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Campaign to honour 'Dunbar martyrs'

Near the north-west door of Durham's magnificent cathedral rises a mound topped by a memorial to the Boer War, writes Tim Cornwell.

Legend has it that the mound contains the bodies of hundreds of Scots prisoners, who died of disease and starvation, in a little-remembered 17th century chapter in British history.

Now, after a one-man campaign by amateur historian George Wilson, cathedral officials are to consider placing a memorial to the Scottish soldiers who died there.

The prisoners were Covenanters captured by Cromwell's troops at the disastrous Battle of Dunbar in 1650, and then forced to march south.

Last October, Mr Wilson set out to have the "Dunbar martyrs" recognised with a memorial. He even called for their bodies to be exhumed for a Christian burial.

The cathedral administrator, Paul Whitaker, said a memorial could bring closure to the issue.

But he insisted that excavations and an extensive search of cathedral records shows no evidence of the Scottish soldiers' remains in the mound or anywhere else nearby.

"There's absolutely no evidence of any mass piling of bodies. We can't put a memorial saying here lie the remains of so many Scots."

Full story at The Scotsman.