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I wrote an essay about the ruined Triple Kirks, lines of sight, and peregrine falcons.
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via Poles and Pylons, thefamulus: THE FAMULUS 1 is available for….
It is late summer, 2012. Or what passed for summer. I planned a day in Fort William, that Highland town named after William of Orange, and later Prince William, Duke of Cumberland. It is also the Outdoor Capital of the UK, and I intend to sample the mountain bike trails of the nearby Nevis Range resort. That means an early morning train, utilising the London to Fort William sleeper service, departing from Edinburgh before 5am.
And what a journey.
Catching that early morning sun. The post-industrial grime of Glasgow suburbs. The struts of rotten boat hulls arching upwards like inverted whale ribs, but black from rust; rising out of the blacker-still mud of unused docks. Passenger ferries in vast sea lochs. Rising hills, clothed in short grasses. Abandoned railway tracks, running parallel to my own, but not perfectly; the kinks and curves making me feel drowsy.
The train feels fast from Edinburgh to Glasgow, but out of Glasgow, things slow down. It’s mostly single-gauge. No need for more; the sparse highlands. The tracks here feel rickety; the train giddying from side to side.
I am looking out to the west, down a steep wooded embankment. The slope is dark, and dense. No sun on this slope, at least not ’til later. I like this view. It’s closed in since the grass-covered hills and the vast lochs earlier in the journey.
Then I see what I take to be a hut. A long building with gently-arched roof, like a stretched potting shed. But something is not quite right. Yes! It’s covered in a sheet. And why is it on such a steep slope? Is it really perched against the trees; its only support? And then finally – I can see the heavy steel wheels below the sheet. This is not stalkers’ shelter, this is a train carriage.
Train of Caledon. Pencil and watercolour on paper. © Lines of Landscape 2013
What happened here? A derailment, for sure. But why? Perhaps the giddying tracks have played a part, maybe it was some japery of bored teenagers, or maybe a detail was missed during the carriage’s safety check. But it’s not really the means by which it got there that intrigues me. It’s that it is there, no longer on the stretched, linear home that is the track; instead now nestled amongst the thicket of trees, cloaked in the deep forest’s clinging darkness. And that sheet. We cover our dead with cloth to hide them away, fearing the grim spectacle of the corpse’ face. And so too the carriage, a sight too unnerving, too properly uncanny for most people to see.
This scene comes close to the end of the journey. Perhaps this is one the last vestiges of that once great Forest of Caledonia. Maybe the forest has decided: enough! and attempted to capture some of that disruptive noise for itself, to silence it amongst its wood and leaves. Perhaps the giddying track is the result of tree roots literally undermining the tracks themselves: the derailed train a long-awaited fruit of its labour.
After a day of riding in the mud in the shadow of Ben Nevis, during a day too windy for bikes to be taken on the chairlift, I set back home on the evening sleeper train. By the time the train begins to depart, darkness has already begun to fall. I sit in one of the old reclining seats of my carriage, and strain to see out of the west-facing window, hoping to catch another glimpse of that spectre of efficient transport and progress. But the twilight, combined with the dense foliage, mean I don’t get a chance to see the forest’s bounty a second time. Now, that unified structure that was a derailed train carriage, and the assemblage-woods of old Scotland, blurred to one seemingly boundless morass of dark shadows.
Following that journey, I never looked into how a train came to be found propped up on a steep wooded slope, or whether efforts have been made to remove it, or if anyone was injured during its accident. And despite making that journey for a day full of adrenaline and easy thrills, it was that fleeting moment spotting a shroud-covered carriage that stayed with me.
Postscript. I would like to thank Diana J Hale and David Southwell for their inspiration and encouragement that saw me write this piece. See in particular their posts here, here and here.
I used to live in Edinburgh. Before I left, I took an amble along the shoreline. Here’s the result.
The Pentland Hills are many things. Destination for walking and other leisure time pursuits. ‘Working’ [sic] landscape for sheep and cattle rearing. Playground for gun-happy soldiers. It is also the key water supply for Edinburgh and urban centres to its east; like the Welsh hills to Birmingham, or the Lake District to areas to its south. That the Pentland reservoirs form such a significant part of its landscape is not up for dispute. But when it comes to Pentland water, what is there? What about other water, beyond the lochs? What of the reservoirs themselves?
