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.

Water is Wealth - Woodside vs. Stoneywood

Pond at Stoneywood House

Readers might be aware that the Other Aberdeen HQ is in the upscale heart of downtown Pitmuxton (or "Pitmuckston"), on the south-facing slope of the valley of the Dee, nestled around the Geldieburn (or west branch of the Pitmuxton Burn), between Ferryhill and Garthdee, and encompassing Ruthrieston. Recent psycogeographical expeditions have taken us to the Don-valley mirrors of our home turf - those being Woodside, Bucksburn (or, indeed "Buxburn") and Stoneywood. There's simply a huge amount of stuff for us to discuss about these fascinating parts of Aberdeen, not least of which is the fact that (and reasons why) these areas are but recent additions to the administrative boundaries of the City of Aberdeen.

Divided

When you visit Woodside, its difficult not to be alienated by the A96 Trunk Road which is a gash in the community's social fabric; a dead space designed for machines rather than people. A hot-spot for noise, congestion, pollution, accidents and isolation. At one time, Woodside hosted and boasted a terminus for the much mourned Aberdeen Tram system, and was conveniently connected by that clean, efficient, quiet and cheap transport provision to the rest of the town. Today, the urban dual carriageway separates Woodside even from itself.

And not for the first time has this phenomenon of a transport "upgrade" ill served Woodside. Between 1807 and 1854 the Aberdeenshire Canal ran through Woodside. The canal was a considerable convenience and, indeed, luxury to the inhabitants of Woodside who would swim in it in the summer and skate on it in the winter in addition to using it as a virtually inexhaustible source of clean, safe, fresh water. It was the very centre and continual re-genesis of their already ribbon-developed community. The canal also had the effect of feeding and adding to the natural springs below it on the north face of the Don Valley at Hayton and Tillydrone. Those springs, in turn feeding a gathering system which provided the water supply for Old Aberdeen. Old Aberdeen was at that time also a burgh independent of "New" Aberdeen.

Canal remnant at Station Road, Woodside.

With the building of the Great North & Scotland Railway the greater part of the canal-bed was to become the bed of the railway, and so the canal was closed, drained and (having been established by Act of Parliament in 1796) was abolished in 1854. This had a devastating effect on the springs below it, effectively depriving Woodside and Old Aberdeen of a fresh water supply. Fresh water extraction from the River Don itself was out of the question, the river being already quite heavily industrialised. The provisions of the Acts of Parliament relating to the establishment of both the canal and railway obliged the railway company to remedy any injury done or deficit caused by the building of the railway and so the railway company agreed to make good the loss of water. Various schemes were implemented drawing water from here and there but all proved inadequate, and in a precursive example of short-sighted venality the town council of Old Aberdeen accepted a sum of £1000 from the railway company instead of the water. The fate of Old Aberdeen and Woodside was thus sealed. Ill-conceived attempts by Old Aberdeen council to secure a supply of water for their inhabitants proved more ineffective than even those of the railway company, and so both Old Aberdeen and Woodside lost their independence, being forced to go cap (or rather, water-jug) in hand to the neighbouring burgh of Aberdeen, where the citizens luxuriated in their new state-of-the art high-pressure water supply brought from high up the Dee at Cairnton. Thus deprived of its independent water supply, and mistaking money for wealth, Woodside's autonomy was sacrificed for the agency provided by neighbouring Aberdeen. Old Aberdeen and Woodside were formally absorbed into Aberdeen in 1891.

Aberdeenshire Canal artifact at Stonewood Terrace:
Mile stone: "5 1/2"

Old Mill at Bucksburn House

Contrastingly, Bucksburn and Stoneywood (parts of the parish of Newhills) - a little further upstream on the Don, remained independent of Aberdeen until the big nationwide local government reorganisation of 1975. Stoneywood and Bucksburn are areas characterised by both water and mills; the prior being the source of wealth, the latter being the means to convert that wealth into affluence (or, at least, prosperity).

