A Hidden Treasure‚ The Panorama of the Battle of Bannockburn

Travelling to Scotland, IPC treasurer Patrick Deicher visited the Hydro Hotel at Peebles to get an impression of a hidden panoramic treasure. Almost a third of the original panorama ‘The Battle of Bannockburn’ survives in the hotel’s ‘Bannockburn Room’ where it is pasted to the wall.

(by Patrick Deicher)

German painter Ernst Philipp Fleischer (1850 - 1930) painted several war panoramas. In 1888 he created in his Munich (Germany) studio three panoramas for an English customer. In 1887 he travelled to Scotland for field studies of the battlefield of Bannockburn near Stirling. Philipp Fleischer’s painting of the Battle of Bannockburn enjoyed considerable success in Glasgow in 1888 where it was exhibited at the panorama rotunda in Sauchiehall Street. It depicted the defeat of England’s Edward II by the Scots under Robert Bruce in 1314, a battle which secured Scottish independence.

Scottish hotelier Albert M. Theim, purchased several of Fleischer’s panoramas. Large segments of the original panoramas of ‘The Battle of Bannockburn’ and ‘The Battle of Omdurman’ are today pasted to walls in the Hotel Hydro at Peebles on the Scottish Borders (www.peebleshydro.co.uk). The hotel is currently undergoing huge restoration works to bring it back to its early 20c. status when it was reopened in 1907 after a terrible fire of 1905. Due to the restoration works the Bannockburn Room is currently used as a depot for new furniture. Soon, it will be back as one of the hotel’s main meeting rooms and open free view to the panorama fragments.