Scarred Tree. A spider’s web protects the tiny water pool within. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Tree Ruin. An altogether more filthy tree-pool. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Where water industry becomes cultural heritage. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Water Over Water. Water supply versus river flow. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
One-Time Waterfall. Overflow from Glencorse Reservoir. Water supply engineering projects for Edinburgh mean this waterfall is no longer needed, as the water level in the reservoirs drops. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Abandoned Waterfall Pool. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Waterfall Reflection. Perhaps the waterfall will be served once engineering works are completed? Should it be? Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Waterfall Detail. Dried pleats of algae, or guano? Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Outflowing Stream. So recently abandoned plants are yet to recolonise. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Damn View. Glencorse Reservoir. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Reservoir Overflow with Submerged Wall. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Loganlea Reservoir Damn. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Not Just Water Supply. Fishing on Loganlea. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Sediment Revealed by Dropped Water Level. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Dual Reserve. Nature + water reservoir. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
Boggy Thicket. Taken by the author. © Lines of Landscape
The other day, I took a wander in the style of what some might call ‘cyclogeography’, but which I prefer to think of as merely ‘a bike ride in the hills’. On the edge of the Pentland Hills, which lie just to the south of Edinburgh, there stands a memorial. A look at an Ordnance Survey map will show its location, situated to the south east of the masthead that is Allermuir Hill (situated as it is on the city-facing edge of the hills), in the shadow of the imposing Castlelaw Hill, with its DANGER AREA, and red warning flag and the pop-pop-popping of the rifle-range guns, and a stone’s throw from the Woodhouselee clachan (or hamlet).
Map of Tytler Memorial. Taken by the author. (c) Lines of Landscape
The Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland in 1882-4 describes Woodhouselee as: “a mansion in Glencorse parish, Edinburghshire, 6 ½ miles S of Edinburgh and 4 N of Penicuik. Romantically seated on the eastern slope of the Pentland Hills”. As far as I am aware, there no longer stands the mansion or tower of Woodhouselee, though I’ve never explored the hamlet to find out. If this is the case, it would be a shame – Will Grant thought it “one of the most delightful in all the countryside” (p66, Grant, 1951). The Titlow family has a long history in the area, being first found in Haddingtonshire, just out in East Lothian. Through time, the name got distorted to Tytler, the family branch of which became seated in Woodhouselee.
It is for the Tytler’s that this monument stands. Built in the 19th century, it commemorates various members of the clan, including Alexander Fraser Tytler, who was a professor of history at the University of Edinburgh and Lord of Woodhouselee. It faces down the hillside, looking across an open field, home to some sheep, cows, and some large ornamental trees (is this the remains of an arboretum, attached to the Woodhouselee estate?), and then over the town of Penicuik, with the Lammermuir Hills making up the horizon.
Tytler Memorial. Taken by the author. (c) Lines of Landscape
But the contradiction of this – and most – memorials is the direction they face. The photo above shows the front of the memorial, and the short view of the hill behind. In order to see the sweeping views out to the Lammermuirs, we must turn our back on the memorial, or stand behind it. But if a memorial is to stand in a landscape, like the menhirs in Francesco Careri’s Walkscapes (2002), then why doesn’t the face of interest also look away from the landscape? So one may view both landscape and the front of the memorial together?
This isn’t the first time I have paused for reflection at this memorial. There aren’t buildings in its immediate vicinity; this isn’t a graveyard – the memorial states that the graves are interred at Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh. I’ve stopped at this point before. Back then, I leant my bicycle against the rear of the monument, to stand in as a cypher for my own presence, as a means to frame the view behind in order to take a photo. The cross wasn’t significant – I could have leant my bike against a tree or fencepost. But what of the cross itself?
Rear of Tytler Memorial with bench behind. Taken by the author. (c) Lines of Landscape
But this time, there is something more. Since I last lingered here, a bench has been placed on slope behind the cross. Sitting on the bench, one is drawn to the vast view, with the cross at the neartohand. The plaque on the seat states “In memory of Mae and Will Hoggan who so loved these hills.” So this is a more modern take on the memorilaisation. But to what hills does this plaque refer? The horizon is filled with the Lammermuir Hills, but this bench lies unquestionably in the Pentlands. Just which hills did they love?
