We recently spent a couple of nights in Glasgow, and on the first evening had a walk to Glasgow Cathedral and the Necropolis. The Fir Park pleasure grounds, across the Molendinar Burn from the Cathedral, were transformed from 1833 into the place to be buried in Glasgow. It was inspired by Père Lachaise in Paris. The situation, on top of a hill, is very fine with extensive views, and the Greek, Egyptian, Gothic and Romanesque monuments are amazing. We could have spent much longer here, but dinner called, and the threatening sky did more than threaten – we got soaked on the way back to the bus stop.
Glasgow Cathedral from the Necropolis.The Necropolis, Glasgow.Glasgow Cathedral from the Necropolis.Glasgow Cathedral from the Necropolis.The Necropolis, Glasgow.The Necropolis, Glasgow.The Necropolis, Glasgow.The Necropolis, Glasgow.
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Further reading
There are several architectural guides to Glasgow. We used Central Glasgow: An Illustrated Architectural Guide by Charles McKean, David Walker and Frank Walker. ISBN 1 873190 22 0. It is published by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) – an excellent source of architectural guides and books. It was first published in 1989, so is somewhat out of date, but is full of interesting history and photographs.
I was looking at Sergio Larrain’s pictures of London from 1959, which now look as if they come from another world. One of them was clearly at Speakers’ Corner. When I was a student in London I would visit Speakers’ Corner every now and again. I did not go to listen to the speakers, who were generally not very interesting, but to photograph them and their listeners. The images are from 1964 to 1966. I bought a very well used pre-war Leica III with an uncoated 5 cm f/2 Summitar lens from Pelling & Cross on Bond Street for £30 in 1964, and part-exchanged it for a mint Leica IIIf with a 5 cm f/3.5 Elmar lens in 1965. I used one or the other camera for all of these pictures. I have lost the negatives, so these images are scans of prints. The film would have been Tri-X, developed in Agfa Rodinal, in the Student Union darkrooms beneath the pavement in Gordon Street.
Further reading
Sergio Larrain. London 1959. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-54541-6
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St Kilda is remote. Very remote – about 65 km west of North Uist, and over 100 km from our starting point in Loch Mhiabhaig on Lewis. It is an archipelago with two main islands – Hirta and Boreray – and many sea stacks. It is home to an enormous number of seabirds – a quarter of the world population of Northern Gannets, and nine-tenths of Europe’s Leach’s Petrels. Hirta was inhabited for two millenia. The population was finally evacuated in 1930. The National Trust for Scotland owns the islands, and the Army have had a base there as part of the missile range on Benbecula since 1957. Getting to St Kilda is now relatively easy, weather permitting, and landing craft regularly service the base. We pay for the military base, and fund the heritage maintenance and tourism, but did not think that the population that produced the heritage was worth supporting on the islands. Strange set of values.
Approaching St Kilda late in the evening, after sunset. Boreray is on the left behind Stack an Armin, with Stac Lee on the right and Hirta just visible in the distance. There are still Gannets in the sky.The store on Village Bay, Hirta. Hirta was the only inhabited island – all the rest are very difficult to land on. Dun, on the other side of the bay, has lazy-bed remains clearly visible. Most of the islands and stacks were visited when possible for grazing the Soay sheep and for harvesting sea birds and their eggs.Main Street on Hirta. All the houses are on Main Street, which is the only street, and curves around above Village Bay. The roofed houses are used by the National Trust for Scotland, and accomodate the working parties.An Lag, Hirta, looking towards Village Bay and Dun. In the foreground are cleits, which are found all over Hirta – they are naturally ventilated food stores.Stac an Armin, almost hidden by Stac Lee, and Boreray from the Gap, Hirta. Stac Lee is white from the Gannet guano.Main Street from Oiseval, Hirta. One of the roofed houses is visible at the lower left.Three of the roofed houses on Main Street, Hirta.The graveyard and Dun, Hirta. Dun is the far island, sheltering the bay.Walls and cleits, Hirta.Stac Lee, Boreray, and clouds of Gannets.
Further reading
A great deal has been written about St Kilda – it was, for visitors, a remote romantic destination on the edge of the ocean.
Tom Steel’s ‘The Life and Death of St Kilda’ was the first book I read about the archipelago. Very interesting with lots of old photos.
Roger Hutchinson’s ‘St Kilda, A People’s History’ is more recent and even better.
The definitve book about St Kilda is Angela Gannon and George Geddes’ ‘St Kilda: The Last and Outmost Isle’.
There are lots of photographs of St Kilda, but few can equal those in Beka Globe’s ‘Land, Sea and Sky’.
