North Inch

Perth's riverside park, site of the 1396 Battle of the Clans — one of medieval Scotland's most violent spectacles

The North Inch is the larger of Perth's two flat riverside parks, running along the west bank of the Tay to the north of the city centre. It's a pleasant open space for walking and jogging, with views across the Tay to the wooded hills beyond. The park hosts football pitches, a golf course, and a bowling green, and is busy with local residents in good weather.

Its history is considerably more colourful than its current quiet aspect suggests. The 1396 Battle of the Clans took place here — a staged combat between 60 warriors from rival clans, watched by the king, that functioned as a kind of human tournament. The North Inch is also where the Black Watch regiment was first mustered in 1739. The South Inch, at the other end of the city, is smaller and more recently developed; both parks are easy walks from the centre.

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A story
On 28 September 1396, thirty men from Clan Chattan and thirty from Clan Kay fought to the death on the North Inch while the Scottish king Robert III watched from a grandstand. It was a staged battle designed to settle a feud and avoid a wider war — a kind of judicial combat at industrial scale. Only twelve men survived. The event was so striking that Sir Walter Scott used it as the centrepiece of his novel The Fair Maid of Perth.

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