Following this area's two main water courses to the Don (the Bucksburn itself and the Greenburn) we find mill after mill, manor-house after manor-house in a fractal succession of water-descent driven capital ascent from the small-scale meal-mill at Bucksburn House to the vast internationally-exporting paper-manufacturing enterprise at Stoneywood. The meal-mill at Bucksburn House is long-retired, and the flourmill on the Bucksburn which supplied the famous Chalmers bakery is now the site of a large motel, but the Stoneywood Mill still operates, manufacturing speciality paper. There's a histobunk section on its retail website which is well worth a look, so we recommend it.

Stoneywood Mill

The Stoneywood Mill is the last of the seventeen (we think) papermills which once operated on the banks of the Don, and is one of only two remaining paper mills in Scotland (the other being in Fife).

[edit - correction
Six papermills remain in Scotland. Stoneywood, two in Fife, two on the west coast and one in the Borders.
- Thanks to Mark Chalmers for the info]

The weir and mill-lade are on a bend in the river below Stoneywood House, accessed by a little zig-zag path. The entirity of the capital manifest in the site of this internationally renowned papermaking enterprise was accumulated through the judicious use of the diverted - gathered and mustered, wrangled and re-tasked - waters of the Don and Greenburn as they fall onto and through, past and across the inch upon which the mill stands.

Stoneywood House and Mill-lade intake.
"Water is Wealth"

Greenburn at Bankhead Road.

No Trolls under this bridge.

The water-workings of the mill are, em, "in retirement" now, benign neglect allowing a picturesque and whimsical aspect to subsume the once rigorously industrially rational and practical. Motive power for the mills is derived from a three-phase electricity supply, which is transmitted to it (largely, notwithstanding grid-balancing on the National Grid) from the gas-fired power station on the very north-east corner of Aberdeenshire at Boddam. That power station itself is fed by gas through the integrated North Sea gas pipeline system, by which gas is brought from the Norwegian-controlled sector of the North Sea, the UK being these days a net gas importer.

Benign neglect

Picturesque

While the Stonewood Mill still operates today, we cannot help but see parallels and portents in history, which is of course like all things, fractal in nature. The affluence and prosperity which bootstrapped itself out of the geographical wealth of the location and accumulated in the capital manifest in the mill site was built via autonomous means - the motive power supplied by water seeking to find its own level under gravity - right there, before your eyes and under the control of your hands. That local autonomy has now been surrendered for the agency of electricity which is manufactured remotely. Moreover, that electricity is manufactured from a feedstock which is not under the control even of our nation's agency, nor even that of the supranational agency of the EU. It is controlled by the monopoly state capitalists of a foreign power.

We said in the title that 'Water is Wealth'. Well, it certainly was wealth. Perhaps it will be again some day. No-one can turn off gravity, and we trust that rain and snow on the Cairngorms will not stop any time soon.

Stoneywood Weir. Play it full screen in HD and feel as if you're there.

We spotted these Statoil ads on the back of magazines, click them to read their messages. We think they're supposed to be comforting, but we find them more than a little chilling.

March Stones 44 to 48 ABD.

Bucksburn dam

Over the weeks and months, we've been tracing the line of Aberdeen's medieval boundary. The boundary of the land gifted to Aberdeen as a salve to his conscience by Buchan-harrying Robert the Bruce is marked to this day by a series of boundary stones or "march" stones, some of which are easy to see and find - perhaps you pass one or two of them every single day - others of which are quite hard to get at, and you need to do a bit of research to pinpoint their exact locations and decide how you plan to access them.

Tracing the boundary - the Old Scots word for boundary is "march", hence: "march stones" - is one of the constructs which we hang our psychogeographical excursions upon: by setting out to go somewhere which is off the beaten track and for no other reason than just for itself, we can find out a great deal about the four-dimensional shape of the town we live in (the fourth dimension being time, heritage, the historical aspect) and we find out about ourselves in relation to all that.

There's all sorts of histobunk about the march stones available online, and we recommend having a look at both this article in the Leopard Magazine, and this heritage trail leaflet (pdf) from Aberdeen City Council. Both are excellent sources of information and both were compiled and written by our local council's Chris Croly. We thank and congratulate Chris for his work, without which we probably wouldn't have been able to do what we've done in tracing the location of each stone.

