Scotland – The Bohemian Waxwing

Mortonhall

My sister-in-law said, ‘Get a dog you can pick up,’ but we ignored that. We wanted a proper dog. An artist friend then said, ‘Get a Vizsla, they’re wonderful.’ He’d had two of them as companions while he painted outdoors, so we assumed he knew whereof he spoke. They were definitely proper dogs. His first one had gone ‘sugar-faced’ in her old age – as Vizslas do (see below).

Portrait of the artist’s dog as an old lady.

While mulling over our canine selection we spotted two lovely Vizslas in Stockbridge, trotting along beside their owner, off the lead, and thought, ‘We could do that.’ When we collected Louis aged eight weeks from a breeder near Balmaha we could easily pick him up; but that didn’t last. He shot up and soon weighed 31kg. His energy was boundless.

We went to the recommended puppy classes and followed our instructions to the letter, but Louis’ attention span was short and no amount of the recommended corrective jerking on his lead would keep him to heel for long. If a cat appeared nearby he would lose it completely. If that cat was on the other side of a busy road he would attempt to get at it. The dog trainer’s ‘two short tugs’ on the lead would then evolve into a protracted rodeo act with Louis scrabbling and wheezing and attempting to get off his ‘big angry dog’ bark.

Sans distractions Louis’ recall is actually quite good. He comes bouncing back to my farmer-style whistle and he will sit obediently until given permission to eat his supper. We were never going to ‘hunt, point or retrieve’ with him so it was clear we would need to find some other combination of physical exercise and mental stimulation to drain his energy and engage his restless mind. This would have to take place somewhere away from moving cars. We soon discovered Mortonhall Estate; somewhere we would never have visited without a dog.

The north of the estate, the campsite and kennels, along with ‘*Gun Emplacements (disused)*‘.

The south estate with Morton House, the Crematorium and *Burdiehouse* (Bordeaux House)

Mortonhall estate to the south of Edinburgh was once in the hands of the renowned St Clairs of Rosslyn but passed to the Trotter family in the early seventeenth century. In Greyfriars Kirkyard you can view the ancient Trotter mausoleum.

In the eighteenth century the Trotters built a large and rather plain residence on the site of a previous moated, fortified house. Nearby is an icehouse and a two acre walled garden, which has run to grass. The former garden outbuildings, the glasshouses and boiler houses are all ruinous. One of the lintels over a doorway is dated 1877. The house has been converted to flats and although they still own it, the Trotters are now based at their Berwickshire estate of Charterhall. Access to the facilities is from the south, via an entrance shared with a garden centre just off Frogston Road.

The original grand formal entrance at Kaimes on the east side of the estate featured double lodges flanking a long driveway curving through woodland towards the big house. The lodges were demolished to be replaced by the entrance lodge and driveway to a large crematorium designed by Sir Basil Spence. We have attended too many funerals there; as has most of the population of Edinburgh. Referring to something he considered unlikely of one of my old consultants used to say, ‘I’ll be a puff of smoke going up Mortonhall chimney before that happens.’

The formal gardens once included fountains and statuary and some of the plinths are still there. That garden is now more of a casual arboretum. Many of the trees are very old and very big. Every now and then an ailing giant comes down. The site is surrounded by wet marshy ground and the original tower must have been well defended by its soggy surroundings. Nearby, to the south west is Morton House, the dower house for Mortonhall, which is actually older than the main house.

Before we walked dogs there I felt the garden centre a rather ugly addition to the relocated entrance to the house and grounds, but it is well-run and useful with a passable cafe and farm shop. The entrance is in any case an anonymous utilitarian affair. The stable block, with its enclosed courtyard, includes a pub and restaurant. It affords a cosy winter retreat with its log stove. It is associated with a large, high-quality campsite.

Apart from two ornamental highland bullocks that hang around the fields next to the drive, Mortonhall is all arable. There therefore are no sheep to ‘worry’ about but there are many horses, an example of the now widespread ‘horsey-culture’ as my farmer brother disdainfully calls it. In any case Louis’ principal interest in large herbivores is rolling in their dung. He will chase roe deer, but he gives up quickly.

A massive ancient yew – which looks older than the house.

To the south, the Pentland Hills are marred by Hillend artificial ski slope – described by Rich Hall as ‘the local sport of carpet skiing’. Originally the enormous estate consisted of farms extending from Blackford Pond as far south as the peak of Allermuir at the north-eastern edge of the Pentlands. The family of Robert Louis Stevenson had a holiday home at Swanston Village which lies at the base of the Pentlands, near the ski slope. In Edinburgh, Picturesque Notes, RLS bemoaned the advance of the Edinburgh suburbs which were beginning their long encirclement of the estate.

