Old Photograph Regimental Police 3rd Royal Scots Barracks Glencorse Scotland

Old photograph of Regimental Police of 3rd Royal Scots in the Barracks in Glencorse, Midlothian, Scotland. The Barracks, which had previously been leased from a private landlord, was acquired outright by the War Office in 1812. Additional buildings were erected in 1813, at a cost of £100,000, to house 6,000 prisoners and their guards. However, the Napoleonic Wars came to an end a year later and the prisoners were sent home. Most of the prisoners were crews of privateers, nearly 300 men were confined in the mansion house. Ensign Hugh Maxwell was convicted of culpable homicide for the death, in January 1807, of Charles Cottier, a prisoner in Greenlaw House. Maxwell was the commander of a guard of 36 men of the Lanarkshire Militia, who were, at the time, based in Penicuik. He was imprisoned in the Tolbooth at Canongate for 9 months. Although for a while it was a Military Prison, the facilities were little used between 1815 and 1875, when they were converted into a major infantry barracks at a cost of £30,000. Their creation took place as part of the Cardwell Reforms which encouraged the localisation of British military forces. The barracks became the depot for the two battalions of the 1st Regiment of Foot, Royal Scots. Following the Childers Reforms, the regiment evolved to become the Royal Scots with its depot in the barracks in 1881. The barracks went on to become the regional centre for infantry training as the Lowland Brigade Depôt in 1960. Royal Scots corporal Andrew Walker killed three Army colleagues in a payroll robbery in the Pentland Hills, south of Edinburgh, in January 1985. He was jailed for life. All three were stationed in Glencorse barracks.



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