For me, the most evocative picture of all, which captures the mixed majesty and terror when paddling a sea kayak between Stac an Armin and Boreray, is Norman Ackroyd’s etching ‘Stac an Armin Evening 2010’ which hangs on our wall. You can find it on page 40 of Norman Ackroyd, ‘The Furthest Lands’ – the catalogue of an exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
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Raasay is a small island lying between Skye and the mainland. Unlike most of the Hebridean islands, it has beautiful woods of birch and rowan, festooned with lichens. The strikingly diverse geology is reflected in the vegetation. The proprietor, George Rainy, cleared the common people off their land, replacing them with more profitable sheep. The memory remains, as do the house ruins. Unusually, there are also remains of heavy industry – an ironstone mine worked for a few years during the First World War by German Prisoners of War, in defiance of international agreements. The scenery is peaceful and beautiful, witness to inhumanity and outrage.
Towards the north of Raasay, Calum’s Road – built by Calum MacLeod with shovel and wheelbarrow – leads from Brochel to Arnish. From Arnish, there are paths to Eilean Fladday’s tidal causeway and to the remote bothy by Caol Eilean Tigh. Walking south, at the top of a long hill, the view to Dun Caan opens up. Below Dun Caan is the fertile limestone grassland of Hallaig and Screapadal. The people were cleared from there onto the infertile gneiss in the foreground. In the far distance is Rubha na’ Leac, above which is the track to Hallaig and the monument to Sorley MacLean.
‘Between the Leac and Fearns the road is under mild moss’ (Sorley MacLean, Hallaig).
The track from North Fearns to Hallaig is wide and well-built until the cairn commemorating Sorley MacLean. It runs part-way up the hillside between the beach and limestone cliffs. Below the track are grass-covered walls, remains of dwellings and field walls.
Below the track from North Fearns to Hallaig is an enclosure with a handsome wall, the upper part one vertical stone thick. The sanctuary of Applecross is on the other side of the Inner Sound.
After Sorley MacLean’s cairn, the track becomes a footpath through a birch wood.
‘I will wait for the birch wood until it comes up by the cairn until the whole ridge from Beinn na Lice will be under its shade.’
After the birch wood, the fertile limestone grassland below Dun Caan can be seen, with the remains of Hallaig above the enclosure wall.
The enclosure wall at Hallaig was built using the stone from the houses, and the name of the wall-builder is remembered. Applecross is on the horizon.
Below Dun Caan is green fertile grassland on the limestone. The people were cleared from here to make way for sheep, which were more profitable than people. The remains of houses are scattered across the more level ground.
Some house remains at Hallaig still stand waist-high, others are only low mounds in the grassland. It seems beautiful in the sunshine, and peaceful, with Applecross visible across the Inner Sound, but ecologically this is a devastated landscape and the Highlands as a whole are a monument to destroyed communities.
Part way up the east side of Raasay is Brae, with obvious house remains like this, and other walls buried in the grass. A path through the birch wood leads to Inver on the Sound of Raasay. There is said to be a Norse burial below the tree.
Ironstone was mined in the south of the island during the First World War. The buildings of Mine 1 are about 100 m above sea level, at the head of an incline down to the pier. The compressor house and haulage house can be seen, with the Cuillin on Skye across the Sound of Raasay. The mine entrance is to the right of the buildings.
In the foreground is the concrete base for the compressor. The mine was mothballed when it closed soon after the war, and all the machinery was removed for scrap during the Second World War. The Skye Cuillin are visible in the distance.
The 8 km of tunnels in Mine 1 are accessed by this adit (a horizontal tunnel). A steel grill now closes the entrance to the dangerous and unventilated workings.
The mine was ventilated by a fan house on the hillside above the Mine 1 entrance, looking from a distance like an abandoned church. The grill on the left is across the shaft leading down at 45° into the mine. The curved walls minimise the resistance to airflow.
Above the pier was a crusher and the kilns. Coal for the kilns was hauled up the incline from the pier. The pier incline hauler house echoes the shapes of Glamaig and Beinn Dearg Mhor on Skye. Loch Sligachan is to the right of the building.
The five calcining kilns had concrete bases with circular steel kilns above them. Only the bases remain, used as shelters by sheep.
The interior of the concrete bases of the five calcining kilns.
The social and economic history of the Clearances and crofting is impressively told by James Hunter in ‘The Making of the Crofting Community’.
Angus and Patricia MacDonald provide a superb overview (literally) of the landscape in ‘The Hebrides, an Aerial View of a Cultural Landscape’.
The history of the mine, with many historic photos and maps, is covered in ‘The Raasay Iron Mine: Where Enemies Became Friends’ by Laurence and Pamela Draper.
Sorley MacLean’s poem ‘Hallaig’ is quoted in full in the MacDonalds’ book, and also found in his ‘Hallaig and Other Poems’. The relationship between the Highlander, the Gaelic language, and the land is explored by James Hunter in ‘On the Other Side of Sorrow: Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands’, which includes a penetrating discussion of ‘Hallaig’.
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