Retrieved from the battlefield of the Battle of Culloden, fought on April 16, 1746 near Inverness in Scotland, the cannonball weighs 1.7kg and has a later silver collar inscribed ‘Ogilvy Culloden 16th April 1746’.
Culloden was a battle that marked the brutal end of the Jacobite rising; between the first shots fired at Culloden and the final flight of the Prince’s army, barely an hour had passed but around 1300 men were dead. The defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s forces crushed any hopes of a Stuart restoration. The cannonball being offered for sale in late August comes from the collection of the Earls of Airlie in Scotland and is expected to sell for $6000 to $10,000.
You might think finding a cannonball would be a rare occurrence, but in the wilds of Kent there was a teacher called Mrs Hall whose children found one under the road. Thinking it would interest her primary school students, Mrs Hall took it into the school one day. The following morning five children each brought in their own cannonballs… It turned out that there had been an iron works in the area from the 1580s to the end of the 17th century and the cannonballs had, for some reason, not been sent off to the military.
