Ancaster Square War Memorial

During our travels through Scotland, we stopped in Callander, a small Highland town often described as a gateway to the Trossachs. In the center of town, in Ancaster Square, this tall stone column immediately caught my attention. At first glance it resembles one of the old market crosses found throughout Scotland, but it is actually Callander’s war memorial.

The memorial was erected around 1920 to commemorate the men of Callander who died during the First World War. After the Second World War, it was altered so that another generation of local men who had died in war could also be remembered here. Bronze plaques on the base record the names of the town’s dead.

Its design contains details that are easy to miss from a distance. The stone column rises from a rough rubble base and ends in a Celtic-style capital. At the very top stands a lion holding a shield, facing toward the former parish church across the square. One of the bronze panels depicts a Highland figure carrying a fiery cross, an old symbol that became associated with Callander itself.

Callander developed at an important crossroads between the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands, and during the nineteenth century it became increasingly connected with visitors drawn to the scenery and romantic history of the Trossachs. Sir Walter Scott’s writings, particularly The Lady of the Lake, helped make this part of Scotland famous far beyond the region.

More than a century after it was erected, the column remains a focal point of Ancaster Square. We stopped because something in the landscape caught our attention, but once again a simple photograph preserved more than the appearance of a Scottish town. It preserved one of the ways that town chose to remember its own.