Howes Road
Gorge-ous (apologies).

The most recent stone (stone no. 43 ABD) we wrote about was in residential Bucksburn, and the next stone is in a small semi-rural greenbelt oasis - the gorge through which the Bucksburn itself flows. The Howes Road, now closed to motor traffic, runs along the base of the gorge and connects the 20th century housing scheme areas of Northfield and Sheddocksly with the once-independent burgh of Bucksburn.

An etymological note: Howes Road - howe meaning hollow or hole, dip, depression.
Bucksburn - buck from the gaelic boc meaning leap or fall.

March Stone 44 ABD is on the west side of the Howes Road, about half way between Bucksburn House with it's spendid dam and old mill and Bucksburn Police Station, where the Howes Road meets the A96 Inverurie Road.

March stone 44 ABD. Looks quite new. It is. 

If stone 44 ABD seems crisp and new-looking in its appearance, that's because it is.  According to the Council this stone was placed on the east side of the burn in 2006, the older stone on the west side being judged to be too hazardous to visit. Well. We'll be the judge of that!

You can see both new and old stones in this pic, with the burn between them.

So, over on the west side of the burn, this gate leads to...

A barely-used path down to the stone... 

Indeed, a little difficult to get to - and probably not possible in wet conditions. You need to be fairly fit and well-shod and sure footed. But we thought not too bad. The engraving "44 ABD" on the stone is quite hard to make out, and the stone has an Ordnance Survey leveling rivet embedded in its top-face. But, yes! Two for the price of one at 44 ABD.

Bucksburn Valley
boardwalk.

When we trace the boundaries, we are, of course, widening the boundaries of our own experience and horizons, if only in a small way, and we find our viewpoints opening up to new interpretations of things, artifacts and behaviours which we might have previously dismissed as irrelevant or worse. For instance, the now pedestrianised Howes Road connects with the Bucksburn Valley Paths network, which we've mentioned once or twice before. One of the many reasons why the Bucksburn Valley Paths network has now reached the splendid levels of outdoor access which it has now achieved was the need to provide a safe offroad means for school pupils from Kingswells to get to Bucksburn Acadamy (Bucksburn and Kingswells being surprisingly close as the crow flies, but rather far as the motorist drives).

Being in the mindset to understand human geographical boundaries - the delineations between discrete communities or spheres of interest or whatever - and having opened our minds to the arbitrary posturing of the tribal warlords who became the feudal lords who became the local civic worthies and all of whom made and maintained the marches for their own reasons, we have predisposed and conditioned ourselves to find where boundary markers might be put, and how the boundaries flow between places of interest. We noticed a new graffito on a stone about equidistant between the two communities.

We can say with some certainty that this is a modern boundary stone - its intent and execution corresponding analogously with those of antiquity and near-antiquity - this new mark is perfectly legible and as visible as a flaming beacon to those who feel the necessity to mark a boundary for their own reasons.
This marks the line between areas of special interest for the young people of Kingswells and Bucksburn.

They have felt it necessary to mark their boundary for exactly the same reason as those men in the past who felt it necessary to mark the extent of their land and influence. It's the same thing. It's as important today to the people who made those marks as it was to those who made the marks of the past; there is no practical difference. Had spray-paint been available to our ancestors, they would have used it. Nothing changes; we are territorial animals and at times it is clear that our free will is subsumed by our nature.

A short way up the Howes Road (south), just past Bucksburn House and its dam, a narrow path leads between a farmer's field and Auchmill Golf Course and after a couple of hundred metres deposits us at the site of stone 45 ABD.

It's got a leveling rivet, too.

The Auchmill Golf Course is a municipal course built and landscaped over and among the remains of the Dancing Cairns Quarry, which we examined before. (Worth a read if you haven't already, if you can be bothered.)

Dancing Cairns Quarry / Auchmill Golf Club

Bonnyview Drive.

