Blackford, like Auchterarder and Dunning, was ordered to be burned by the Earl of Mar before the Battle of Sheriffmuir as a scorched-earth measure to deny Argyll's advancing army shelter and supplies. The village lay directly on the road Argyll would use marching north from Stirling. Mar's burning orders were executed in the days before 13 November 1715. Blackford had a particular significance as it lay near the Ochil Hills on the approach to Sheriffmuir itself — the burning parties were operating in the zone that would shortly become a battlefield. Local inhabitants fled before the Jacobite incendiaries.
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