Overview of Birnam

A mid-Victorian village in Perth and Kinross, Birnam lies near the junction of the Braan and Tay rivers just south of Dunkeld. The village owes its development to the arrival of the railway, its station being the northern terminus of the Highland Railway until the 1890s. Its finely-ornamented station still serves Birnam and Dunkeld. Turreted mansion-houses overlook the grand Birnam Hotel and smaller boarding houses which were built to welcome tourists of all levels of income in the 19th Century abound. A feature today is the Beatrix Potter Garden which is associated with the author of children's books who holidayed near here and was strongly influenced by the landscape. On Birnam Hill stands a fort known locally as Duncan's Camp, said to have been the scene of courts held by King Duncan whose murder at the hands of Macbeth along with the famed Birnam Woods appear in Shakespeare's Macbeth.