Skulferatu #16 - Cammo Tower, Cammo Estate, Edinburgh

 

Lying on the outskirts of Edinburgh, as you head North towards South Queensferry and Fife, sits Cammo Estate.  This was once a private estate, but was bequeathed to the National Trust and then given to Edinburgh Council.  It is now maintained by the council as a wilderness park.

 

Cammo House circa 1900

 

The remains of Cammo House

 

In the estate there are the remains of Cammo House.  This was built in 1693 for John Menzies and at that time had fourteen bedrooms, four public rooms, a smoking room, a billiards room, bathrooms, a kitchen, a wash-house, a laundry, cellars, larders, pantries and servants' accommodation.  A surrounding park and landscaped garden were then laid out around the house. 

 

The house went through several owners before being bought by the Clark family.  In 1909 David Bennet Clark divorced his wife Margaret Maitland-Tennent and she and her son Percival kept the house.  However, shortly after the divorce Margaret dismissed the staff and moved into a caravan with her son.  The house was left, still full of valuable paintings and antiques.  Over the years it was completely neglected and was broken into on numerous occasions.  During the break-ins it was vandalised and damaged, with various valuables also being stolen.  In 1955 Margaret died and the house was left to Percival.  He lived as a recluse with a pack of around thirty dogs, which were given a free run of the house.  On his death in 1975, the house and the estate were left to the National Trust.  In 1977 most of the house was destroyed by fire and the remains were later pulled down, leaving only the door frame and lower wall.  In 1980 the house and the estate were given to Edinburgh Council by the National Trust.

 

Cammo House is thought to have been the inspiration for ‘The House of Shaws’ in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped.

 

On the estate there is also the very picturesque Cammo Tower.  This is a 19^th Century Water Tower built to supply water to Cammo House.

 

A view of Cammo Tower

Cammo Tower

A view of Cammo Tower

 

On my wanders around the estate, I left a Skulferatu in the wall of Cammo Tower with a view of the nearby hill.

 

Skulferatu #16

 

Skulferatu #16 in wall of Cammo Tower

Google Map showing location of Skulferatu

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are:

 

Latitude 55.954275

Longitude -3.321390

 

Skulferatu #15, St Baldred's Cradle, Peffer Sands, East Lothian

 

The thing I love about working in East Lothian is that there are so many beautiful places nearby to go for a lunchtime walk.  My walk today was along Peffer Sands, which is a great big sandy beach with lots of sand dunes.  It is a quiet and isolated spot with amazing views over the Forth and down to the Bass Rock.   

 

View down Peffer Sands to the Bass Rock

 

I walked along the beach and up onto the rocky outcrop at the southern end of the beach.  This area is known as St Baldred’s Cradle. 

View from St Baldred’s Cradle

 

View over rocks at St Baldred’s Cradle

 

Here St Baldred is believed to have spent some years in a remote hermitage.  He obviously liked the view if he came here, as it’s still pretty remote and out of the way.  There is supposedly an ancient cairn here, but I’ve never actually seen it.  However, I do find this is often the case with ancient landmarks, unless they are pointed out to me, I just don’t see them.    

 

Today’s Skulferatu was left in a crack in one of the rocky outcrops overlooking the Bass Rock.

 

Skulferatu #15

 

Skulferatu #15 in rocks at St Baldred’s Cradle

Google Map showing location of Skulferatu

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are:

 

Lattitude 56.023742

Longitude -2.584464

 

Skulferatu #14 - Figgate Park, Edinburgh

It has been snowing.  The snow has turned to slush and ice.  So today I didn’t venture far, my walk taking me through Portobello and up to Figgate Park and around the pond there.

 

View over pond at Figgate Park to Arthur’s Seat

 

Figgate Park is nestled between Portobello and Duddingston.  The main East Coast railway line from Edinburgh to London runs past the park, and it is surrounded on the other sides by various housing estates. The park is about a kilometre long and at the east end there is a large pond.  This used to be a claypit, which supplied the potteries in Portobello.  It is now a habitat for lots of birds.  The park was formally opened in 1938.