Caerketton Hill and the ski slopes from Galachlaw. Swanston is in the trees.
Caer is a Welsh prefix meaning fort, showing that Welsh was the ancient language of lowland Scotland – as also seen in the name of Caerlaverock Castle in Dumfriesshire.

The City of Edinburgh, Arthur’s Seat, and the Castle all lie to the north of the estate with the Firth of Forth and Fife beyond that. Mortonhall is part of a wedge of green land extending deep into Edinburgh as far as the Grange. This wedge takes in the rump of Mortonhall estate, the Braid Hills, the Hermitage of Braid, Blackford Hill and several fine golf courses. On the fairways you can still see the ridge and furrow marks, left by medieval ploughing. These features are known as riggs in Scotland. The edges of fields were still referred to as end riggs when I was a boy. Out walking, it is hard to believe you are so near the centre of a major city. Long country walks are possible over a variety of terrain with spectacular views.

North towards Arthur’s Seat from the Braid Hills with harebells in the foreground.

Entrance to the stable courtyard with its guard stones.

The main attraction of Mortonhall is long off-the-lead walks through woods and along the edge of arable fields. Watching the cycle of ploughing, sowing and harvesting is a great pleasure, giving me a connection to the farming year that I lost when I left home.

To the west, the woods of Galachlaw run along the northern boundary of what was once the Princess Margaret Rose Orthopaedic Hospital where I worked for two months of my junior house officer year. It is now a large housing estate which includes the converted residence where I slept while on call and where I once attended a mess Christmas party in 1979. The top of Galachlaw Hill is clothed in mature trees but it is still possible to identify the neolithic cairn marked on the OS maps above. Before the trees took over, the view to the hills would have been splendid. Cromwell’s army of 16,500 troops camped there before the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, a crushing defeat for the Scots who had declared Charles II King after the execution of his father.

The military connection doesn’t end there. As with many large country houses, Mortonhall was requisitioned during both world wars and extensive temporary buildings were constructed in the grounds for accommodation. The remains of these huts in the form of concrete footings and brickwork are everywhere. The huts are visible on the post war aerial photographs available on the National Library of Scotland website.

In World War I the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were based there. In World War II they housed the Durham Light Infantry. The huts were also used for Prisoners of War, and later displaced persons. It is impossible to look on the overgrown concrete floors and brickwork steps leading nowhere without thinking of the hundreds of souls who have passed through.

To the north east, near Meadowhead Farm lay one of the main anti-aircraft batteries defending Edinburgh in the Second World War. This is the site marked ‘Gun Emplacements’ on the OS map. The associated buildings retain the tall concrete fence posts with the inward-sloping tops that carried the barbed wire. There is an old sentry box at the entrance. These buildings are now a sanctuary for retired racing greyhounds.

Still further to the north is Liberton House, a seventeenth century Laird’s house and a rare survivor. Nearby lies its precursor, the even older, and starkly rectangular, Liberton Tower, which dates to some time before 1453. It is more or less as originally constructed and is now a holiday let – with very small windows considering the remarkable views! Further north still lies the Royal Observatory on the shoulder of Blackford Hill.

We walk the estate several times a week throughout the seasons and Louis gets to run about off the lead. He chases squirrels endlessly but with only one disconcerting success in seven years. Perhaps the pursuit is the real pleasure. We are are on an affable chatting basis with several other dog owners whom we meet there regularly. None of us are very keen on the commercial dog walkers who turn up in their white vans with the inevitable punning titles displayed on the sides. The vans usually contain more dogs than an individual can safely manage.

The grounds of Mortonhall are lovely in all seasons but are at their most enchanting in winter as the autumn colours give way to snow with its blue shadows. Some seasonal shots and a painting by my wife Catherine are included below…

Making Hay

Haytime at Crofthead in the mid-Sixties. Big cousin and younger brothers on top, me at the wheel.

Every summer we made close to 100 acres of hay. My father disapproved of silage which he thought tainted the milk. In Ayrshire, at around 600 feet above sea level, we made our hay in July. The tractormen did the more skilled tasks of mowing and baling, but working the cut hay and gathering it in was anyone’s job. Bales of hay are heavier than straw, oblong in shape, and secured by ‘binder twine’ which burned your fingers if you let them slide along the cord. Usually it was better to dig your fingers into the bale to lift it. Until your hands toughened up, dried thistles or grass stems under your fingernails were an unpleasant hazard.

