Edgeland at Moss of Rotten

In the liminal zone, that edgeland zone of replacement where the town and the countryside fray into each other, scrubland horse-riding centres rub shoulders with smallholdings in a landscape characterised by picturesque benign neglect. This is time's realm and time, given time, blends the mineral into the organic, the artificial to the natural as first-generation barbwire and corrugated iron - beyond aged - flake in transmutative rust, richly endowing soils with their serendipitously ferric fertiliser. Sickly-sharp-smelling brackish standing water silver-mirrors through surface-skating midge-haze the discontinuous summer-showery sky. Fern frond, gorse barb, hogweed stand.
All this on that rarity - unimproved land. Here a bog - a 'moss', as known here - where medieval freemen dug their peat fuel - wealth from the land, continued prosperity and security against a hard winter; there craggy bedrock - last blanketed by topsoil some ten-thousand years hence before glacier's denuding scrape - stands exposed; a convenient landmark, waymark. Property marker.

To the west of our town, the proposed (delayed?) Aberdeen bypass motorway will thunder, heroic high on embankment shoulder-carried through this landscape, claiming this Moss of Rotten, facilitating the motorist as he looks down upon the equestrians, the smallholdings and the unimproved edgeland. Once the motorway comes this edgeland will be replaced, subsumed into a rigidly defined geography of minimum speed limits and theodolite delineated plots; housing-zoned for pleasant-valley detatched and semi.

We don't fear for the edgeland - the edgeland will move on, move farther out. Edgelands are always with us. But the Moss of Rotten will be forever gone.

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http://www.awpr.co.uk/d/Environmental%20Statement/September%202007/Environmental%20Statement%20Non-Technical%20Summary/Non%20Technical%20Summary.pdf

Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route

Environmental Statement

Non-Technical Summary

2007

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Landscape

The road crosses a predominantly rural landscape, which has a range of landscape characters relating to topography, vegetation and land use.

Impacts will typically be associated with the introduction of the road, embankments, cuttings, bridges, junctions, lighting and vehicle movements into the open and wooded farmland, hill and valley landscapes.

Measures included in the scheme proposals to reduce impacts on the landscape include careful alignment of the road and easing of embankment and cutting slopes to blend with existing landforms and allow a potential return to agriculture. Appropriate boundaries, su.ch as drystone walls or planting, will be put in place to reflect existing boundaries and maintain the character of the landscape. The effectiveness of this planting will typically increase over time as vegetation matures.

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Cultural Heritage

There are a number of sites of cultural heritage importance located within the route corridor, The effects on these include direct physical impacts and indirect impacts on their setting.

Where possible, the route of the road has been designed to avoid or reduce direct impacts or impacts on the setting. Where this has not been possible, archaeological recording is proposed for known sites where direct impacts are predicted. Works will also be undertaken to identify and record previously unknown sites. In addition landscape design proposals have been developed to reduce impacts on setting.

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http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/114573/details/aberdeen+north+westfield+house+boundary+marker/

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Alternative Names March Stone; Moss Of Rotten

Site type BOUNDARY MARKER

Archaeological Notes NJ80SW 51 c. 8474 0400

This boundary marker comprises the letter P (285mm high) incised into the upper surface of an area of bedrock about 225m E of North Westfield farmsteading (NJ80SW 52). The bedrock is situated on the S edge of an area of low-lying ground that originally formed the W end of the Moss of Rotten (OS 6-inch map, Aberdeenshire, 1st edition, 1869, sheet lxxxv).

The marker almost certainly indicates a point on the Outer Marches of Aberdeen and is of medieval date, the letter 'P' standing for 'Propertie'.

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Look closely - click for a big version of the pic - and the 'P' is evident proof that, even in pre-enlightenment times, the people of Aberdeen were obsessed with 'Propertie'.

20th Century Boundary Stones "ACB"

Once you've got your eye in, it's difficult to stop seeing stuff that you might otherwise miss. We've mentioned 'unknown stones' before - our tag for boundary stones that aren't mentioned on the Aberdeen City Council's splendid archeology pages, but perhaps are mentioned on the RCHAMS database. Or perhaps not mentioned anywhere at all, like this one:

Simply inscribed "ACB"

It's about 45cm in height. The stain 5/8ths of the way up suggests that it may once have been buried deeper than it is now. And that's all new turf around it, so this may not even be its exact original location.

