The past, present and future of the Caledonian pinewoods of Mar Lodge Estate NNR
Few landscapes in Scotland are as evocative or as celebrated as the Caledonian pinewoods. In these places, pines have survived uninterrupted since the ice retreated just over 10,000 years ago. These are landscapes of great ecological value, but they are also storied, mythologised, and even misunderstood. They have also suffered at human hands with just a few precious fragments remaining across the Highlands.
The pinewoods of Mar Lodge Estate NNR are no exception. These woods have risen and fallen over the centuries, and now are rising again, thanks to decades of work from dedicated people from all walks of life. In this talk, Andrew Painting, Conservation Officer with National Trust for Scotland and author of ‘Regeneration: the Rescue of a Wild Land’, will delve into the past, present and future of Mar Lodge Estate’s pinewoods, and discuss what place they might have in a warming world.
17 BHS members participated in the final BHS summer excursion for a 4-day trip to the Angus area to visit a number of archaeological and historical sites, predominantly owned by Historic Environment Scotland, from Monday the 22nd to Thursday the 25th of August.
On the Monday, we visited the Meigle Sculptured Stone Museum, the Eassie Sculptured Stone and the four sculptured stones at Aberlemno before travelling to the George Hotel in Montrose, our base for the following days. We were very lucky that John Borland, who presented a talk on Medieval Sculptured Stones for us in January, was able and keen to join us for the day and to guide us through the meaning of many of the Pictish symbols.
Tuesday took us to Arbroath Abbey and the Arbroath Signal Tower Museum in the morning, and to the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Montrose Basin Visitor Centre in the afternoon.
Further Pictish sculptured stones were inspected at the St. Vigeans Sculptured Stones Museum on Wednesday morning with a visit to the neighbouring St. Vigeans Parish Church before driving to Forfar to see more Pictish stones in the Meffan Institute Museum and Art Gallery.
On the final morning, we visited the National Trust for Scotland’s House of Dun and gardens just to the west of Montrose which included an informative and interesting guided tour of the interior of the house. In the afternoon, many of the fifteen members of the group managed to visit other sites on their way back to the Aberfeldy area which included the White and Brown Caterthun iron age hill forts to the north of Brechin and Restenneth Priory just to the east of Forfar.
If you would like further information on all the sites we visited, you will find a more comprehensive narrative with many more photographs on this page in our website:
David has worked in archaeology at both national and local level in Wales, England and Scotland since the late 1980s. Over the last two decades with the Perth & Kinross Heritage Trust he has established the Historic Environment Record and planning archaeology service for Perth and Kinross. He has developed and delivered several projects including the Carpow logboat, Tay Landscape Partnership Scheme, Glenshee Archaeology Project and Kings Seat Archaeology Project. His areas of interest include community archaeology and, in particular, Iron Age forts and settlement c.700 BC to AD 700.
Membership: Thank you to all who have already paid their subscriptions either online or by cheque. There will be an opportunity to pay your membership subscriptions at the meeting, either cash or cheque, and it is not necessary to complete a new membership form unless your contact details have changed. We are not issuing membership cards this year, however all members will receive email confirmation of their membership and an electronic copy of the 2022-23 Programme, hard copies of which will also be available at the meeting. As in previous years, there will not be an entrance charge for BHS members, but visitors will be asked for a donation of £4 on the night.
Looking forward to seeing many of you at the Breadalbane Community Campus in Aberfeldy on Friday 21st October.
In November last year, Dr. Liz Auty, John Muir Trust’s East Schiehallion Property Manager, presented a comprehensive talk to our Society on the Reverend Nevil Maskelyne’s 1774 expedition to Schiehallion, and the organisation and the people behind his experiment to ‘weigh’ the mountain and the world.
In the poem below, Jon Plunkett, a well-known poet resident in Aberfeldy, creates an evocative picture of the mountain, Maskelyne’s expedition and his experiment.
1 – Theory
An apple tree among the stars,
and from it a single apple falls.
It spins through the spheres,
draws a line straight and true.
A straight line, a true line, until –
from the planet’s rippled crust
a mountain rises, exerts a pull –
enough to sway that falling fruit.