In 2009, John Wylie considered the memorial benches overlooking a Cornish cove. He conceives of the landscape as being criss-crossed by multiple gazes – gazes of those who are absent, where the benches become those who are absent, and the person sitting on the bench manifests the gaze of the spectre: “looking-with – a host of ghosts and memories” (Wylie, 2009, p277).
It’s a curious notion. As I sit on the bench, I manifest the gaze of the missing couple (whether they like it or not). The bench-and-me becomes the absent. And so too for the cross. The reason the cross faces across to the Lammermuirs is precisely NOT to frustrate those who come to remember those passed. It is because, in the process of creating a memorial, it becomes the very thing it is there to remember. The physical remains of the Tytlers may not lie here, but there forever remains their eternal gaze, facilitated by the cross. The family motto becomes a suitable epitaph: Occultus non extinctus: hidden not extinguished.
The hills so loved by Hoggans become apparent. It is the Pentland Hills, but not just for the hills in themselves, but for the views across the landscape that these hills afford. For while the Pentland Hills may have a neat line drawn around them when viewed on the map, a categorisation that assists both users and unitary authority in their making their way around, it is these views across lines-of-concept that give the hills their life – even in death.
References
Francesco, C, 2002, Walkscapes: walking as an aesthetic practice, Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili
Grant, W, 1951, The Call of the Pentlands: a land of glamour and romance, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd
Wylie, J, 2009, Landscape, absence and the geographies of love, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34:3, 275–289
Cards
A study of poppies. Water colour painting, white background. Print-on-card. This is a gift shop in Berwick upon Tweed, and I’m drawn to an Elizabeth Blackadder greetings card. I came in for a birthday card for my Dad, but this caught my eye. Emma couldn’t come down for the few days away – severe gum pain means taking it easy – so this card will need to suffice; a surrogate for the trip away. And by her favourite artist.
I like her work too. Her earlier work is most readily classed as either ‘landscape’ or layered still-lifes (does a line really lie between the two, though?). But later, her attention turned to more minimalist work, with little background distraction. This is almost like looking at flowers pressed and dried in the back of a heavy book; the thin water-colour of these poppies giving a light, airy feel. It seemed like a fitting card for someone feeling under the weather.
Cottage
Rob and Jo finally arrive to pick 
me up. Car trouble, apparently. The cottage is a few miles away from Berwick upon Tweed, on the Blackadder estate, and just within the Scottish border. A Georgian building, three floors with one room on each. The accompanying literature describes this originally as a ‘picnicking pavillion’ for Blackadder House (now no longer standing), and later, as a servants’ quarter. The cottage, in its transformation to holiday accommodation, is no longer a key abode in a working estate for a landed gentry. Now, rather it stands for itself; nestling among the sycamore trees and hemmed in on two sides as two watercourses converge; a small garden with hanging bird (and, apparently, rat) feeder; large gunnera on the banks of the water opposite; then a field-with-cows; further a tree-lined hedge; sky. Not a vast view, but one filled with sounds: bird song, bubbling water – and falling rain.
Water
And so to the third panel of this triptych. The heavy, murky, swirling water to the front of the cottage is the Blackadder Water. It is this watercourse that gave the estate – and original occupying family – its name, and subsequently that of the cottage. But during my stay, the river is not as it would usually be. Now the flow is fast, heavy, and swirling. Brown murkiness, only momentarily diluted by the clearer Kelloe Burn as it enters from beside the cottage. Forlorn trees peek from the surface of the river, their green leaves still attached 
despite the previously-engulfing flows.
The sound of the river and the sound of the falling rain seem to predominate. But of course, it does stop raining. Once it did, blue tits, woodpeckers and the aforementioned huge rat came out to feed from the bird feeder, all playing a performance of respect and fear, one group after another.
This was certainly a trip that was defined by water. From Elizabeth’s poppy study, via the rain-swollen river, to the cottage built to enjoy the water that gave it its name. The water of the river so ferocious, yet the image of the card so fragile. It is through these extremes that water can seem to pervade through everything. But it was also the various Blackadders that swam through the story of this trip. The fact that I’m not aware of Elizabeth Blackadder having any connections with Berwickshire (she’s originally from Falkirk) makes it all the better.
Originally, ‘thing’ meant a gathering of people, and a place where they would meet to resolve their affairs. As the derivation of the word suggests, every thing is a parliament of lines.