It's on Lang Stracht (for those without Scots - a streetname which translates: "Long Straight"), at Sheddocksly, near the pedestrian/cyclist access to the new-ish housing association homes which occupy what had been the site of the garden centre chain before it moved farther west. From the crisp quality of the stonework and typeface used for the inscription, it appears to our eyes to be post-Victorian, and being different in its form factor (not having an inclined face for the inscription) is not one of the series of "ABD" or "CR" marked 'March Stones' which regular readers will know that we've been tracing over the weeks and months.

An educated guess might bring us to conclude that "ACB" stands for "Aberdeen City Boundary"; but that geographical point on the Lang Stracht is much closer in than today's far-flung city limits. So then we think of the time during the 20th Century when that city boundary was much closer in than today...

As a child, I remember road signs with words to the general effect: "Welcome to the City of Aberdeen"; specifically I remember them on the North Deeside Road at Pitfodels, on the Stonehaven Road just south of the Bridge of Dee and on Auchmill Road just about at Newton Terrace. We suppose that we should really get ourselves along to the local studies department at the Central Library and see if we can look at a mid-20th century map for clues to where we might find others of these 20th century boundary stones, but hey - this isn't a job! (Nevertheless - if anyone's got a copy of such a map that they can let us have we'd be really grateful.)

Anyhow, by far the easiest to get to of these half-remembered street-sign border signifiers from the early 1970's from Other Aberdeen's salubrious atelier in the upscale heart of downtown Pitmuxton is at Pitfodels. So, off we go for a look. And bingo! An ACB marked boundary stone at the bottom of Baird's Brae.

Just a hundred yards up the brae, at the junction with Airyhall Road/Rocklands Road there's another.

We've been past this location hundreds of times before and never
noticed it till today.

Interestingly, at the location of the ACB stone at the bottom of the brae, at it's junction with North Deeside Road, across the road a current roadside sign still marks the boundary of Cults village. A milestone still survives at this location too. Though it's seen better days...

If you weren't looking, you'd not see it.

The face seems damaged.

This would have been the 3-mile stone. Having spent time and effort looking for Aberdeen's boundary stones, and having become accustomed to people saying things like "oh yes, you mean those mile-stone thingies", it is ironic to actually come across one of these artifacts more or less by accident.  The item itself, pre-dating as it does the 1867 survey, seems almost impossibly remote and exotic (ish).

Farther along North Deeside Road, at Bieldside, the 4-mile stone has survived in a much better condition.

We've since seen other milestones in other locations around town which mark both different routes and different transport modes. But that probably enough trainspotting for one day. We'll get around to mentioning the other milestones in the usual course of psychogeography...

Thin Places Delineated at the Broad and Gallows Hills

A couple of months ago, we were on Aberdeen's Broad Hill to visit the innovative and subversive art installation: "By Order of Me".

Some of the artworks invite the viewer to consider the psychogeographical aspects of our situation ("You make the world the world"), as well as the psycho-historical aspects of the location ("Just think - there used to be bears here"). Go along with an open mind and time on your hands, observe the signs and you'll see what we mean. The installation is to remain in place until the end of the year.

It was a most raw February day when we were there, with a high tide battering hard against the esplanade which forms the sea-wall protecting the links from the North Sea. We walked under the esplanade and between the beach and the Broad Hill, then traversed the Trinity Cemetery up to the summit of Gallows Hill. Our interpretation of and interaction with the landscape inspired by the artifacts and the topography of the area.

Under the esplanade

Esplanade surveillance cluster.
For your safety and comfort.

From the top of Broad Hill, we see some remarkable views over the town lying to the west and, it being a prominent landmark, we're not surprised to find both an OS Trig Point pillar and a granite boundary stone at the hill's summit.

South face "R"

Both photos are of the same stone, we think it marks the boundary of fishing rights, the incised groove runs west to east pointing seaward. The inscribed letters will be the initials of the proprietors of the fishing rights. We're not certain of this, so if you know better, let us know...

