Birral (Clan)
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern BWRRBRRWGWBWWWBWR.
Sourced from tartans-authority. It is a 17 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=658
Provenance
Earliest known date: 1819 The accounts books of the old firm of weavers, Wilson's of Bannockburn, provide a reliable early source for this tartan. Wilson's were in business with a monopoly to supply tartan to the regiments in the second half of the 18th century before this pattern was recorded.
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 1797 — Birral (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
The count was taken from a manuscript account book in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in Queen Street, Edinburgh. Sample in STA Dalgety Collection. This tartan is mentioned by Telford Dunbar in his 1962 'History of Highland Dress' (Page145) when he states that it appeared in William Wilson's stock list of 1800. The earliest known date recorded here is from a list compiled by D C Stewart from Wilsons of Bannockburn letters. A note in Wilsons' pattern book states: "If the Birralls, or nore properly the Burrells were a clan this probably would have been their Tartan. Manufacturers had a custom of naming patterns after the person who gave them (the orders) or any person whatever. This gave rise to the names of many patterns and perhaps this among the rest." - 1819 — Birral Burrell Clan Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Tartans Authority
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/tartans-authority/data.csv
- data date
- 1797 (this record)
- licence
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Tartans Authority
the heritage body's archive — its tartan-ferret record browser is retired (links repaired to the SRT, above) - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 658
Thread count
R/130 W4 DP16 LB8 W4 LB8 DP16 W4 G64 W4 R16 Ri8 DP4 Ri8 R16 W4 DP/32
One full sett is 530 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
| R | #D05054 #D05054 | oklch(60.2% 0.162 21.5) |
| DP | #4B0B4F #4B0B4F | oklch(30.1% 0.125 325.4) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
| R | #C80000 #C80000 | oklch(52.3% 0.215 29.2) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s17/r65w2dp8lb4w2lb4dp8w2g32w2r8ri4dp2ri4r8w2dp16x2r2109032-ri2406019/