The baler would chug along, dropping bales at intervals across the field as it consumed the lines of hay. As children we were too weak to lift bales but we got a few pennies for rolling them together into heaps. This made it easier for the men to fork them onto trailers or the old milk lorries that were drafted in for the season. Later a bale ‘sledge’ was acquired which was towed behind the baler. It consisted of a wooden platform with stout steel prongs mounted behind it that supported the bales until the miniature stack was complete. The task of arranging the bales into a triangular pile resting on these forks at the back of the sledge was brutally physical and was conducted in a choking cloud of dust and flying fragments of dry grass. The ram on the baler rocked the whole rig back and forth making it difficult to keep your balance. Once a pile of 10 bales was constructed, a lever at the side released it onto the field. This had to be done sharply to avoid the pile tipping over. The process then began again.

I started driving tractors at 9 and cars and lorries at 11. Aged 9 I was insufficiently heavy to depress the clutch on a tractor using gravity alone. I had to brace myself against the steering wheel and push down with all my strength. On the way back up, with the spring resisting, controlled engagement of first gear was tricky. The accelerator on a tractor was a lever mounted on the steering column and it stayed wherever you put it, fixing the revs. My favourite tractor was our ancient ‘wee grey Fergie’ (Ferguson TEA 20) which had 4 forward gears and was quite fast. You started it by depressing a brass button with the inner side of your right lower leg and pushing the gear lever into ‘S’. It also had a ‘Ki-Gass’ button which I never understood. I loved the smell of fresh hay and diesel.

At first I simply drove the lorries or tractors between the piles of bales in the fields, stopping at each one so that the two-man team could fork them up to whoever was building the load. The older lorries’ gearboxes lacked synchromesh so I learned early how to double declutch to changing down smoothly. This was useful later when driving cars at rally speeds around country roads. As I got older and stronger I graduated from driving to load-building, learning to lock the bales together like laying bricks.

Bales varied in length and some of the longer ones needed slammed into any gap that was slightly too small. Kneeling down, this took considerable strength and timing, especially when the team with the pitchforks were trying to bury you in more bales. I never made it to pitchforker status. The relentless parade of tractors and lorries shuttling from field to hay sheds meant that the men with the pitchforks were in constant action. In addition to strength and stamina, timing was needed to get the bales onto the top as the load rose higher.

Whoever had built the load would also drive it back to the farm for unloading and storage in the hay sheds. There was an element of taking responsibility for your construction skills. On the lorries we simply relied on gravity to hold the bales in place but the biggest tractor-drawn trailer loads overhung the sides and were so tall they often had to be roped to cope with the big sways caused by negotiating ruts at the field gates. This made riding on top of such loads quite exciting. Even if the load held – and sometimes it didn’t – the branches of nearby trees would threaten to brush you off your perch.

On really hot days little whirlwinds would pick up loose hay and deposit wisps of it onto the tops of nearby trees. Rain usually meant work was suspended. As a small child I remember sitting on top of the last load of the day along with the men in the pitchfork team as it left the field. As it started to rain, one of the men lifted a bale out to create a space for me. I jumped in and they placed the bale across the hole for shelter. It was very pleasant to ‘coorie-in‘* as my refuge swayed back and forth.

Before baling, the hay needed to be sufficiently dry to stop the shed turning into a massive compost heap. The weather was critical to this. While it takes only three consecutive dry days to cut silage (which is preserved by fermentation) at least two weeks of dry weather are needed to get any significant acreage of hay. This rarely happened. In the worst years prolonged rain could turn hay that was almost ready into a blackened mess fit only for burning. My father sometimes called Prestwick Airport to get an indication of what was coming towards us over the Atlantic. If it was rain, you might bale hay that wasn’t quite ready rather than lose it altogether. The longer the mature hay lay in the field, the less its nutritional value.

The tractor men ‘opened’ the fields of long grass by cutting the ‘end-rigs‘ next to the hedge first, then cutting the rest of the field into long rows. After the top layer of grass had begun to dry the rows needed turned over. The older turning machines used the movement of their wheels over the ground as a source of power. Later I used a more modern ‘Acrobat’ rake with 4 large yellow wheels of sprung tines which rotated by being dragged over the ground. Set separately these would pick up two rows of drying grass and flip them over individually. By rearranging the 4 wheels into a single line the Acrobat could be converted into a rake for clearing any residual hay left after all the bales had been removed. Whether turning or raking, it took a long time to do a whole field. A cleared field was described as ‘redd‘. Clearing up at the end of a day was getting ‘redd-up‘ as in; ‘We’ll need tae get redd-up, it’s lowsing time‘. Lowsing or loosing probably refers to the unyoking of horses or oxen at the end of a day’s work.