North face "ND"

Traces of the foundations of recent structures can be seen in the low-lying flat links land - now a cricket pitch - beneath the hill. The area was heavily militarised during the Second World War, reflecting one of its historic uses as a convenient open and flat place to hold wappenshaws - "weapon-showings" - mustering of men under arms to satisfy clan or feudal lords that a suitably large, fit, well-equipped and bellicose corps of men could be gathered to execute their war-like bidding. We can't say whether the marks we see are the outlines of military camp structures and emplacements, or whether they are to do with the more conducive sporting and leisure uses of this land, which have included horse-racing, livestock shows, football, golf, galas and markets.

Impressions of previous land-use.

The shifting patterns of land use in this marginal zone between the town and the sea reflect the dynamic nature of this littoral zone itself. It is said that from time to time in pre-history the mouth of the River Don would become silted up and its waters would flow southwards, innundating the area now occupied by a links golf course and exiting to the North Sea somewhere around the latitude of the Broad Hill. Recent geographers doubt this assertion, the impervious clay bed of the links being at too high a level to allow the river to flow all the way south to the Broad Hill before finding an outlet or re-breaching its established one. However, the past undoubtedly saw the area characterised by a dynamic and shifting landscape with boggy quicksands, tidal lagoons, freshwater and brackish lochs (the Canny Sweet Pots - a bastardisation of Gaelic roughly translating as "the head of the settlement by the deep pools of water) fed by the Powis Burn and Banstickle Burns, which now run in underground culverts beneath the links. At their confluence, those burns became known as the Tile Burn which had a tidal flow allowing sea-going vessels to navigate some half-a-mile inland to the 18th century tile and brick works which gave the burn its name.

On the day when we visited, when a very high tide and a storm blowing in from the sea caused the waves to bluster and batter against the sea wall with more violence than we'd ever seen before, it was very easy to imagine a similar day in a time before modern sea defenses, the water inundating the land and reconfiguring the shifting sands, lagoons and watercourses.

This feeling of impermanence; of the diaphanous edge between something and nothing - the delicate balance between certainty and inconstancy which we felt and experienced as we stood braced against the onshore gale surveying the foreshore - put us in mind of the concept of the "Thin Place" in Celtic spirituality and the early Christian church. I've heard there's a Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, and that in the "thin places" that distance is even smaller. The early Christian church in Ireland, in Wales and in Scotland sought out these "thin places" for pilgrimage and in some cases to co-opt the sites and plant their missions on the foundations of pre-existing spirituality.

We feel that others have felt the same about this site throughout the history of our town and perhaps before. On the western slope of the Broad Hill, descending into a hollow and then ascending up to Gallows Hill is the Trinity Cemetery, which hosts a unique monument to people who've willed their remains to medical science for research.

The increase of knowledge and the advance of medicine

An ancient scabby dog-shit strewn right-of-way leads up the side of the graveyard to the summit Gallows Hill. As if to emphasise the theme of changeability and inconstancy, as we mounted the summit, the weather changed dramatically, the skies cleared and the sun shone strong and low in the late winter sky.

A young couple on the summit of Gallows Hill

Looking back down the right-of-way from Gallows Hill
 to Broad Hill in the backgound, North Sea beyond.

Some old maps show a powder magazine sited on Gallows Hill, and a rifle range extending down the right-of-way between Broad Hill and Gallows Hill, chiming with some of the martial aspects of this part of Aberdeen. An ancient site of execution, where the gibbet remained in place until at least 1776, the choice of this site for the storage of volatile military materiel was apt. No doubt folk would avoid the area if they could, because of its associations with crime and punishment, death and bodily corruption. The Victorian Trinity Cemetery tempers the negative psychogeographical aspects of Gallows Hill somewhat with the usual mawkish Victorian aspirations towards spiritual redemption and resurrection in an idealised afterlive of child-cherubs and young-women-as-angels. These Victorian signs and symbols strike a saccharine note with us in the 21st century, and so merely add a further freight of peculiar queerness to the undeniably singular atmosphere which is embodied in the topography, artifacts and history of this area, despite it being very close to the town centre today.

Clinging to the old rugged cross

Gravediggers baronial-gothic cottage

The hill is marked with a couple of 19th century (probably) boundary stones and a much older stone, marked with a cross. The retired grave-digger (no, really) who lives in the splendid Gothic-Victorian pavilion guarding the gates of the graveyard told us that this was a "Doupin Stone" like the one out west at Wynford, but we can't corroborate that. Aberdeen City Council's archaeology pages don't appear to have a record for it and the RCAHMS record it as a boundary stone.