 

The name of the park comes from the burn that runs through it and from the old name for the land it sits in, Figgate Muir.  Figgate Muir was an area of land on the east side of Edinburgh that now forms the main part of Portobello.  In Cassells Old and New Edinburgh, Vol.3 (1883) it is described as ‘…a once desolate expanse of muir-land…which latterly was covered with whins and furze, bordered by a broad sandy beach and extending from Magdalene Bridge on the south perhaps to where Seafield now lies, on the north-west.’ 

 

The park was busy today with everyone doing their daily Covid walk, or slip and slide in the slushy mess of last nights snow.  Disconsolate looking ducks sat on the ice of the pond while a group of swans swam in the small area that hadn’t frozen over.  Noisy seagulls circled around hoping to spot someone throwing something edible to the other birds.  Children screamed and demanded attention from their worn out parents, while an occasional train roared past. 

 

Boardwalk round pond at Figgate Park

 

View over pond to pylon and powerlines

Disconsolate ducks and selfish swans

 

I found some quiet places in the park to take a few photographs.  Then in another quiet spot, in between some reeds on the bank of the pond, I left my Skulferatu.  I placed it on some pockmarked, icy snow, so it should fall down between the reeds and into the pond when the snow melts.

 

Skulferatu #14

Skulferatu #14 on snow by pond

 

Google Map showing location of Skulferatu

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are:

Latitude 55.949871

Longitude -3.124324 

Skulferatu #13 - Victoria Swing Bridge, Leith Docks, Edinburgh

 

Today’s Skulkferatu ended up somewhere a little bit different, on a structure from the industrial past of Leith – the Victoria Swing Bridge.  This crosses the water of Leith just down from the popular area of The Shore, where there are many restaurants and eateries.

View down Water of Leith

Victoria Swing Bridge, Leith

The bridge was built between 1871 and 1874 and is constructed of wrought iron.  It is a swing bridge, meaning it could swing open to allow passing boats through.  It was hydraulically operated and the power for this was supplied from a small power station building that sits nearby.  Originally a railway track and a private road ran down the middle of the structure and there was a walkway on both sides.  The bridge no longer swings open and is nowadays solely for pedestrian use. 

Victoria Swing Bridge and old Whaling Harpoon

View down Victoria Swing Bridge

Unfortunately, the bridge is now in a state of disrepair and though there have been various campaigns to have it restored, nothing has yet been done.  It is currently on the Buildings at Risk register.

 

I left a Skulferatu balanced on a rivet in one the beams of the bridge.

Skulferatu #13

Skulferatu #13 on Victoria Swing Bridge, Leith

Google Map showing location of Skulferatu #13

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are:

Latitude 55.978708

Longitude -3.170241

Skulferatu #11 - Hangman's Crag, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh

I was out for a walk around Holyrood Park, and while there wandered past a spot known as Hangman's Crag.  Leaving the main path, I crossed over a small fence and took a narrow path up to the top of this rocky outcrop. I have walked up here a few times before, but always in the summer when it has been dry.  Though it was steep, it was a relatively easy walk.  Not so in winter.  Everything was slippery and wet and a worked up into a mass of mud from all the thousands of people who have been walking up this path in these Covid ridden times.  Thankfully, on the most treacherous part of the path, there were lots of tree branches to hold onto.  If there hadn’t been, I’d have ended up flat on my arse in the mud.

Hangman's Crag, with Duddingston Kirk in the background

Hangman’s Crag sounds like the name came from the place being a site of execution, but actually it comes rather from the sad tale of one of Edinburgh's much hated and loathed executioners.

 

In the late Seventeenth Century in Edinburgh, one of the city's hangmen was a young man who had come from a wealthy and well-to-do family from Melrose in the Scottish Borders.  On his father's death, he had inherited the estate and a great deal of money.  However, the young man had extravagant tastes and wasted the whole fortune on living the high life.  When not drinking, entertaining and visiting one of the city’s many whorehouses he was gambling away vast amounts of money.  Soon he was broke.  There was no money left.  To survive he had to move to lowly lodgings and sell off his belongings, though he did keep one set of fine clothes.  The young man then had to do what no gentleman should ever have to do, he had to work for a living. So, he took the job as the city hangman.  This was a particularly odious and unpopular job at that time, as many of those sentenced to die were innocent men fallen foul of higher powers or those whose religion was not in keeping with the main orthodoxy.  Even in normal times the city hangman was seen as someone on the fringes of society, on the same level as common criminals and prostitutes.