One summer while turning a field, I noticed a hint of putrefaction as I reached the end rigs next to the hedge. Returning to the same place on the following set of rows the smell got stronger. The next time it was detectable far from the hedge and became quite overpowering. I stopped to investigate. Over the hedge, trapped in a ditch by thorns, was a black-faced ewe, still alive, but with her hindquarters seething with maggots. It’s a distressing image I cannot seem to erase from my mind. A couple of seasons later I had a parallel experience – but this time the smell was sweet. As I approached the source it was obvious that it emanated from a huge mound of wild honeysuckle, its yellow flowers covering the hedge.

Once turned and dried on the reverse side, the maturing hay needed ‘tedding’ – using a tedder of course. These machines were power-driven from the PTO (Power Take-Off) on the tractor and their job was to throw two rows of drying hay into one large row, fluffing it up in the process. This allowed the sun and wind to further dry the hay ready for baling. The machine I favoured had two horizontal rotating wheels with large tines attached. We called this process ‘wuffling’ as one make of tedder was actually called a ‘Wuffler’. Once, when enthusiastically experimenting with how fast I could turn round on the end rigs, I miscalculated and wuffled the hedge. Bits of hawthorn flew in all directions and I bent some of the armatures. Our engineer had to straighten them with a welding torch and a hammer.

Later on as a teenager I would spend the summer mornings working in the dairy, loading milk bottles into crates as they came off the bottling plant, or get up at 4am to deliver milk for one of the roundsmen. After this very early start the dairy was finished by the afternoon and it was time to go to the hay fields once any morning damp had dispersed. My mother would bring refreshments out to us. It was lovely to take a break and sit on a bale under the shade of a tree eating sandwiches and taking tea from a flask. The men got a beer. It was good for morale. If it remained dry with no early dew, work would continue far into the evening, making escape to the pub before closing time increasingly difficult.

During the day, priorities might change and my father, who was supervising it all, would sometimes stop me working in one field in order to go to another or help out elsewhere. The constant drone of the tractor engine and the noisy machinery were like white noise. You stopped noticing it after a while. Paradoxically the racket and monotony of traversing a field over and over again allowed your mind to wander.

My father had a powerful whistle which he could deliver without using his fingers – something I never mastered. This was how he got my attention if I was working on a noisy tractor. Hearing his whistle, I would look up and see him in tweed cap, waistcoat and rolled-up sleeves, waving at me from the gate. He died when I was in my third year of medical school and while I was in a bit of academic trouble. The year after that, I was working a field when I thought I heard a whistle. Automatically, I looked down the rows to the end of the field, which was – of course – deserted. It was like a waking version of those dreams where you discover someone you loved and lost is still alive. My dreams about my late father finally stopped a few years ago and I no longer wake up just as I am demanding to know why he has kept his survival a secret from us for so long.

Building the hay into the corrugated iron sheds was tough. Each shed was divided up, by the girders supporting the roof, into several sections or ‘dasses‘ (another Scots word). These sections were stacked to the roof in turn. Open wooden trunking was placed on the floor of the dass to allow it to be ‘blown’ later. As the dass rose, the space under the curved metal roof got smaller – and hotter. Reversing into the shed was tricky and the men would amuse themselves by shouting false instructions at us:

‘Up the hill!’

‘Naw, doon the hill!’

‘Back, back, back, come on! Oh Christ you’ve hit it!’

The last dass in a shed was completed using an elevator to take the bales up through a small opening high in the gable end. In summer the roof was hot to the touch and the atmosphere inside suffocating. It was easy to overwhelm the unseen team in the shed by loading the bales too quickly onto the elevator. More shouting was required.

Inevitably, no matter how dry the hay was, it tended to heat in the shed; the same process that takes place in a compost heap. In an attempt to stop this happening a huge power-driven, heated, fan was mounted on a tractor to blow air into the trunking at the bottom of the dass. Steam would emerge from the openings in the gables in a satisfying way. The noise of the tractor engine droning on into the evening is associated in my mind with late summer, as too the glorious peace that ensued when the engine was cut, leaving just the sound of swallows twittering on the telephone wires.

Throughout the rest of the year the hay sheds were our playgrounds. We would build houses out of the bales or jump off the top of one dass onto loose straw on the lower one next to it. There is no recreational value to be had from a silage pit.

*snuggle in.

Share this:

Share this: