The Scottish travelling community maintain that the Heart was established as a monument to local tinkers who joined the Jacobite Rising of 1745, and weddings have been celebrated at the site since the mid-1800s. The Heart was removed during roadworks in 1928, but local protests forced its reinstatement. The monument's location was originally at the junction of the Strachar Road and the Hell's Glen, but this junction was bypassed by new road building in the 1970s, thus placing the monument in a field.