 

The young man took up this office and performed his duties of execution, flogging and all the other rather unpleasant sentences ordered by the courts.  Now, a man has to be of a certain mentality to carry out these sorts of duties and not be affected or destroyed by the torment he is inflicting.   This young man found escape from the guilt of his actions and from the lowly office he now occupied in life, by donning the one set of fine clothes he had kept and mixing with the gentlefolk of Edinburgh.   He would dress up and mingle with the groups of Edinburgh society who played golf in the evenings at Bruntsfield Links, and for a few hours he could feel he was back in his place in society.  He could switch off from the haunting screams of those whose lives he was paid to end.  Those he was paid to maim or torture or humiliate.

 

One day while out at Bruntsfield Links, the young man was recognised by a group playing golf.  One of their friends had recently been sentenced to death for some minor offence, and they realised that the young man playing golf alongside them was none other than the man who had hanged him.  They shouted at him and pointed out to the others there who he was.  They insulted him, spat at him, threw stones at him and chased him away.  They told him never to come back, that he was a disgrace and lower than even the most common and base criminal who had dangled from his rope.    The young man ran off humiliated and ashamed.  He made his way to the quiet solitude of one of the crags overlooking Duddingston Loch.  There he contemplated his life and what he had become.  Falling into a state of great despair he threw himself off the crag to his death.  His body was then found there the next day.  After this the crag he had thrown himself from was always referred to as the Hangman’s Crag.

View up path to top of Hangman's Crag - with Crow Hill in the background

View from Hangman's Crag over Duddingston Loch

 

Near the top of the crag, I found a hollow in a group of rocks near the cliff edge and there I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk.

Skulferatu #11

Skulferatu #11 in a hollow between rocks at the crags edge

Google map showing location of Skulferatu #11

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are:

Latitude 55.941027

Longitude -3.154901

Skulferatu #9 - Nelson Monument, Calton Hill, Edinburgh

 

Path up to top of Calton Hill from Regent Road

Nelson's Monument, Calton Hill

I have many fond memories of Calton Hill and days of misspent youth there.  On a cold, February morning in 1982 the kid’s TV programme Swap Shop was live on the hill in front of the National Monument.  I have a memory of the main stage being a boxing ring, not metaphorically, but it literally was an actual boxing ring.  We then had the excitement of watching the Revillos mime to their song ‘Bongo Brain.’  There is an extremely lo-fi and wobbly video of this available on YouTube.

 

The Revillos on Swap Shop at Calton Hill, Edinburgh

In the summers of the mid 1980s my friends and I used to go up the hill and sit by the pillars of the National Monument of Scotland (or Edinburgh’s Disgrace, as we knew it).  There we’d smoke fags and drink cheap, nasty lager and think we were cool.  We were not cool, but rather just a bunch of slightly pissed and noisy teenage geeks.

Other than the National Monument, Calton Hill is cluttered with exciting, old buildings such as the Dugald Stewart Monument, the Old Observatory House, the City Observatory, and Nelson’s Monument.  It also has some spectacular views over Edinburgh.

View from Calton Hill over Edinburgh to Leith

 

A brief history of the main buildings is –

 

The National Monument of Scotland was built to commemorate the Scottish soldiers and sailors who died in the Napoleonic Wars.  It is modelled on the Parthenon in Athens and work began on it in 1826.  However, by 1829 the money for its construction had run out and it was left unfinished. 

The National Monument of Scotland or Scotland's Disgrace

 

The Dugald Stewart Monument is a memorial to the Scottish Philosopher and mathematician Dugald Stewart (1753-1828).  Regarded as an important figure in the Scottish Enlightenment he published many philosophical essays.  Here’s a little quote from him – ‘There are very few original thinkers in the world, or ever have been; the greatest part of those who are called philosophers, have adopted the opinions of some who went before them.’

The Dugald Stewart Memorial

 

The Old Observatory House was designed by the architect James Craig and was originally built as a family home.  It was then used by astronomers for a short time.  It is now rented out as holiday accommodation.

 

The City Observatory was built in 1818 and was used until 1896 when due to light pollution from the city centre, it was decided to move to the Royal Observatory at Blackford Hill.

