We had meant to visit Arbroath Abbey for some time but did not actually do so till last year. (We had tried the year before but the Abbey was undergoing some restoration work so access was limited and we decided against it.)

William the Lion was the longest reigning king of Scotland before the 1603 Union of the Crowns. He was the first Scottish king to arrange an alliance with France. His epithet ‘the lion’ did not relate to military prowess but rather to his banner the red lion rampant on a yellow background, still the banner of Scottish monarchs though frequently used as a symbol of Scotland itself and often brandished at sporting events.

Domestically his reign saw legal and local government reforms but disputes with English kings and his attempts to regain the Kingdom of Northumbria were not so successful.

William is credited with founding the Abbey at Arbroath, so to find his grave there is not surprising.

As well as the Ensign Ewart Memorial there are four other memorials to British (make that Scottish) regimental involvements in various wars. Three of them can be seen on the right and one on the left in this view of the castle from the esplanade.

The first was erected in 1861 to the memory of the 256 men from all ranks of the 78th Highlanders (78th Regiment of Foot) who died during the Indian Mutiny. Pity about the traffic cone in the foreground!

The second was erected in memory of the men of the Scottish Horse who died in the South African War (the Second Boer War.)

The thinnest one is to the memory to the men of the 72nd Highlanders who died in the Afghan War 1878-80. That was the Second Anglo-Afghan War. (Despite “Never Invade Afghanistan” being Harold MacMillan’s first rule of politics there have now been no fewer than four Anglo-Afghan Wars.)

The Memorial on the south wall of the castle Esplanade is to the Gordon Highlanders who died in the Second Boer War, the South African War, 1899-1902.

This detail shows a fine stag’s head.

The entrance to the castle itself is flanked by statues to Scotland’s two great warrior heroes, Bruce and Wallace,and surmounted by the Royal Emblem (the Lion Rampant) and motto, Nemo Me Impune Lacessit.

Edited 3/10/13:-
The flickr account I previously linked to in this post has disabled the sharing facility. The set of pictures is still viewable on flickr via this link or for each photo click on the relevant links below.

Re-edited 12/12/16. The pictures have become embeddable again so I have done so.

Original post:-
Various memorabilia were made for the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938; a lot of them containing representations of the Tower of Empire.

The Exhibition’s logo though was, like that of the Wembley Empire Exhibition of 1924 and 1925, a lion. The Wembley lion was what is heraldically known as statant. Since in 1938 the Exhibition was being held in Scotland the 1938 lion was of course rampant.

Colour images of the 1938 Exhibition are rare but this was what the Empire Exhibition’s entrance gates looked like – complete with lion logo. (Photos below taken from Flickr – though I’d seen them on display at the last Glasgow Worldcon in 2005. A set of coloured photographs of the Exhibition had come to light a year or so previously after having been in a drawer or something for 60+ years.) As always the Tower of Empire is conspicuous in the background.

And there’s a night time view of the entrance taken from much the same angle.

One of the features of the Exhibition was the coloured lights not only on the buildings but also in the fountains and on the Tower.