Calton Hill

This picture of Calton Hill appeared in my blog a few weeks ago and starts this blog because it's where we went for a small wander there last week. The hill along with the National and the Nelson Monuments are one of the most recognisable views of Edinburgh.

It has been suggested that the name of the hill derives from the Gaelic "chiolle-dun" (forested hill), or "cauldh-dun" (black hill). I suspect it is more romantic to think that the name comes from the Gaelic but it should be noted that a settlement on the hill appears as Caldtoun in the 1591 South Leith Parish Records ,which is obviously from the Scots for cold town, and stayed with that name pretty much until around 1700.

The National Monument of Scotland below was supposed to be a copy of the Parthenon and is a memorial to the fallen of the Napoleonic wars. The foundation stone was laid in 1822 by George IV on his visit to Scotland but construction was only started properly in 1826. Money ran out and what you see here is about how far they got. Various suggested uses for a completed version have been suggested over the years but never got further than a suggestion. What we do have looks rather good from the town (perhaps not as impressive if you go round the back of it for a look)

There is quite a selection of buildings to see on top of the hill - most of them in the enclosure of the City Observatory. In the South East corner of the enclosure, nearest to you in this picture is a monument to John Playfair, 1748 - 1819, who was professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University and president of Edinburgh Astronomical Institution. The green dome you see in the corner is of 20th century origin and contains a 22 inch refractor telescope

This building was built in 1812 for the Edinburgh Astronomical society which was formed in the previous year. It was designed by William Playfair, who designed many of Edinburgh's fine buildings as well as the National monument a few pictures ago. Playfair's not a common name, William was John's nephew.

The oldest building in the enclosure, in the South West corner is a one of the few surviving houses in Edinburgh designed by  James Craig in the 18th century - he was one of the planners of Edinburgh's new town.

A monument to Dugald Stewart who was professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University from 1786 till 1828 when he died.

As one of the highest places in the city, you get a cracking view. Here looking North Westish you can see the Forth Rail bridge in the distance and behind that the road bridge.

 In the other direction the largest hill in town, Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury crags. This, Calton Hill itself and the hill the castle sits on are all signs of the city's volcanic past - all be it, quite distant past.

Looking down on Hollyrood Palace at the bottom of the High Street. No royal standard flying today so the Queen is elsewhere. In the bottom right of this picture is a monument to Robert Burns, still officially on Calton

Hill.

Surely Edinburgh's most famous landmark, the castle.

You get a good view right down Princes Street from here. The clocktower on the left belongs to the Balmoral Hotel and just to the right of that is the Scott Monument which is the tallest monument to any writer in the world.

From ground level, the Omni centre at the top of Leith Walk just looks like any other modern cinema multiplex with eateries and bars, but from up here you can see they've got a rather peaceful looking roof garden.

And it's not alone, this building's got several smaller ones.

And this one's got cows!!

 Back to the hill, these pictures were taken a couple of days later, a  little distance from the hill. The tower and the building it comes from (you can't really see it here) were built between 1807 and 1815 to commemorate Nelson and his Victory at Trafalgar in 1805.

It's a building with a curious added use to it. To tell the tale we must return for a minute to the buildings of the Edinburgh Astronomical Society. One of the purposes of the society was accurate timekeeping - for which they used observation of the stars to help. Ships clocks were brought up from Leith, a few miles away, to the hill in order to get them checked. In 1854 they came up with the bright idea of the time ball. Every day it is ran up the flagpole just before one o'clock and it is dropped exactly on the hour so that ships out on the Forth could see it and set their clocks without a trek into town. A few years later in 1861 this was joined by the one o'clock gun which is fired from the castle every day. Electric wires ran from the City Observatory to both ball and gun to set them off. Nowadays, both are just tourist events and are set off by hand by somebody watching their watch.

Quite to my surprise, I managed to take a picture of the ball as it fell (I have to admit I had a few spares of the ball on the way up the flagpole just in case)

The lost Pict.

The history of the Picts is vague. Perhaps that's a little bit of an underestimation but one of the things that they left behind are a number of carved stones from the 6th century through to the 9th century. They share a number of common patterns which nobody today knows the meaning of. As time marches into the  later centuries, you see the stones becoming increasingly christian, decorated with elaborate knotwork but they still use the mysterious symbols on the stones and mythical beasts. In a later blog I'll have several pictures of these stones but in this blog I'm off for a bit of a walk in the country with the intention of finding only one them. It's at Trusty's Hill just outside Gatehouse of Fleet and is one of the few Pictish stones to be found outside the recognised land of the Picts at the time (they mainly lived in the North east of Scotland and this is about as South West as you can get).

In the meantime, this rather toothy fellow brings us to a considerably more recent time, 1612 according to an inscription on the other side of the tomb.

The tomb was inside this ruined church which curiously is dated as 1627 - I really can't see them building a church round about such an large tomb so perhaps it some of the engraved slabs  from outside were used to make another tomb inside the church after it fell into disuse.

There may some film buffs out there who are finding this a curiously familiar churchyard. It's Anwoth churchyard and featured in the original Wickerman film. It's from here that I set off up Trusty's hill.

There's not really a lot I can say about the last few pictures, they're just a few scenes from the average assent of a small Scottish hill; a bit field with worryingly large hoof prints, a wood, a fragile dyke, some moor and a rather boggy bit (not pictured). It's a wonder I ever found my way up at all given the confusing nature of the local footpath signs.

Now that's what I'm looking for.

There is clearly a common Pictish symbol - the double disk with a z through it. To me , and indeed others, the z seems to be a broken spear having a pointy end and an end with a ball, which would have been used to help produce more force when throwing or thrusting it. You can see it featured on this page of common Pictish symbols here.