 

Nelson’s Monument was built between 1807 and 1816 to commemorate Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victory over the French and Spanish Fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and his death during the same battle.  In 1852 a mechanised time ball was added that was synchronised with the one o’clock gun fired daily from Edinburgh Castle.  The time ball dropped daily allowing ships in Leith Harbour to set their chronometers by it.

Nelson's Monument

 

I left the Skulferatu, that came on my walk in a gap in a tree, just on the hill leading up to Nelson’s Monument.

 

Skulferatu #9

Skulferatu #9 in split in tree

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are: Latitude 55.954352 Longitude -3.182646.

Google Map showing location of Skulferatu

 

Skulferatu #8 - Warriston Cemetery, Edinburgh

 

I do like a good wander round an old graveyard, and not just because I’m an ageing Goth.  They are great places for quiet contemplation and for getting one’s life into perspective.  As you walk round tomb after tomb of the great and the good, the self-important and the lowly it really does show you that life is just so fleeting.  That death not only comes to us all, but is also a great leveller.  Yes, some will have monuments towering up above them, but beneath they are just bones, clay or dust.  One day that is all any of us will be.  So, on that happy note, my latest walk was to and around Warriston Cemetery in Edinburgh.  This is one of my favourite of Edinburgh’s old cemeteries, as it is quiet and relatively peaceful, or was until Covid came along and everyone was looking for new places to discover and walk around.

Bridge leading into part of Warriston Cemetery

Gravestones covered in ivy

 

The cemetery is full of the graves of many of Edinburgh’s Victorian elite.  There are artists, poets, mathematicians and scientists lying in their damp graves alongside the merchants and lawyers of the city.  With the wonders of Google, you can look up lots of them and find out bits and pieces about their lives.

Gravestones in Warriston Cemetery

 

On this visit I came across the grave of the Nichol family.  I was intrigued by the few lines written about John Walter Nichol – ‘Assistant Astronomer in the Government “Venus” Expedition to Honolulu in 1874.  So, I had to look this up to see what it was all about.

Gravestone for Nichol Family

Inscription for John Walter Nichol

 

In 1874 a group of British scientists travelled to Hawaii to observe the transit of Venus.  This is when the planet Venus passes directly between the sun and a ‘superior planet.’   When this happens Venus can be seen from Earth as a small, black dot moving across the sun.  The purpose of the expedition to Hawaii was to obtain an accurate estimate of the distance from the Earth to the sun.  

It would seem that the tropical climate and the insects of Hawaii did not agree with the British scientists and Nichol is mentioned in a letter by  one of his colleagues who writes that – ‘…When it became necessary to commence the computing we found the mosquitos so troublesome it was almost impossible to do anything.  Nichol presented a mass of sores over his face and hands and Ramsden couldn’t sit at the table five minutes.’  (Michael E Chauvin - The Hawaiian Journal of History – Page 199).  The scientists were also disturbed from their work on numerous occasions by King Kalakaua of Hawaii and the locals, who all took a keen interest in what they were doing.  However, despite all of this the scientists carried out their observations and detailed and noted their calculations.

 

A collection of the documents, photographs and sketches from this expedition were digitised and are available from the Cambridge Digital Library.  Many of the sketches depict Nichol and other members of the team, as do the photographs. These can be accessed at -

https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/tov/1

 

By coincidence, while Googling for info on John Walter Nichol I found that there was a talk by Dr Rebekah Higgitt that evening about him and the expedition to Hawaii.  For anyone interested in details of the expedition and Nichol’s life and career, this talk is now available on the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh’s website.  From this I learnt that Nichol was known as Walter, rather than John and seemed to be a popular member of the group who went out to Hawaii.  That before joining this expedition he had been a shipping clerk at Leith, before going on to work as the second Assistant at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh.  After the expedition to Hawaii he returned to Britain with the other members of the team and they all wrote up their findings at Greenwich.  He then went to Leipzig where he studied under Professor Karl Bruhns.

 

On his return to Britain he died suddenly of a pulmonary infection on 4 November 1878.

 

I left Nichol and his family a Skulferatu.

Skulferatu #8

Skulferatu #8 by the Nichol's gravestone

 

As I then walked around the graveyard, I found that on another old grave someone had left a small, handmade ceramic cat. Maybe someone else leaving little mementos?

Google Map showing location of Skulferatu

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are: Latitude 55.968509 Longitude -3.196384.