Nipping through a snicket off of the golf course and on to Bonnyview Drive we enter the town's Northfield estate, where, with a bit of head-scratching and walking up and down looking suspicious and asking local passers-by we eventually find stone 46 ABD, close to the wall of someone's house, in their garden.

Stone 47 ABD is against the fence of someone's back yard, down a snicket off Bonnyview Drive.

And crossing Provost Rust Drive to get to Marchburn Drive ("March" "Burn" - geddit?) at its corner with Old Town Place we find stone 48 ABD. The "burn" along which the "march" runs is the Scatterburn - more on this next time.

And at that point, having seen enough stones for the day, we were blessed by what we noticed next. It was October when we visited the site, and the weather had just turned cold for the first time in the year. Just above the roofs of the pleasant family homes, semi-detached post-war social housing - arranged around open grass playparks in horseshoes and crescents, cul-de-sacs and circles - the sun appeared to take on a smeared, dynamic appearance, as if rendered by an action painter. Five miles high in the sky, drifting hexagon nanocrystal plates of ice fluttered and fell gently downwards, prisming the wan sunlight through twenty-two degrees. The more we looked - sunglasses on, averting our eyes from the sun itself, holding up our hands to shade it away - the more we could see an arc around the sun; a sun halo! At the leftmost and rightmost edges of the halo, smears of rainbow color spread in a brightening splash; red on the inside through white to a blue-white brilliant sideways-spearing smudge. We were delighted to realise we was being treated to our first ever sight of parhelia; sundogs!

As we observed the phenomenon first brighten and then fade over about five minutes, we shared it with a young family who'd come out to see what we weirdos were gawping at from the end of their garden - passing our sunglasses around and wowing and oooohing we considered what we were seeing. We thought about how the interaction of scales from the unimaginably vast to the unobservably miniscule created this display, seemingly just for us who took the time to stand still and marvel. We wondered just how many other pairs of eyes were seeing that same halo, those same sundogs.

That night, we considered the recurring cycles of human activity, marking and re-marking old and new boundaries in the landscape we'd traversed, we thought of the cycles within cycles and prompted by the sun-dogs we thought of the cosmic cycles too - the whorls of primordial material which aggregated into the rocks and stones and water and gas that founded and maintain life on earth and the sun above which sustains all cycles of activity, however grandiose or trivial. Important or inconsequential all items and intentions, all actions and philosophies come from the same ancient stardust source. The fingerprints of the motions of the people and the events and everything that ever went on or goes on or will, the guidelines of our nature that constrain our free-will - all were encoded first in that condensing cloud of primordial dust and gas. No - encoded first in those uncountable previous star cycles; that dust and gas itself in turn the remnants of previous cycles of starbirth and death; the surface detail, the bloating darkness, the imperfections on the face of the big bang itself.

Imperfections on the face of the Big Bang.

Woonerf for the Denburn Valley Development.

Word comes from the European Commission that, for the sake of the future, for the sake of sustainability and for the sake of liveability, it is their aspiration that petrol and diesel vehicles be banned from urban centres by 2050.

As radical pedestrians and utility cyclists, naturally, this is exactly the sort of thing we want to hear. This weekend, the taste of exhaust pollution in the centre of Aberdeen was quite disgusting, the noise-stress was unbearable and the vast majority of people (pedestrians) were, as usual, crammed into their tiny pavement allocation by the car drivers who use the space allocated to them on our town centre's roads to the exclusion of all other potential utility that might be gained from that precious urban space.

Future carpark.

In the light of this new anti-motor transport policy development in Europe, it seems all the more perverse that Aberdeen's political and business interests are intent on pushing ahead with urban dual carriageway projects which will deliver large numbers of high-speed drivers into the town centre at a higher rate than ever before. This, of course, will necessitate the creation of more car parking space, which will in turn induce more journeys by car into the city centre. It's like the 1960's version of urban planning. Quite embarrassing, really. One of the places earmarked for a big new car park (sometimes euphamistically termed or "traffic hub") appears to be the city's historic Union Terrace Gardens. This is deplorable.