Groove-incised boundary stone.

Boundary stone inscribed "TH"

Cross-marked stone

The hill overlooks Aberdeen Football Club's stadium at Pittodrie. We understand that the hill was at one time known as the Miser's Hilly, because hard-up or parsimonious football fans could watch the match free from the prominence. We suggest you read Alex Mitchell's pieces on the Ancient Burgh's of Aberdeen in the Aberdeen Voice for more background.

Remains of a bonfire on the summit

There used to be a manure works nearby to the north at Linksfield, involved in the production of fertiliser and chemicals for the leather tanning industry and bleachings. The feedstock for for the works was provided by a police stables, it's dung-heap occupying the site of the present-day football stadium, the name of which - Pittodrie - is from the Gaelic "pitt" - place of and "todhair" - manure; bleaching. 

The Manichean paradox embodied in the fact that the filth of manure is transmuted into an agent of purity: the bleach for the tanneries and bleachings, similarly chimes with the transformative and dynamically charged psychogeography inherent in the shifting topography of the area and how that in turn has affected our use of it. A place of comings and goings; of shifting surfaces; of things which are not as they seem; of deaths, planned and natural; of aggression and recreation; and of crime and redemption all in a "thin place", a place on the edge between the land and the sea, the edgelands between here and there; the border between the past and the future. The difference between something and nothing.

Ferryhill's Mystery Masonry; Enigmatic "S"

A little while ago, we posted about "unknown stones", and in the post, we included this picture of an "S" marked stone in Ferryhill.

At the acute angle meeting of Ferryhill Road and Ferryhill Place

We had assumed that, like so many marked stones we see around Aberdeen, this was a boundary stone, marking someone's commercial or political property. These stones are very often shown on the large scale Ordnance Survey maps, but there's no sign of this one on the 1869 25 inch-to-one-mile map. So, it's later than that...

The map shows a couple of 'stones' on the northernmost curve of Ferryhill Road. That'd be close to where the defunct public toilet is situated. We hear that the toilet is still in occasional use; No 17 bus drivers having a key! Brilliant!

Stop the bus!

Walking down (northward) Ferrhill Road from Ferryhill Place towards Crown Street, we see these:

This one's got an OS Cut-Mark and Rivet Bench Mark,
down at the bottom.

They're all the way down the road, each about 50m from the next. A neatly incised "S", surrounded by a perfect rectangular border, on a piece of flat-faced granite - ashlar at the top (southern) end of the road, rubble at the bottom (north). The bottom (north) end of the road is characterised by a large retaining wall which encloses the steep-sloped common green of Archie 'Pech' Simpson's Marine Terrace.

By the time we reached the bottom, our eyes were well-opened, and we also noticed this wall-bound artifact:

"Presented by
Andrew Lewis Lord Provost
1927"

So regularly spaced, so unlike the other boundary stones; these "S"-marked stones are perplexing. Often, boundary stones are marked with the initials of the landowner, like this one at on the top of the Broad Hill:

Marked "R" to the north, "ND" to the south. Grooved on top.

So these stones in Ferryhill aren't the usual Aberdeen boundary stones, they're quite different. We've got a few theories:

• We've often noticed the words "sundry proprietors" marked on older maps of our town, and we wondered whether the single "S" might refer to that. 
• My old dad thought that the "S" might stand for "Simpson": that's Archibald Simpson, who built Marine Terrace, up above the stones.
• Someone suggested an infrastructure connection, referring to Soil- or Sewer-pipes.
• Similarly infrastructure related - Aberdeen's first source of electricity - the "Corporation Electricity Works" is at the bottom of Ferry-Hill, and so at the bottom of Ferryhill Road. Might the "S" be something to do with that? Substations?
• Aberdeen's first electrified tram ran up Ferryhill Road to the south and Crown Street to the north, it's source of power being the "Corporation Electricity Works" at the bottom (south) end of Crown Street. Perhaps the "S" is related to the trams?
• Ferryhill Road connects with the bottom of Crown Street, and so is close to the Masonic Temple. Amongst many things, the Masons are/were know for "masons marks". Is it possible that the "S" is a latter-day and more literate version of these ancient esoteric signs?

