The type of fruit doesn’t matter because the trick is the same ‘when he gripped an apple, nobody could straighten his fingers,’ so says Pliny the Elder.
Which strongly suggests a public performance of some sort and a challenge set to be the first person to successfully retrieve the fruit from Milo’s grip.

Another one in Milo’s portfolio of impressive things was to burst a cord tied tight around his forehand by inhaling and expanding the veins in his head, which no man has any reason to do beside to show off that he can. Milo was a man who created his own legend and lived it to the full.


It is fitting that the manner of Milo’s death should be as legendary and show-offy as the manner of his life, he was never going to be a man who expired quietly after a short illness. His demise came about when he punched a tree in half, got his hands wedged in the split and was eaten alive by wolves.

After: Pordenone's painting of the subject in the David and Alfred Smart Museum, University of Chicago, or one of its many copies. Wellcome Collection

 
There’s a lesson in that tale somewhere about the worthlessness of great feats if there is no one to witness them, about abusing the powers the gods have given you and paying the price, or about how man is nothing compared to nature and that nature will always triumph. Grand themes like that. Although my takeaway is never ever to go wandering around any woodland where you could possibly encounter a wolf. But then I’m from Britain where the most dangerous animal you are ever likely to encounter in a wood is a slightly narked squirrel or a grumpy badger.

L.J, Trafford

Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece is available for pre ordering now.

  

The Ayrshire Vendetta by Margaret Skea

The Ayrshire Vendetta.

It is 440 years since the Massacre of Annock. Though not an unusual occurrence in the lawlessness of Scotland in the 16th century, that event, and particularly the extent and ferocity of the reprisals that followed, marked the beginning of a change in attitude towards blood feud. 

‘Blood feud was the custom of the times.’ So wrote William Robertson in Ayrshire. Its History (1908) 

Of course, feuding between Scottish clans wasn’t a new phenomenon, nor did it entirely end with the 16th century, and it certainly wasn’t confined to Ayrshire. There are many well-documented, long-standing feuds between families throughout Scotland, from the Scotts and Kers in the Borders, to the Campbells and MacDonalds in the west and the Gordons and Stewarts in the Highlands. However the Ayrshire Vendetta, as it became known, is a classic example; the Cunninghame and Montgomerie families later dubbed the ‘Montagues and Capulets’ of Ayrshire. 

All that remains of Eglinton castle – Primary residence of the Earl of Eglinton – head of  the Montgomerie family.

Nothing remains of Kilmaurs, the seat of the Cunninghame family.

Various factors contributed to a culture in which violence was considered the most appropriate manner of dealing with dispute. Foremost was the weakness of the Crown.  Of the seven Scottish monarchs of the 15th and 16th centuries, only one (James IV, aged 15 when he became king) was able to rule in his own right from accession. Of the others, three inherited the throne as infants (James V, Mary Queen of Scots and James VI) and two at less than ten (James II and III), while James I, aged twelve, was captured, still uncrowned, and detained in England for eighteen years.  As a result the years of successive minorities were characterized by a nobility jostling for precedence and for control of the monarchy, allied to a general acceptance of the rule of ‘might’ regardless of ‘right’.

On his accession in 1488 James IV set out to establish stable government at local level, appointing representatives in each district to dispense justice. A laudable aim, marred in Ayrshire by an error of judgement, when he passed control of the bailiwick of Cunninghame to Hugh, Lord Montgomerie, thus sparking the 150 + year feud. 

Although the original affront had been to the Cunninghames, the first blow in the feud was the sacking of Kerelaw - a Cunninghame tower situated in the midst of Montgomerie territory.  The years that followed were punctuated by repeated acts of brutality and murder on both sides, separated by periods of temporary quiet. 

In 1505 Cunninghame of Craigens was attacked and wounded by the Master of Montgomerie; and in 1507 the Cunninghames retaliated, attacking the newly created Montgomerie Earl of Eglinton, with lives lost on both sides. 

Meanwhile the issue of the bailiwick became the subject of arbritation, the decision in favour of Eglinton in 1509 failing to satisfy the Earl of Glencairn, head of the Cunninghames. 

