Wallace

The Register page gives the colours indirectly: its Wallace Hunting entry says that tartan is the same as Wallace (1208) with green replacing the red. The Register keeps threadcounts behind a login, so the count below comes from Tartan Dictionary, a derived database, and has not been checked against the Register.

The recorded count is K/4 R32 K32 Y/4. The slashes mark pivot points where the sett reverses, so the full sett is 136 threads: a red band of 32, a black band of 32, and a pivot stripe of 4 at each end, one black and one yellow. Treat these proportions as unverified; the hex colours on this site are approximate.

The Register's Wallace record carries the year 1800 but gives no designer and no document that fixes that date. Its note says only that the threadcount was recorded by William A Wallace in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland (38/123) on 6 December 1951. That tells us when a threadcount entered the Lyon Register, not when the pattern was first woven.

Tartan Dictionary quotes a 1962 note by Telford Dunbar placing a Wallace pattern in the stock list of William Wilson of Bannockburn around 1800, and calls the family connection unclear. The same database dates its own record 1842, which is the year of the Vestiarium Scoticum, a book the Register elsewhere describes as containing spurious documentation. Which of these dates describes the red, black and yellow sett is not settled by the sources read.

The 1951 recording is the one firm point in the paper trail. After it, the pattern appears in the Scottish Tartans Society and Authority numbering as 1208. The Wallace Hunting variant is a sample from Lochcarron of about 1980 made by swapping green for the red, so it is a later commercial-style adaptation of 1208 and not an older tartan. Whether the 1800 date was inherited from an older pattern book or assigned by later cataloguers is not stated on the Register page.

The Register holds eleven entries when searched for Wallace. Five are tied to the name Wallace as a tartan: Wallace (Clan/Family, 1208), Wallace Hunting (Clan/Family, 1980 sample), Wallace Dress (Clan/Family, 1842, Sobieski Stewarts), Wallace Blue (Name category, 1966) and Dundee Wallace (Fashion, Wilsons of Bannockburn, 1819). Wallace Blue was taken from a 1966 Canadian enquiry to the Scottish Tartans Society, with a sample found at the Cluny Macpherson Company in Ontario.

The other entries are a school tartan, two personal tartans and the Wallace Memorial Centenary tartan. These designs share a name, not a common ancestor. The Wallace Dress entry is also known as Lendrum or Black and White MacFarlane, which shows how a name can be attached to a sett that began elsewhere.

The Register reserves the Clan/Family category for clans and families recognised by the Court of the Lord Lyon. The Clan Wallace Society says Clan Wallace has a chief recognised by the Court of the Lord Lyon and that the society is the only organisation the chief acknowledges. The Register's own Wallace entry does not name the chief or a clan society. A surname, a clan and a tartan are three separate claims, and the Wallace surname has more than one origin.

The Wallace Memorial Centenary tartan was designed by the handloom weaver Christine MacLeod to mark one hundred years since the Wallace Memorial was installed at Elderslie, and the Register says members of The Society of William Wallace wear it. It was first worn at the Scottish Parliament and at the centenary celebration on Wallace Day. That tartan is a society design and not the clan tartan; the red, black and yellow Wallace remains the family pattern.

Wallace Hunting is a twentieth-century colour variant, not a separate old sett. The register describes it as a Scottish Tartans Society sample woven by Lochcarron of about 1980, identical to Wallace (original STA reference 1208) with green replacing the red. Its own reference is 1101, its date is 1980 and no designer is named.

The word hunting in tartan naming usually points to a darker palette, but the register's note makes no such claim for this entry, so none is made here. The record does not say who chose the colours or why the variant was made. The practical consequence is narrow: the pattern is the Wallace sett, and the choice between the red and green versions is one of colour, with no source read tying either to a branch or purpose.

The register states no restriction and repeats that there are only traditions about who wears which tartan. Its threadcount is behind the login and was not read, so the colours here are the three the record names: dark green, black and yellow.

Wallace Dress is a different design from the red, black and yellow Wallace tartan. The register dates it to 1842, names the Sobieski Stewarts as designers, and lists two other names: Lendrum and Black and White MacFarlane (STA reference 1251).

Its note says the pattern is unnamed in the Highland Society of London Collection, whose original has a much smaller sett. That sequence means an older, unlabelled black and white cloth received the name Wallace in the Vestiarium era. The register lists samples at Inverness Museum, in the MacGregor Hastie Collection and in the Scottish Tartans Authority's Dalgety Collection. The sources read show no Wallace family use before 1842.

Two reasons to treat it cautiously. The register's Buchanan - 1842 record says the Sobieski Stuart claim to have copied a sixteenth-century manuscript was later proven fraudulent, so an 1842 attribution to the brothers is not evidence of an older family cloth. And the existence of three names for one sett shows that the label Wallace is one of several that attached to it. The register lists no restriction. Anyone wanting a Wallace tartan for family reasons has a better documented option in the main Wallace sett, whose threadcount was recorded in the Lyon Register on 6 December 1951.

The Wallace Memorial Centenary tartan is a 2012 society design, not a clan tartan, and the register classes it as Corporate. It was designed by the handloom weaver Christine MacLeod and registered on 21 August 2012 for The Society of William Wallace, which marks a century since the Wallace Memorial was installed at Elderslie.

The colours are assigned meanings in the register's note: red for sacrifice, grey for the Wallace Sword and the memorial granite, brown for the Wallace Yew, rust for a commemorative walk, and blue and grey for the St Andrew's cross. The register records first wearing at the Scottish Parliament during ceremonies for the return of the Letter of Safe Conduct, and at the centenary celebration on Wallace Day. Bute Fabrics wove the cloth and a sample is held in the National Records of Scotland.

It is the one tartan on this page with a stated restriction: the register says use and production are controlled by The Society of William Wallace. Anyone who wants to wear or weave it should ask the society first. This differs from the clan and family tartans on the register, whose records state no such control.

Because the design commemorates a monument, wearing it does not claim Wallace descent, and it does not substitute for the Wallace clan tartan; the main record's clan sett is a separate pattern with its own sources.