Detail from Ordnance Survey 25 Inch map, 1860s.

Martyr's Grave

5 Westwood Crescent

Laighstonehall

Hamilton

NGR - NS 710548

 

The grave was located where a concrete slab is located in the pavement in front of 5+7 Westwood Crescent, Laighstonehall, Hamilton. There is no inscription.

Laigh Stonehall Martyr's Grave

 

The grave of a Covenanter who was wounded at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge is to be found at Westwood Crescent, Hamilton. He is thought to have died here, perhaps slain by  pursuing soldiers.

Little is known about the stone, but reference to it is made in the Ordnance Survey Name Book of 1864:

'A piece of ground in an arable field on the farm of Laigh Stonehall, about the size of aman's grave, having a rough headstone without any inscription at the south, or supposed head of the grave. It is aid to contain the remains of one of the Covenanters engaged at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, 22nd June 1679, at which he was wounded and afterwards fled to this spot where he died and was buried. No accounts of the parish mention this but the grave and its history are well known in the neighbourhood. The present farmer and his predecessors as far back as can be remembered have never been known to plough over the grave, which from this cause has a different appearance from the ground around it.'

The site of the grave is now built up, but a slab in the ground in front of numbers 5/7 Westwood Crescent, Hamilton, marks the spot.