A radical daydream creeps into our consciousness, a vision of a pleasant city centre which is proud to display both its heritage and its faith in the future. One of the major arguments put forward by those who want to redevelop Union Terrace Gardens is the fact that they are 'poorly utilised'. Well, we're not sure that a city park loses utility when unoccupied by people - it continues to provide ecological services; oxygen generation, urban wildlife habitat, sound baffling and the like - but, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and it has been pointed out elsewhere that the Denburn urban dual carriageway is, likewise, 'poorly utilised'.

A woefully underused urban asset.
No pavements. WTF?

Another argument for decking over the Denburn valley is to conceal the unsightly urban motorway. But, wait a minute - why conceal something which is barely used? Why not just do away with it? Keeping such a big road seems a bit, em, short sighted when private petrol vehicles are to be banned from town centres in less than 40 years time. We say dig it up and lay turf. We say plough it up and plant trees. A small service road on the woonerf model could be retained for emergency vehicles and utility services, but, most of the time it would be used by pedestrians for pleasant sunlit walks in the serene and valley. Maybe the Denburn itself could run in the open once more.

Aberdeen Woonerf!

A "woonerf" is a shared space urban landscape - it's a policy pioneered in the Netherlands in the 1970's. "Woonerf" is a term increasingly used in the English-speaking world to mean an area where motorists have priority equal to or lesser than other road-users, thus increasing the livability of the city at the human scale, even as residential density increases. Based upon principals of filtered permeability and shared space for transport corridors and thoroughfares these woonerf areas were pioneered in Groningen and other towns in the Netherlands, Flanders and Germany to encourage walking and cycling by giving them a more attractive environment free from traffic and a time and convenience advantage over car driving. Why can't we have that?

A further argument put forward for decking over the Denburn valley is that the current gardens are often shaded - and this is true in the evenings. With our new plan to turn the existing dual carrageway into a new contemporary garden, the Denburn Valley Gardens (if you will) would encompass both east and west slopes of the valley, so some part of the gardens would always be in direct sunlight. The existing Victorian gardens would be fully retained at practically no cost, and when the sunlight moves off them, garden users can cross over to new, modern gardens on the east bank, terracing down from Belmont Street, accessed by footbridges over the railway line which itself would be retained lending scenographic drama to our showpiece city centre and displaying the latest tilting train TGV technology.

One of the intentions of the European Commission's policy is to move half of journeys under 200 miles onto rail. Retaining sight of the railway (and, perhaps, new platforms for passenger embarkation) would display the fact that rail travel is at the heart of our city's vision of the future - not the dead-end car-dependent motorcentric vision which today predominates to the detriment of our environment.

And so our radical daydream turns into achievable vision. We're not joking. This is now our stated vision for Union Terrace Gardens and the Denburn Valley, including Upper Denburn (you'll be hearing a lot more about Upper Denburn over the next few years - you heard it here first!).

It would look a little bit like this original human-scale vision for the valley, with greensward and gardens on both sides, a tiny Denburn Road woonerf full of dawdling pedestrians and the latest high-tech railway on display:

We'll be examining this radical new proposal in a bit more detail over the coming weeks with site-visits and the like. We'll do this in comparison with similar projects which have been delivered elsewhere, such as Cheonggyecheon Park in Seoul:

This is more-or-less exactly what we have in mind.

 The "High Line" in Manhattan:

The "High Line" regenerated a disused railway viaduct.
At Denburn, we will turn a disused dual carriageway into a park.

We will also look at our new woonerf proposal in the context of the City Gardens Project "Turning Vision Into Reality" presentation material (particularly that provided by Charles Landry), which we believe supports our vision for high-liveability, human scale, mixed use, walkable places of refuge and tranquility, where creativity can flourish.

Here are some of Charles Landry's slides, as presented to ACSEF and as available to download from the City Gardens Project website:

High-liveability - Mixed use - Places of refuge

Human scale - Walkability

Comforting to read this.

Hardgate Well, and Another Hardgate Well

All the little and big stories, all the little and big artifacts, all the places and all the people. Woven together where the past meets the present and gathers its forces to generate the future. That's "Other Aberdeen"; that's what the psychogoegraphical toolbox we're building is intended to disclose. We are all part of the process, tools in the box, part of the story of the town.

