The Trouble with Wilderness

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Highland Clearances, Landscape, Murray Robertson, Scottish Natural Heritage, Scottish Planning Policy, Wild Land, wilderness

The ‘The Artist Traveller’ exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy includes a series of pen and ink and digital pigment prints by artist Murray Robertson on the theme of wild land and wilderness.  The centre-piece is a digital pigment print map of Scotland showing the Core Areas of Wild Land identified by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), with a legend and annotations in Gaelic.  The work is titled Priomh Sgìrean na Talmhainn Fiadhaich II in Gaelic.

Robertson’s works were originally developed during a visual arts residency at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye in 2015 and invite questions about the perceptions and values we bring to debates about Scotland’s land and landscapes and concepts such as “wild land” and “wilderness”.

SNH published a new map of ‘Core Areas of Wild Land‘ in June 2014. It has been given an important status as a basis for decision-making on development by being referenced in Scottish Planning Policy (para. 200).  This incorporation into policy was primarily a response to concerns about the potential impacts of large commercial wind farms on sensitive rural landscapes, but there are fears that the broadly restrictive terms of the policy (para. 215) could inhibit almost any development activity over large parts of the Highlands, effectively preventing economic diversification and community renewal.  Critics like Rob Gibson, the former MSP for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross and Convener of the Rural Affairs Committee in the last Parliament, have pointed out that many of the areas now described as core wild land were previously populated and believes that what has been mapped is “Clearances country”.

In December 2016, Scottish National Heritage published a common statement on Landscape and the Historic Environment prepared for the Scottish Historic Environment Forum by a working group comprising Historic Environment Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland and SNH.  The document seeks to offer a ‘shared vision’ of the historic dimension of Scotland’s landscapes.  This latest exhibition of Murray Robertson’s work reminds us that Scotland’s land and landscapes remain contested territory.

The ‘The Artist Traveller’ exhibition runs at the Royal Scottish Academy until Sunday 29 January 2017.

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A version of this article was published by Bella Caledonia on 16 January 2017.

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Proposals for Expansion and Redevelopment of the University of Glasgow

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Frank Mears, Gilmorehill, Hillhead, University of Glasgow

In 1951, Frank Mears submitted proposals for a major expansion of the University of Glasgow northwards into Hillhead.  In the eighty years since the construction of Gilbert Scott’s monumental Gothic edifice, the University had outgrown its Gilmorehill site and much of the original accommodation had proved to be ill-suited to the requirements of modern academic disciplines.

With a view to maintaining a sense of unity in the expanded university precinct, Mears proposed the progressive transformation of the space between the existing Reading Room and the Scott Building into a “Great Central Court”.  This would involve moving the main entrance of the Scott Building from its south to its north side, the grouping and design of new buildings on both sides of University Avenue in careful relation to the old, and the closing of the Avenue to through traffic to reduce noise and promote safety.

As with his earlier schemes for Jerusalem and Edinburgh, he sought to “combine the maximum of adaptability in construction of buildings with adherence to planning principles which will promote an environment of academic dignity” and he suggested that this could best be achieved by the development of a system of courts and quadrangles linked by tree-lined footpaths.  As at Jerusalem, he recommended that, wherever possible, internal partition walls should be erected independently of the main structure in order to facilitate the rearrangement of accommodation as needs changed.

Perhaps with an eye to developments in Edinburgh, The Glasgow Herald commented in an editorial that: “The mistake will not be made at Glasgow that has been made at universities elsewhere of dispersing activities that ought to be part of the central framework of academic and corporate life.”

Sikunder Burnes

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Afghanistan, Alexander Burnes, Craig Murray, Kabul, The Great Game

‘Sikunder Burnes: Master of The Great Game’ by Craig Murray (2016), Birlinn, Edinburgh

Craig Murray tells the story of Alexander Burnes, a lad from Montrose who secured a commission with the British India Company at the age of 16 and played a prominent role in The Great Game, the struggle between the British and Russian empires for domination of Central Asia.

Burnes won fame with his published account of the commercial mission he led to Bhukara in what is now Uzbekistan in 1832, as a cover for the gathering of intelligence on the region.  In 1837, against the background of mounting concern that a Russian-backed Persian army threatened Herat, the Governor General of India, Lord Aukland, put Burnes in charge of a second mission into Afghanistan.  He was cordially welcomed at Kabul by Dost Mohamed Khan, the reigning Emir, and treated with him with a view to securing his alliance with the British.  However, Burnes’ efforts were fatally undermined when the Governor General back in Simla concluded that removing Dost Mohammed and restoring Shah Shuja ul-Mulk to the throne in Kabul would suit British interests better.  Against his better judgement, Burnes accompanied the British Army of the Indus which invaded Afghanistan for this purpose in 1839.  He was murdered by a mob in Kabul shortly before the disastrous British retreat from the city in January 1842.

Murray shines a brutal light on the haughty incompetence of those in charge of British Imperial policy at the time.  Lord Palmerson, Aukland, and his adviser, Sir William McNaghten, fare particularly badly under his withering scrutiny.  Understandably, given his experiences as British Ambassador in Uzbekistan, Murray is tempted into comparisons with events in our own time.  Chapter headings include ‘Regime Change’ and ‘The Dodgy Dossier’.

There are a few typographical errors which could have been eliminated by more careful proof reading.  For example, Lieutenant Robert Leech, one of Burnes’ close colleagues and companions on his later missions, disconcertingly intrudes himself on his first trip up the Indus in 1831 (p.71), presumably standing in for Ensign John Leckie.