THE 300-YEAR-OLD skull of a soldier who survived the Battle of Prestonpans after an early example of cranial surgery is the centrepiece of a display at the East Lothians site.
Captain James Clarke survived a horrific head wound as his comrades were cut down by Bonnie Prince Charlie's Highlanders in the 1745 battle in one of the Jacobite Rebellion's bloodiest episodes.
A sword injury left a five-centimetre hole in his head, but the officer survived after doctors put a silver plate on his skull.
Now, 267 years after the first major battle of the Jacobites' rising, his skull is on display at Prestongrange Museum.
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