OtherAberdeen: lanes

Wednesday, 4 May 2011

Up the Stairs to an Understanding of Topography #01

Desire lines diverge

As we walk the concrete, adamant and flagstone pavements of Aberdeen, from time to time our feet stray with purpose onto grass and topsoil desire lines - on the beaten track unrecognised by those who have placed the paving, mis-planned our best route from place to place.

And just as often, we find our feet climbing or descending the many staircases of the public townscape. When gradients become too steep for feet to comfortably and safely walk an incline and the ground beneath them breaks up into the discontinuities of riser and tread, those stringer-held steps can help us to a topographical understanding of Aberdeen. An understanding of human interventions in the landscape - building up artificial features; bridges and causeways, embankments and revetments to span hollows and valleys, to terrace inclines or consolidate banks and tame hills. And we can reach an understanding of those banks, inclines, hollows, valleys and hills themselves - the treads and risers whisper to us a story of the three; no-four (not forgetting time, not forgetting heritage) dimensional shape of our urban environment.

And so a mental acquisition is gained and augmented by the agency of our calves and thighs and their unconscious and unblended apprehension of scarp and glen: the sixth psychogeographical sense is fed by unconscious muscle memory and conscious eye.

Up from Virginia Street to Castle Terrace, up Castle Hill. These steps, according to Aberdeen Civic Society's Alex Mitchell, may well correspond to the former Hangman's Brae, where a house was allocated to the town executioner.

Up from Ruthrie Terrace to Ruthrieston Road, vaulting over the Old Deeside Line disused railway (now re-used as Sustrans National Cycle Network route 195). Up from the broad flat valley of the Ruthrieston Burn (its flood-plain occupied by Asda, carparks, playing fields and a trunk road today). Ruthrieston Road connects the Foords o' Dee (fording the river-shallows where newly feudal modern medieval Ruadri extorted his licensed tax and gained his power) with the south-western marches (ancient borderlands) of Aberdeen along Countesswells Road. But who was the countess?

Devanha Lane climbs step-terraced between unremarkable modern tenements on the après post-industrial sites where brewery and foundry and cattle-exporting/royalty-importing railway terminus once helped built Ferryhill's wealth.

All the way up to splendid Devanha House on the summit of Ferryhill itself from the once tidal mudflat - long-since railway re-claimed - land at the southern end of South College Street, the ancient right-of way connects the southern turnpike road and Wellington Bridge to the heart of Ferryhill.

We've identified about 36 sites like these around town, we'll document them bit by bit over the coming weeks. Nominations are welcome.

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Aberdeen Green Lanes

With the last fortnight's snow in Aberdeen still lying on pavements and roofs, the town - while looking beautiful in this frosty cowl - isn't ideal for walking about much. Our lives are literally lacking color, and there's not many sunlight hours in the December day. We're feeling a bit stuck-in and pent-up, as it were.

As an antidote, I indulged in the following train of thought which was set in motion when writing the "Personalities" post, with the Aberdeen Adamant pavingstone. My wandering thoughts went here...

One place where the Aberdeen Adamant paving stones were notably used (pdf) is the borough of Haringey in London. A few years back, some friends of ours lived in Haringey and when we visited, we found that it's an exceedingly colourful place, a mix of diverse cultures, a place full of edges. We thought it fascinating.

The main drag through the borough is a street called "Green Lanes". We considered this name most evocative, bringing to mind as it does a time before the urban development of Greater London had subsumed the pre-existing villages which are now the hubs of its semi-suburban boroughs.

Today, there's a Green Lanes movement in England (eek! crappy code warning!) which lobbies to keep unsurfaced roads open for motor vehicles, while we in Scotland have a statutory right of responsible access which seems to work pretty well for all sensible users.

During our psychogeographical wanderings around Aberdeen, we've discovered that the town is full of our own surviving "Green Lanes" system, which extends from the suburbs to the very heart of the town centre, forming a network of urban refuges away from noise and pollution and everyday concern. These linear bucolic(ish) havens - penetrating the modern town like ancient unbypasses - form a web of wildlife corridors and allow a surprising level of relaxed access to many places in the town. These routes differ from the rest of the town, which they are at right angles to. Seek them out; let them take you over, under and through, Aberdeen.

Here are just a few: