Clach na Cudainn: The Lucky Stone of Inverness

Why it matters

Thousands of people walk past it every day without noticing. At the foot of the Mercat Cross in front of the Town House on the High Street sits a worn grey stone, almost flush with the steps and ringed in granite. This is Clach na Cudainn, the Stone of the Tubs, and for centuries Invernessians believed the town’s fortune depended on it. The town’s oldest football club, Clachnacuddin, is named after it.

Why the tubs?

The name is everyday rather than mystical. The stone is said to have stood on the way up from the River Ness, and the women carrying water or washing up from the river rested their tubs on it, beat their laundry against it and stopped to talk. It became the town’s meeting place, and its gossip stone.

The legends

Two traditions have kept it safe. The first is a prophecy, attributed to a seer who used the stone as a seat, that Inverness would prosper only as long as the stone was preserved. The second is linked to 1411, when Donald, Lord of the Isles, burned the town on his way to the Battle of Harlaw. The townspeople were said to have been consoled to find their stone unharmed in the ashes.

The Highland Historic Environment Record suggests it may be older still: possibly a prehistoric standing stone, part of a lost stone circle, or a charter stone on which land grants were made before they were written down.

A stone the town would not give up

The town records show how seriously it was taken. In 1776 two youths were jailed for tumbling the stone out of its frame. In 1791 the magistrates proposed removing it and backed down after an outcry. In 1837 street works lowered it to ground level, the townsfolk took it as an ill omen, and after a petition it was raised again, with a bottle of wine broken over it for good measure. Souvenir hunters chipped so much away that it was finally set in its protective granite ring.

Around Inverness

The stone is the obvious start for a walk round the old town by the river. The Caledonian Canal begins at the sea lock on the western edge of the city, and just beyond, the Battle of Clachnaharry was fought on the shore around 1454. Five miles east, the moor of Culloden saw the last pitched battle on British soil in 1746, and a mile beyond it are the Bronze Age Clava Cairns. Inverness has its own malt again at Uile-bheist, and south on the A9 is Tomatin, once the largest malt distillery in Scotland. To the west, the Great Glen runs past Urquhart Castle to Fort Augustus at the southern end of Loch Ness. For more stones with a story, see our guide to the famous stones of Scotland.

Sources

• Highland Historic Environment Record — Clach-na-Cudainn, Town House, High Street, Inverness (MHG3679).
• Canmore — Inverness, Clach-na-Cudainn (site 13321).
• Inverness Courier archive features on the Clachnacuddin stone.