Regular readers will know that we’ve been tracing the line of Aberdeen’s ancient boundaries. Skip the first few paragraphs if you’re already familiar with the background...
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The extent of this "gift" of land from Bruce (which required an annual rent to be paid to the crown - heh, some gift!) can be seen around Aberdeen today. Often mistaken for milestones, the engraved numbered stelae which lie hidden in plain view around Aberdeen mark the boundary between the gifted estate and the hinterland beyond - Kincardine to the south, Mar to the west and Buchan to the North. Bruce had occupied Aberdeen in 1307 and 1308 while he laid waste to a large part of that hinterland.
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http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/01/march-stones-37-to-39-abd.html
The Harrying of Buchan was a devastating event for this area, characterised by its (surprisingly modern) ruthlessly systematic nature. This was a policy, managed and executed with businesslike efficiency; entire towns like Ellon were completely eradicated, livestock and crops were burned in the fields, infrastructure was dismantled and dissipated. Some historians say that so complete was the destruction that the innate and potential wealth of Buchan was damaged for centuries after. A terrible and exceptional act of vengeful spite, unparalleled in these islands before or since.
Small wonder the Aberdonians cowered and offered Bruce whatever he wanted. The fearful and pusillanimous capitulation of Aberdeen's burghers (who had been loyal to the English crown until the pogrom in the hinterland) no doubt, in time, pricked Bruces' conscience and lead to his eventual largesse. According to the Aberdeen City and Shire website, the ordinary people of Aberdeen also "furnished" Bruce with "large supplies" of cash, food and other goods. Under what levels of terror and sword-edge compulsion was this "furnishing" obliged? In this context, the "gift" of the Freedom Lands more than a decade later might be seen as a form of belated conscience-stricken compensation from Bruce to Aberdeen's craven burghers.
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Quarry-spoil heritage on Rosehill Drive |
The boundary line, from where we last left it at Rosehill’s March Stone 54 all the way to its end with the “Omega Stone” close to the mouth of the River Don, largely marks the route of this ancient watercourse, its tributaries and distributaries. Sloping down along Rosehill Drive and Back Hilton Road, it was long-since tamed into rod-straight ditches. And then, more recently - just outwith living memory - it was subsumed beneath flagstone, then concrete and tarmac. Once an important, prominent and known boundary between the jurisdiction of one burgh and the next, between one thing and something else, where the rights and obligations of one gave way to the rights and obligations of another; in this area, the boundary has long also been a thoroughfare. It’s almost as if the power of those rights and obligations was apt to be discharged latitudinally via the path-of-least resistance desire-lines represented by the boundaries and marked by boundary features; a surface effect - an edge phenomenon; like lightning striking water. This psychogeographical power of edges is remarkable in its longevity - for instance, the medieval western boundary of the Burgh of Aberdeen - the western edge of Bruce’s Freedom Lands; the estates marked by all these “March Stones” - remains the boundary of the modern entity City of Aberdeen to this day. And (if and when it is ever built) the proposed Aberdeen bypass motorway will, between its crossing of the River Dee to its circumnavigation of Kingswells, follow the arbitrary line of this ancient edge.
Telecoms network infrastructure at the Five Roads |
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God! The bloody noise! He sooooo doesn’t like it when the staffie starts playing up - things get a bit, em, unpredictable. Gotta get the dog out of here. Gotta get across the road, and then follow the barriers and another pelican crossing across another road. ’At’s it, now he’s getting somewhere: he’s got the kid on his hip - the toddler’s sticky face - tears and toffee - smirching his tracktop. Nevermind - it’ll go in the machine at the missus’s and, while he waits in his vest, it’ll dripdry quickly - it’ll have to. He’s got the plastic carriers and the dog’s chain and the kid’s toy (a nasty cheap plastic trike on a long handle for pushalong - oh my god how the kid had insisted - grat and peenged and grat until he got his way) he’s got the long bright plastic handle of the toy in his other, his right hand, dragging it behind him like the carcass of some rigoured animal. So, no hand free to push the button for the pedestrian crossing. Fuck. A gap in the traffic, sightlines are poor - risk it? No don’t be daft. Someone else, a middle-aged couple, at the crossing now, one of them pressed the Push Button for Crossing Signal Opposite thank god, he gives a smile and a nod of thanks. "WAIT", says the lit up box. WAIT... WAIT... Beepabeepbeepabeepbeepabeep. Swiftly across in front of the couple. And follow the pavement behind the barriers down a bit more. Good, quieter here - the pavement a bit wider here, good. A yank a damned good hard yank on the staffie’s chain and that - to know that there’s a big boss at the other end of the lead - calms her down a bit. Calms her down a good bit. She immediately flollops herself down, almost comically, ungainly, like a very powerful and muscular sack of tatties, on the pavement and starts licking at her bits. Nice. But it’s OK, though - she’s not going to cause any trouble while she’s at that. Now for the shopping. Squatting on haunches, eye-level talking quietly and soothingly to the kid, one carrier bag goes inside another, both into the rucksack. OK, the words to the kid have worked, and the kid rubs his eyes and sniffs up the snotters, swallowing and, literally looking up - chin out resolute, the upset is forgotten. Now to get the kid and his toy together...