(Tim Ingold in the introduction to Lines: a brief history, 2007)
Exhibition at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland, 5 May – 8 July 2012
Piers Art Centre, Orkney, Scotland, 30 March – 8 June 2013
RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, 28 June – 17 August 2013
Tim Ingold. An enigmatic character if ever there was one. In Lines: a brief history, he highlights the lack of any scholarly approach that focuses on the line as a core of study, stating that he wrote the book: “as an open invitation to join an enterprise” of the study of the line. Such a call has been taken up by curator Euan Gray, the culmination of which is this show: “A Parliament of Lines aims to explore how drawing is being used in current contemporary Art practice. The exhibition seeks to question what constitutes a drawing, at times exploring its boundary with painting, animation and photography” (Euan Gray, in the exhibition’s book). I’ve long been intrigued by Ingold’s work, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that the title of the show immediately drew me in.
All artists involved claim to have some kind of connection to Scotland – by birth, by upbringing, or by education. So therein lies the second conceptual motivation for the show. Thirdly, the show has five different themes around which various pieces are grouped:
But while these notions exist in the accompanying video and publicity material, the layout of the exhibition is not so strongly grouped – and so much the better for it. While I was most intrigued by those pieces in the ‘landscape’ section, I was also drawn to Ainslie Yule’s sculpture sketches. Out of the 15 artists exhibiting, it is to four that I wish to turn my attention: Ainsley Yule, Layla Curtis, Graeme Todd, and Sam Griffin.
Spiritual Space: Sam Griffin – Bring the Good News, Not Now but Soon; Ruin Value; Zeitbeger (pencil on paper); Huey, Dewey and Louie (pencil and graphite on paper).
A recent article on the Cambridge University research pages considered the assertion by archaeologist Dr Susan Oosthuizen that the search for Britishness can be found through our connection to the land – a connection not only through space, but time: old traditions that saw us heft to the land are still reflected in modern practices, be they politics, community, or subversive movements. As I looked at Griffin’s work (before having read the Cambridge piece), I was struck by sense that the ancient, temporally distant, can resonate so strongly.
Ruin Value, Sam Griffin. From the Schirman and De Beaucé website
In Ruin Value, we see a tomb, crudely constructed from several upright stone plinths, with a stone plinth roof. No clue is given as to whether this drawing is taken from a real relic, or if merely a construct of the artist’s mind. Either way, there is a mystery to the tomb: who made this? who was it for? is it actually a tomb? But this is not all the picture shows. To the left and right of the tomb, we see two geometric shapes. The left, in particular, shows a Flower of Life, a sacred geometry symbol that has captured the imagination of many, as something that may just hold a key to the mysteries of a spiritual universe and existential meaning. Personally, this is not a thought that particularly appeals to me. But conversely, it is not something I would wish to rule absurd. To me, the presence of an ancient monument next to potentially spiritually loaded geometric patterns speaks of this connection with the land that can tie us back through time.
Permeable Places: Layla Curtis - Glasgow Index; Edinburgh Index (ink on tracing paper).
These are drawings that are partial copies of Glasgow and Edinburgh street maps. Why partial? The bulk of both cities are shown, yet the partiality is through only showing street names. In a move that initially seems counter to Ingold’s call, all lines in the maps have been removed. But of course, the lack of a solid line denoting the street edge does not mean there are no lines – rather that we are forced to consider what a solid line can come to mean in representation of place.
Glasgow Index, Layla Curtis. From the artist’s website.
In a world of public spaces and privatised enclosures, we have come to know where we can be – and where we can’t. Yet take away the lines, and you are left with a map of possibilities, not confinement, one of permeability, not boundaries. As I walked through the exhibition, I came first to the Glasgow drawing. I have been to Glasgow a handful of times, but it is not somewhere I know well. I can get about the centre on foot, find suitable transport and roads to get further out, but I lack a comprehensive understanding of how it all joins up. And this was the beauty of the map. Where there are no roads; this map shows no markings. So that huge swathe of largely wordless space snaking through the west of the city must be a river, presumably the Strathclyde. A closer look and one can see the odd road crossing over the river as a bridge, evidenced solely by the street name. The Edinburgh map, on the other hand, had an instant familiarity, mostly from pouring over my OS and A-Z maps. But again, the spaces stand out: the expanse of the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links (besmirched by Melville Drive cutting through); the name-encircled Arthur’s Seat; the possible gap of the narrow and crowded Water of Leith. Everything is possibility, potentiality. Maybe, we could go further, and present a blank page. No names, no lines, nothing. Just pure, potential experience. As has been said before: “The drawing board is a map with no references“.
