Crossroads and Characters

5. THE THORN TREE.

At nine o'clock on the stormy winter evening of January 28, 1716, disaster befell Dunning. A crowd of Jacobite troops, on orders of the Earl of Mar, turned villagers out of their homes and set ablaze Dunning's houses, corn-lofts, byres and their contents. All but a few buildings, owned either by Jacobite sympathizers or people who bribed the troops, were quickly gutted. Other Strathearn villages and farmsteads were similarly razed to slow the enemy from whom the Jacobites were retreating. Thirty-three Dunning families lost all they had, and it is recorded that three people perished, victims of the bitter weather. To commemorate the calamity, Dunning residents planted a thorn tree, trimmed in the fashion shown here. The original tree stood until it too was a victim of a storm in 1936. Since then it has been replaced several times.