I grew up and went to school in this specific area, and I played on Ferryhill Road and the Marine Terrace green countless times. Since my childhood I've walked up and down Ferryhill Road regularly. It's amazing to me that I'd never noticed these plain-as-your-face marked stones before the day that we walked down Ferryhill Road looking for anything out of the ordinary. 

Neither our local council's Sites and Monuments pages, nor RCHAMS "Scotland's Places" pages mention these "S" marked stones on Ferryhill Place. So, if anyone knows for sure what they are, or has any other theories, we'd be delighted to hear about it. 

Beach Boulevard Tenement, March Stones, Public Art

On our way to visit "By Order of Me", we walked from Castle Hill to Links Road down Cotton Street, parallel to the Beach Boulevard in an area where industry is giving way to retail and residence. On the corner of Cotton Street and Links Road, we spotted something we'd missed last week when we went to look at the big weapon of embarrassed prestige.

The wall has been built over the top of a granite boundary stone, only the 'BD' of its 'ABD' mark is visible. Well, we assume it has an 'ABD' mark. Probability suggests that it is, but there's no definite way of knowing.

Along with the stone we spotted about 15 metres east of this stone, this is one of what we at Other Aberdeen have started calling "unknown stones", that's to say, boundary stones (or "march" stones) which do not appear on Aberdeen City Council's Sites and Monuments Record web pages. The RCHAMS record says "nothing is now visible of these stones".

Across the road, the post-modern tenements which are bounded by the railway, the Beach Boulevard, Links Road and Constitution Street have some nice detail touches on the Boulevard side: porthole stairwell windows, asymmetrical profile and frontage, colourful penthouse storey. Unfortunately, the Links Road frontage is a little less uplifting.

Beach Boulevard

Links Road

But it's inside, in the semi-public, semi-private space of the courtyard/carpark that we find some real gems of placemaking, worthy of this spot's maritime associations, what with it being quite close to the beach and all...

Our town is dotted with new-build tenement developments of this kind, invariably with a car-park and circulation area in the centre (rather than gardens). No doubt there are many similar instances of semi-public art. We'll try to seek them out.

Unknown Stones - Foreshore.

We spotted another couple of 'unknown' boundary stones down by the foreshore the other day when we went to gawp at stranded warship HMS Diamond, becalmed at Telford Dock.

Firstly, on the Queen's Links we noticed this concrete marker which is inscribed:

?(defaced) M
No 3

Being concrete, this stone intrigues us. It's not like the other boundary markers around town and we've not seen any others like it, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. It doesn't appear on Aberdeen City Council's Sites and Monuments Pages, but here's its RCAHMS entry.

Then, on Links Road we spotted this granite marker which is inscribed 'ABD', and also sports an Ordnance Survey benchmark rivet. Of which more later.

Oddly, its RCAHMS entry says that "Nothing is now visible of this boundary stone". We beg to differ. Here it is:

There are probably many other stones like this one, the 25 inch Ordnance Survey of 1869 certainly shows a good few. Over the coming weeks and months, we'll see if we can find some more of them.

Unknown Stones - Rosemount.

The city, having evolved to its current state over many centuries, contains many signs and signifiers, artifacts and arrangements which encode the events of the urban story and which can be understood by anyone who possesses the key to the code. Sometimes the key is apparent, often it is not. A good example of this type of artifact is Aberdeen's system of boundary stones - the March Stones - which we've been exploring over the weeks and months.

All of the March Stones are in plain view, but sometimes they are difficult to see. That's partially because our modern perception is simply not focussed upon estate boundaries; we've no need to know of rights of way along free byways and waterways or any other feudal concerns. During the psychogeographical process of exploring these boundary markers we had to learn where and how to look, where to direct our cognition so that we could locate the artifacts.

So, once we had those eyes switched on (as it were) - once we'd directed our consciousness towards ancient boundaries, where they might be and how they might be marked - we coincidentally found other stone marks and markers, signifiers of past property or infrastructure and not registered on the council's reference pages.

Back in November, we documented some of these 'Unknown Stones' which we'd seen around Ferryhill.

We've been wandering the Green Lanes of Rosemount this week, and we saw these:

Groove-marked stone - Watson Lane

Groove-marked stone - Watson Lane

M&C marked stone - Loanhead Walk Lane

These stones (and many others) appear on the first large scale OS map of Aberdeen, which was drawn in 1869.