That's why we're really pleased that 'Other Aberdeen' has inspired a reader to share his story of a place, an artifact and of people. It brings it all together - that's what Other Aberdeen's for. Today, many people seem to think that a town is merely the sum of all the business activity within it. Part of Other Aberdeen's mission is to demonstrate that this is wrong. Reader Bill Watt has joined in by clicking the e-mail link to the left of the page and sending a message to otheraberdeen@gmail.com with this story and photos:

When I first became aware of the intended destruction of a local landmark ‘The Hardgate Well’ I shot off the following series of photographs for posterity. 

Readers may find it interesting to know that the Hardgate Well had a brother/sister well just across the road which I very nearly fell into back in the early 1980’s.

 How I almost fell into the well; My Father (Bill Watt Senior) was employed by the owner of a house just across the road from the ‘Hardgate Well’ to renovate his basement. Part of the renovation involved lifting all the granite flagstone flooring in the basement rooms and hallway.

The need to remove the flagstones was caused by rats or voles, not sure which, tunnelling everywhere just under the flagstones causing the flagstones to sink and tilt in all the rooms and hallway, the intended solution was to remove all the flagstones, level the ground and pour in 4-6 inches of concrete to replace the flagstones thus preventing the rats/voles from returning, question being how were the wee devils getting under the flagstones in the first place.

 As my father was getting on and didn’t want to carry out the heavy work of lifting and removing all the large granite basement floor flagstones he approached me (Bill Watt Jnr) to assist him.

We estimated the removal would take a couple of days as the flagstones covered a couple of rooms and a hallway, each flagstone was about 2’ x 3’.

My job was to lift each flagstone and walk it out the back door and onto the Hardgate there the flagstone would be stacked until someone collected them to be re-used, probably in someone’s garden..

Removing the flagstones took two full days. To complete the job ready for the concrete delivery I worked into the evening of the second day, no electricity, no one to help me, I was all alone and the basement was getting dark, finally I had just one last flagstone to remove at the end of the hall.

The procedure was the same for removing all the flagstones, it was, dig my pickaxe just under the edge of the slab, prise it up just enough to get my fingers under the stone then with all my strength lift the slab and take a step forward to get my body behind the slab for the last shove to get it upright against the wall, as I had done with all the other slabs, except this time as I lifted and was ready to take my step forward I heard a small plop, like a small stone dropping into water! This noise saved my life, if I had taken the step forward I would have dropped down into a well with the slab slamming shut on top of me, crushing me and or knocking me out, once in the well I doubt if I could lift the slab again as the well was 4’ to 5’ deep with slippery walls and three quarters full of crystal clear water.

Could this be where the rats or voles were coming from? We never did find out. Next day I showed my father and the owner of the house the well, I managed to get a photograph before I was instructed to fill the well with rubble before the cement arrived. You may think from the picture that the hole is an old drain, which is possible, however this does not explain why the hole is so deep and why the water so clear, in addition no one knew it was there as it had been covered by granite flagstones for a number of years, probably since the house was built which was at least 200 years ago.

With our grateful thanks to Bill Watt for the story and photos. He retains all rights.

The well(s) of this slope featured in the notorious Battle of Justice Mills (pdf) during the Civil Wars, the battle being a curtain-raiser on a dark period of occupation for and atrocities against the then people of Aberdeen.

The original Ordnance Survey of 1867 shows many wells along the spring line at Justice Mill Lane and Bon Accord Terrace on the southern facing slope of the Glen of the Holburn (or Ferryhill Burn, or Howburn or Justice Mill Burn), today's Union Glen. It makes a fascinating connection to the past that Bill and his father discovered one of these wells while making a property fit to face the future. It's all the more gratifying because today we can spread the story in this most modern of ways.

We've heard that locally-headquartered multinational oil service company Wood Group has leased space in the new office block development which now occupies the site of the derelict buildings shown in the first of Bill's photos above.

We're pleased that commerce/industry has returned at last to this historic part of Aberdeen. Now, it has a future.