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Diametrically opposite the terminus of Rosehill Drive at the Five Roads roundabout is Ashgrove Court, which we are told was Aberdeen’s first residential tower block or “’scraper”, as local usage would have it. The elision of “skyscraper” to “’scraper” is a telling piece of nominative determinism - nominative pre-determinism, in fact. The very word “’scraper”: something which “scrapes”, with its connotations of harsh friction, erosion, damage, injury, striation, denudation. Or is it the other meaning - the way that, if you were to live there, you might “just scrape by”; manage to live only with difficulty; scrimping and scraping; scraping a meagre living? In either case, our local word for residential tower blocks has determined that none should regard them as desirable places to live. Give a dog a bad name...
Un-underpass. Nonederpass. |
Ashgrove Farmhouse Occupied until quite recently. |
That boundary wall forms the south side of Back Hilton Road which we walk down from the Five Roads roundabout. If you know where it is and what you’re looking for, and if you have sharp eyes, its possible to gaze down the entire length of Back Hilton Road from the roundabout and discern March Stone 55 ABD at the end. It’s just a tiny pixel-speck at that half kilometer distance, but it is visible.
March Stone 55 ABD |
And as we approach the stone we hear a scrapey rumbling behind us, across the road - and a gurgling laugh, then a dog-bark - and another. More laughter as the rumbling gets louder. Turning round, we see again the track-suited buzz-cut young man accompanied by his status dog and toddler son. He’s got the toddler - feet splayed out sitting down - on a sort-of plastic tricycle which has a four-foot pole extending from the rear axle ending in a handle which would come to about the young man’s waist height. With his left hand holding the dog’s chain, his right hand is pushing down on the trike-pole so that the trike is wheelie-ing along - its front wheel up 20 centimeters from the ground. And he jogs gently, loping controlled and steady down the concrete pavement slope of Back Hilton Road pushing the plastic trike with his son on board in front of him. The toddler on the trike - being pushed far far faster (but safe, level and steady) than ever such a toy plastic tricycle was supposed to go - has his head thrown back laughing uncontrolled loudly in sheer delight and ecstasy. The pure glee on the pre-school boy's face is as bright as sunshine - looking up and back over his shoulder he can look into his dad's eyes, leaning over and laughing right back with him. WahayYayhay-aha-ahahahaha! And the Staffordshire Bull Terrier on her chain, in the young dad's left hand, appears anthropomorphically on her furry face to have a similar laughing grin, the same as her master's and his son's. Muscularly she trots, matching the man’s loping strides with her own elbow-out sideways-ish lollop, her front legs seeming to manage to travel far far faster than those at the back. Barkbarkbark. For joy. Man, boy, dog - an ancient family unit subset on an outing, getting in a bit of fun while getting in the shopping. Getting a thrill along with the necessary provisions - laying down a bonding substrate of happy time memory. A memory template which is held in common by men and boys and dogs since first men and boys and dogs went out together and came back with food; game for the table, serious play for the hunting unit. And now this family has a memory-bond which ties them not only together in shared experience today but which will also last them all their days together or apart - solid, pure, innocent - a tie which binds. Archaic and primordial, contemporary and eternal. Universal and personal. A timeless moment, that morning on Back Hilton Road, close to March Stone 55 ABD.
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1 comment:
Somehow "march stones" feel like something that should be connected to early spring. How should such an object look? And a "september stone", would that be different?
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