[MR] History Blog: Oldest Scottish Tartan Found

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends, Especially fellow Scots,

Yesterday the History Blog posted a story on a major Scottish history find:
the oldest surviving piece of tartan cloth has been identified.

The scrap of wool cloth was found by peat cutters in Glen Affric during the
1980s. It lay unstudied in the archives of the Scottish Tartans Authority,
until curators for an upcoming exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum's
Dundee branch stumbled upon it. Scientific testing by the National Museums
of Scotland dated the tartan to 1500-1600 CE.

The Glen Affric tartan is not to be confused with the "Falkirk Tartan", a
scrap of late Roman-era wool cloth found with a coin hoard. The Falkirk
piece is "shepherd's check", a much simpler weave of just two colors.

The story and photos are at http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/66890 .

A more detailed BBC story is at
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-65081312 .

Yours Aye,


Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