This is a bit more difficult to make out, it's what is normally referred to as a water horse. You can make out the head in the top left of the stone and the curly tail down in bottom right.

The piece of hill that this stone is on is a known iron age hill fort which may still have been used in when these stones were carved. So far away from their normal area, I would imagine that they have been made by a travelling Pict or a local who had himself travelled to the land of the Picts and seen these carvings for himself.

At the bottom of the stone, apart from a bit of recent graffiti which is why there is a cage installed over the stones, you can make out what look like a couple of  antenna coming out of a circle.

My thanks to Antonia Kearton for letting me use this photo from here Flickr page. Not only has she managed to get a much clearer picture of the carving but, when she was there, there was less moss growing on the stone and you can see a quite apparent face within the circle. This is not a known Pictish symbol.

There's a good view of Gatehouse of Fleet from up here.

 And in the other direction, past the Rutherford Monument to the sea.

I managed to avoid the bog on the way down but got rather lost instead and came out on the road about half a mile or so from the car. I did manage to see these deer though, who didn't stand around long enough for me to take more than one picture of them.

Roger Ackling

I'm aware that many people have an idea of what constitutes art and that a great many things, portrayed as art, fall outwith the bounds of it. I suspect I may be throwing one of these at you right now. For me, if the artist has applied his mind to think about what he's making and how it appears (or sounds - perhaps even smells or feels) then he or she has produced a piece of art. Sometimes my mind wavers about a bit and I just cannot see what the artist is on about but sometimes I pick up on the thread of thought of the artist - often in a way that's difficult to describe.

So it was with Roger Ackling's latest exhibition at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh (it's on till the 21st of April if you want to pop along and try it out on your mind). Occupying the entirety of their main room, it is a collection of garden shed odds and ends that have been incised with lines made by a magnifying glass and the sun. I don't think The List website were so convinced (read their review here) but I liked it.

Around three walls or the room was a blackened line hanging with incised half clothes pegs at irregular intervals

Castle round up

Last year seemed to have more than it's fair share of castles in it, not all of which have been mentioned in previous blogs. It seems a shame to get to far away from last year without giving these three, very different, castles a mention.

Most of the castles I've been to have a long and often bloody history but not so Comstoun castle, just outside Kirkcudbright - I doubt all that many of the towns residents even know it exists. It is tucked in a wood behind a large manor house also known as Comstoun. The name makes it's first appearance in history when Walter fitz Walter de Cummstun swore fealty to Edward I and makes no appearance after that till the 15th century. It would appear that the castle was built by Sir John Kennedy around 1500 (I read that the architecture matches this suggestion). The most exciting thing to have happened here is that in the late 1500s one of the leading Scottish poets of his age, Alexander Montgomerie, rented the place. The new mansion that stands today was completed in 1828 but it appears that the castle had already fallen into disrepair by that time - in 1794 it is described, "the remains of an old building.

It's interesting to see that a castle can get through it's history without a suggestion of intrigue or the clash of swords ringing though the centuries. The potential source of it's name is also quite interesting. The two most likely suggestions to me are that it comes from the Norse for a war badge, Kulm, and the Norse for a stone, Steinn, or from the Saxon, Kemp,e for a soldier which is very near the Norse, Kempa, meaning warrior.

Nothing could be further away from Cumstoun castle than the stately pile below. It's Fyvie castle, built in the 13th century but, as you can see has been extensively renovated and expanded over the years. I was there because I had an appointment in Aberdeen the day before I was due to go to work and it was only a short drive away. It's well worth going into as it had a good collection of paintings, tapestries, arms (as in swords etc, not what you keep up your sleeves) and all those good things that you expect to find in a castle. The National Trust do not let you take pictures inside it's buildings or else this would have been a blog all on it's own.

As with the best castles, it's got it's fair share of ghosts and a couple of curses. The most famous is supposed to have been made by Thomas the Rhymer when he was old, towards the end of the 13th century. As he was approaching the castle the wind blew the castle doors shut in his face and he took offence and issued the following curse.

Fyvie, Fyvie, thou’s never thrive

As lang’s there’s in thee stanes (stones) three

There’s ane intill (one in) the oldest tower,

There’s ane intill the ladye’s bower,

There’s ane intill the water-yett (water gate)

And thir three stanes ye never get.

It is thought to relate to three stones removed from church land. The stones are supposed to be wet when those about them are dry and visa versa. One stone has been located and often is found to be wet for no good reason. Since the curse was issued, no firstborn son has lived to inherit the castle from his father.

The castle has a large walled garden, mainly laid out with fruit and vegetables

The day I was there was a bit damp but when I was in the garden the weather decided to up itself a gear or two - it chucked it down and I had to hide under a beech tree for a while.

When it eased off, I went for a walk round the large pond at Fyvie where a mist was rising from the water.

Good weather for..... sorry just been stopped by the cliche police

A little later in the year I dropped in on Mr McK for a visit and we went to see Blackness Castle a few miles outside Edinburgh on the Forth with the young McKs.

It was built in 1440 by Sir George Crichton, it soon, in 1453, became the property of the crown and remained so for the rest of it's existence. It was strengthened in the 1500s but when Cromwell turned up in 1651, gun power had overtaken the strength of the walls and it fell. After repair it was used as a prison for covenanters. Later during the wars with France it was used for prisoners of war. During the better part of the 19th century it was an arsenal and briefly a barracks again until in 1912 it was turned over to the Office of Works as an ancient monument.

I was surprised at how uneven the ground was inside the castle.

This photo was taken from the castle's jetty and it's the nearest I come with my pictures to showing the castle's boat shape. It has often been called "the ship that never sailed"

A view from the castles jetty of the two Forth bridges. It gives an idea of the important defensive position the castle must have commanded.