2 – Mountain
In the heart of Scotland
a mountain of symmetry and bulk.
A shark’s fin of earth and stone
in and out of cloud, in and out of cloud
soaked and soaked again.
A place of ancient spirits, and new spirits –
illicit stills nestled by the burns
on this rock-crowned king of hills.
3- Experiment
The measurements are minute,
fractions of fractions taken from the space
between a star-line straight and true,
and a plumb-line’s slim deflection –
the most subtle bend of gravity,
the tiniest sway of cosmic force,
and just enough to weigh the world.
4 – Men
They are small, there on the hardship of the hill,
Following on from the talk and as one of of our summer excursions this year, on the 8th of June Liz led a group of BHS members to explore the lower slopes of the John Muir Trust’s Eastern Schiehallion site looking at some of the archaeology, social history, and the flora and fauna of this area. You can find the details of this summer excursion by following the link to our subsequent blog: https://breadalbane-heritage.org.uk/2022/07/27/bhs-visit-to-east-schiehallion/
On Friday, the 16th September, we open the new winter season of talks and events with a talk on Alexander Stewart, aka ‘The Wolf of Badenoch’. This starts a season which includes talks on ‘The Hillforts’ of the Tay’, ‘Culloden’, ‘The Regeneration of the Mar Lodge Estate’ and ‘Old Ways, New Roads’.
This opening talk on Alexander Stewart is presented by Steve Boardman, Professor of Medieval Scottish History at The University of Edinburgh, who is currently researching the life and post-medieval mythologizing of Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and a descendant of King Robert the Bruce.
Alexander Stewart is notorious as waging a rule of terror in the late 14th century in the Highlands and, in particular, the sacking of Forres, Pluscarden Priory and in Elgin the burning of Elgin Cathedral as well as the monastery of the Greyfriars, St Giles parish church and the Hospital of Maison Dieu. Through marriage and his royal connections, he had extensive lands in the Highlands as well as in the Breadalbane area at Bolfracks and Garth Castle.
In this talk, Steve will mostly concentrate on the Wolf’s posthumous reputation to the present day.
On Friday, 18th March 2022, and prior to the monthly meeting and talk commencing, the ‘Annual Members’ Meeting’ was held. As the Breadalbane Heritage Society is a registered Trust, this replaces the previous Annual General Meetings. If you were unable to attend the meeting, you can view the video recording here.
We have a new Facebook page which is more directly linked to our website. To view it, please go to https://www.facebook.com/BreadalbaneHeritageSociety/ and if you like the work that the Breadalbane Heritage Society does, please ‘like’ and ‘follow’ us on Facebook.
On Friday, 18th March 2022, Annette Carruthers, an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the School of Art History at the University of St. Andrews, presented her talk to the Breadalbane Heritage Society and described how, despite the tragic shortness of his life, James Marjoribanks MacLaren (1853-1890) achieved much in his architectural career and is recognised as a pioneer of the Arts & Crafts Movement. Annette discussed how his work as an architect and designer impacted on his contemporaries in the context of this movement in Scotland and in Britain more widely.
On Friday, 18th February 2022, Dr. Nicki Scott, Senior Cultural Resources Advisor with Historic Environment Scotland, presented her talk and described how although the survival of so many Pictish carvings highlights the long tradition of Christian worship across Angus, the tradition of monumental display continued in the medieval period, most famously at Arbroath Abbey. But while this royal foundation rightly draws much attention, sites such as Restenneth Priory and Maison Dieu show that it wasn’t just the elites whose lives were connected to the Church. Nicki provided some insight into the lives of these foundations and the people associated with them.
On Friday, 21st January 2022, John Borland presented his talk which provided an overview of the early medieval sculpture of Highland Perthshire, following its distribution from west to east along the glens and straths, highlighting what is rare and unusual. He examined the distribution of the sculpture to see what that tells us about its cultural origins and thus assess just how “Pictish” this part of Perthshire was.
John worked as an archaeological surveyor for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and Historic Scotland (RCAHMS) and then Historic Environment Scotland (HES) for 36 years, latterly recording Scotland’s Pictish and other Early Medieval sculpture.
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