Sublime Landscapes: Graeme Todd – Mount Washu (acrylic, ink and varnish on canvas); untitled; untitled (ink, acrylic and varnish on panel).
Todd’s three large paintings shown at the exhibition feature some of the elements that make landscape painting what we have come to know it as: the topographical features, the trees, the buildings. But not all elements are present. At first look, any three-dimensional perspective is missing. One cannot easily tell what is in front, what is behind. It is as though it is a collage of landscape elements, all shot through with a deep vermillion, crowding in from behind. It is almost as if Kant’s sublime has been abstracted to its extreme, but just short of losing the very recognisability that makes the sublime possible in the first place. Perhaps Todd’s work can take us one step further: didn’t Bruno Latour once say that distance is a myth? I wouldn’t like to go that far. But it certainly seems as if Todd’s work encourages us to dispel the notion of landscape as something only far off and removed; an antidote to the myth of the gaze: in Mount Washu, the house is such a size that it is unlikely to be reachable by hand. But its immediacy stands for itself: it, and everything else in this landscape image, become of the viewer, the abstracted and disconnected elements create a single experience where everything is tied in together; the single-colour wash of the background crossing the boundaries of the lines between tree and cliff, drawing us in, troubling the boundaries between viewer and viewed.
People in the Landscape: Ainslie Yule – Structured Wave; Drawing for Sculpture A; Drawing for Sculpture B (pencil and wash on paper).
In The Orchard, E. A. Hornel
Drawing for Sculpture A and Drawing for Sculpture B seem to be showing physical features of a landscape – perhaps some kind of bank. Drawn onto this is Yule’s sculpture – seemingly of a stepped structure, utilising the form of the bank. While much could be said of the intrinsic beauty of such fine architectural drawing, it was the surroundings to the central point to which I was most drawn. Across both Sculpture A and Sculpture B, there appears a series of smudges – sometimes fingerprints in paint, sometimes tiny ink spills. What are these splodges meant to represent? What are we being shown here? I do not know what the artist’s intentions were, but to me, these smudges represent people. But not the detailed characters one might expect of the ‘artist’s impression’; rather these have no strong definition. These are but fleeting ephemera, the ghosts of the people who have yet to visit the sculpture, should the dream ever be realised. Not people of ponderance, but of transience, drifting through, with no clear line between their body and their surrounds. Interestingly, there happened to be another exhibition showing at the same venue – Art and the Garden. One piece here caught my attention, and goes some way to offering credence to my understanding of Yule’s work. E. A. Hornel’s 1898 piece In The Orchard, in its carefree and slapdash painting, shows Victorian children playing amongst some apple trees. But where does the soft colours of the dresses end and the lush greens and reds of the apple trees begin? Who holds the fray in this scene? Do we even need something to hold the fray?
Just what are these Lines of which we Speak?
I wrote part of this post in the National Library of Scotland, surrounded by thousands of lines, mostly short ones, defining words in dictionaries. I finished this post in a local library, hemmed in on two walls by an exhibition of tapestries. Truly it is lines that come to define us. And just as Tim Ingold reminds us, the life of lines (and lines of life) is multitudinous:
What do walking, weaving, observing, storytelling, singing, drawing and writing have in common? The answer is that they all proceed along lines.
So there we have the lines through time of Sam Griffin (and Dr Oosthuizen), the dissolution of the map lines, and the opening up of places of Layla Curtis, the troubling boundary/non-boundary lines of Graeme Todd’s sublime landscapes, and the hard lines of sculpture and their opposition to the blurry edges of people in Ainsley Yule’s work. Lines are everywhere, but lest we forget that lines are not the definition of existence, or of people’s place in the world or landscape. Lines are merely the constitutive meshwork of which we all fall into: like the tapestries around me, where the lines of the thread weave into one another to create a surface, so too do lines of landscape cross-over and knot, bringing meaning, substance and connection through time and space.