However, as is so often the case when a country is threatened by an external enemy, private grievances are set aside. So it was in the years before Flodden, clans uniting in the face of the English threat. The Scottish losses, whether one accepts the lower estimate of 5,000 or the higher one of 10,000, decimated the nobility and left the country once again with an infant king. 

                           Site of Flodden Battlefield – very atmospheric even today. 

It is interesting to note that though both Eglinton and Glencairn were on the same side in the unsuccessful conspiracy to depose the Duke of Albany, Regent for James V, it failed to diminish the ill-feeling between the two families.  Just four years later, in 1517, hostilities flared again with the wounding of John, Master of Montgomerie and the killing of his followers. Though Albany extracted an agreement from both factions to lay aside their quarrels, it served only to delay revenge, Cunninghame of Auchenharvie and of Waterston becoming the next victims.  

These tit-for-tat murders led to one of the most significant episodes in the vendetta, when in 1528 a large force of Cunninghames rode through Montgomerie territory, causing wholesale destruction: decimating crops, stealing and killing stock and burning the dwellings, leaving the tenantry penniless and homeless. The raids culminated in the burning of Eglinton castle itself, destroying all the contents, including tapestries, furniture, paintings, armaments and most important of all, family records going back as far as the Norman Conquest, as well as their Charter to the Montgomerie lands. This time the Montgomerie earl, perhaps tired of violence, or feeling his increasing age, accepted a cash settlement as compensation, and for a period of almost sixty years there are no records of atrocities, though whether as a result of external pressures or a genuine attempt at peace is hard to gauge.  

The external pressures were certainly significant - war with England, the Scottish defeat at Solway Moss and the subsequent death of James V; resulting in the accession of 6-day old Mary and a new cycle of government by regency. Then came the ‘Rough wooing’ as Henry VIII tried to force a betrothal between his son Edward and Mary; the English incursion into southern Scotland; and two battles: Ancrum Moor, where the Scots were victorious, and Pinkie Cleugh where the honours went to England, precipitating the smuggling of the young Queen Mary to safety in France. 

     

But it seems that old enmities are hard to stifle and when the country was once again secure, with James VI on the throne and hopeful of inheriting the English crown, the feud erupted once more, with the massacre at Annock in 1586. Most sources agree on the main facts: a small group of Montgomeries stopped at Langshaw on route to the court at Stirling; the Cunninghames, having been alerted to their presence, lying in wait at the Ford to ambush them. Though the numbers killed appear to have been small, the aftermath was brutal and wide-ranging. As Robertson put it: 

‘All the country ran to arms, either on one side or the other, so that for some time there was a scene of bloodshed and of murder in the West that had never been known before.’ 

One person’s fate seems particularly poignant: Lady Margaret of Langshaw, a Cunninghame by birth, but married to a Montgomerie, was held responsible for the ambush and forced to remain in hiding for many years - a heavy price to pay for a family name.

James VI, determined to outlaw blood feud, brought forward laws restricting the carrying of firearms, and commanded opposing lords to process hand in hand up the High Street in Edinburgh as a symbol of the new, peaceful order. It wasn’t quite the end of the Ayrshire Vendetta, however, for in 1606, while Parliament was in session, a battle between the followers of the families was waged on the streets of Perth, lasting for three hours. 

But in contrast to Shakespeare’s ‘Montagues’ and ‘Capulets’, 

the marriage of William, 9th Earl of Glencairn to Margaret Montgomerie, daughter of the 6th Earl of Eglinton, did finally seal the peace in 1661.

And in an interesting postscript the Lord Lyon recognized a new chief for Clan Cunninghame in 2013. 

His name? Sir John Christopher Foggo Montgomery Cunninghame.

Margaret Skea is the award-winning author of three books focusing on this long-running feud, which together comprise the Munro saga:  Turn of the Tide, (Historical Fiction Winner in the Harper Collins People’s Novelist competition and Beryl Bainbridge Best First Time author Award), A House Divided (Long-listed for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award) and By Sword and Storm. 

They tell the story of a fictional family trapped in the middle of the conflict, with all the challenges and difficulties it poses for their relationships and their safety; along with the pressure it places on conscience and integrity.

For details of these and Margaret’s other books visit www.margaretskea.com 

Ebooks can be found at https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Margaret-Skea/author/