Written by 22/7/25
Making a film on the famous murder of the English Sheriff of Lanark William de Hazelrigg at the hands of William Wallace had been gnawing away at me for some time. The ancient medieval market town of Lanark has been familiar to me as far back as I can remember.
Since my early boyhood memories, I would visit and stay with my cousins who lived in Lanark. My father drove livestock trucks, and we would visit the town’s livestock market regularly. The market is no more but it does present great memories of days gone by.
It is impossible to take a walk through the streets of Lanark and not experience the imposing presence of William Wallace, Scotland’s son and freedom fighter. His statue stands proud above St Nicholas Church which dominates the High Street and the Wallace House is a few quick steps away at the head of Castle Gait.
You will find modern murals, plaques, and a great monumental sword marking the area where legend tells us Wallace’s house once stood. According to the story, Wallace often visited, and he escaped from this house while Marion Braidfute, a Lamington heiress, stalled English soldiers who were searching for Wallace in the town centre. Tragically, for assisting Wallace’s escape she would pay with her life.
The story of Wallace in Lanark has stirred my imagination since a young age and has left lasting impressions on me. I remember frequently staring up at his statue with my imagination bringing his face to life. As a boy I played in the forest near the river Clyde, hiding and running among the trees, play acting as Wallace, my hero.
The motte and bailey castle of Lanark is also long gone but it stood at the base of Castle Gait where a boulder plaque at the town’s bowling club marks its site. If one is adventurous enough to walk and has a few hours to kill, I can recommend the strenuous but immensely rewarding walk-up the Cartland Crags and into the forests in Cleghorn Glen.
The hike will take you in Wallace’s footsteps to the area where he retreated and hid with his men after an incident in Lanark where the English Sheriff was holding the county court. Wallace would return later that very night with his men under the cover of darkness to attack the English sheriff.
I arrived in Lanark around 6am, which I am prone to do if I am to film in a town. I like to walk the streets at their quietest before the town stirs to life and the inevitable volume of traffic emerges and hinders my walking and filming. There is also a great atmosphere and sense of place to be got when the streets are quiet, and I can let my mind and imagination wander.
That’s important for me to have when I am filming if I want to ‘feel’ and get the story over with the best results. I see it unravel in my head as I walk and speak.
I had been in Lanark a few weeks earlier on a hideously wet late afternoon for some location research and laying the groundwork on how I was going to shoot the film. This type of homework helps me conjure up images in my mind of how I will tell the story.
I began the morning with taking some footage around the town centre before moving slightly out of the town’s ancient boundaries towards the ruins of St Kentigern’s Church. It is the church Wallace is reputedly to have attended and as the story goes, he was harassed by some of the town’s soldiers after leaving the church and a fight broke out shortly afterward in Lanark’s streets.
I walked briskly down through the town’s West Port Street towards Castle Gait while imagining what the medieval layout might have been in Wallace’s time and the possible route where he left the church and encountered the soldiers before the row and bloody fight ensued.
Once outside St Nicholas’s I stand under Wallace’s statue and stare up at him. I think to myself, ‘Goodness me…I have stared at this since I was 9 or 10 years old, and here I still am at 60…’
Satisfied that I have filmed what I need from the town centre, I enjoy the walk down the steep street towards the site of Lanark Castle, knowing that Wallace would have tread these very streets with their medieval layout.
I cross the park known as the Delves and head steeply downhill into the wilder territory of the fields and woods at the back and below where the castle stood and take the route towards Castlebank Park. This area is hilly, wooded and rugged, and largely unchanged from the wilder terrain Wallace would have known when he took flight. I made from there out to the Cartland Crags and eventually into Cleghorn Glen. It had been years since I was last here, and I loved every step of it as I made my way up the banks of the Mouse Water and into the forest.
I met a couple of local lads, and we spoke briefly. Seeing my camera, we I told them of the film I was doing. One of them uttered, ‘Have you been to the Wallace Cave…?’ and then quickly corrected himself, ‘No the pub!’, which stands in the town centre’
Distinguishing legend from fact is no easy thing to do concerning William Wallace. The Marion Braidfute presence and her story in Lanark is as clear as her legendary lover. The Lanark and Lamington districts are Braidfute country and there is an interesting church in Lamington with a Norman doorway that Wallace may have known very well. A couple of miles away is an obscure ruin hidden in a wood that stands on the sight that was reputedly Marion’s home. Both lie under the shadow of the magnificent Tinto Hill, a defining landmark throughout the ages. Whether Marion existed or not, Wallace would certainly have known these places and the English forts occupying the Clyde Valley as the Scottish Waers of independence were about to ignite.
Blind Harry’s tale of Wallace describes him as one who would slip into town for ‘sport’, where a strong English presence would be, and how he would pick on a drunken soldier in a back alley and slit his throat. Whatever the facts, we know that there was Scots animosity towards an invader and that disturbances and social unrest had been breaking out in towns over the country. It came to boil in the town of Lanark that day in 1297.
I finished the film in what might seem a strange place to do so, in Northumberland on the other side of the border at the small but ancient farm of Heaton, known as Castle Heaton. This is relevant because it was the home of Thomas Grey, father to the son Thomas Grey who penned the Scalacronica and an eyewitness of the Wallace incident in Lanark that day and night. Grey was a guest at the Sheriff’s abode and was found naked and left for dead during the fracas. He was found next morning, and his life was apparently saved by his body being preserved by the heat emanating from between two burning houses in the street.
The only real frustration is one wonders that surely Thomas Grey Junior’s father gave much more information to his son that what he passed down to us through pen and parchment? As Wallace was such a legend in his own lifetime and public enemy number one I would have thought young Thomas would have grilled his dad constantly over the years to relate the story and ask how he must have heard it told numerous times by his father to guest at his home and anywhere else the subject was brought up.
As in anything to do with Wallace accurate knowledge is as rare as…we must continue to make do with our imagination and the weaving of legend into his tale.
Until my next adventure…
Thank you for walking in the footsteps with me and keeping our history alive!
The link to my film and tribute of the Wallace uprising in Lanark is below.
Max Muir
August 2025