Art at (Little) Sparta and in (Greater) Edinburgh
April 15, 2014
A walk through The Water of Leith and the Pentland Hills
Starting at James Craig’s & Robert Adam’s New Town, developed in two stages either side of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800’s, don’t be fooled by the wide flat streets parallel to Princes Street, or the easy grades of the sloping cross streets heading down the hill to the botanic gardens. It would seem that the New Town was constructed over the ruins of an earlier development, but this was not the case.
The New Town was separated from the Old Town and Castle by the Nor Loch (which began to be drained in 1759). The loch is now Princes Street Gardens, Waverley Station and the rail line through to Glasgow. The Old Town may seem anarchic in the street layout and sloping nature of the ground, but this was a far preferable development area that the undulating farmland and woods of the New Town, on the ‘cold side’of the Castle, separated by the loch, and bounded to the east by the ‘smelly trades’, on the road to Leith; the butchers, tanners and leather-workers.
Once development was underway, significant levelling and regrading took place, allowing for basement construction and even limited storage below broad footpaths. To the west of Great King Street, towards Moray Place,the fill batters placed for the New Town impacted on the severely incised Water of Leith, the watercourse draining the Pentland Hills to the south. One evening I browsed briefly into a description of the construction of the New Town, it transpired that there were several severe landslips of unconsolidated material slipping into the river below causing significant disruption to port activities, with compensation for losses to businesses downstream, and remediation works being paid by the developer landowners, as it should be of course.
The Water of Leith is a hidden delight, an easily accessible path linking the port of Leith with the western edge of the new town, and further to the Dean Gallery and The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The walk goes under the Dean Bridge,constructed by Thomas Telford in the early 1800’s, which really began to open up the district, over the lower level ford that has existing slightly upstream. The old mill building by the ford now house the Edinburgh offices of RMJM Architects, who collaborated with Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue on the Scottish Parliament buildings. (They seemed very busy – looking through the windows we saw lots of young faces peering at screens).
Across the road, the SNGMA contains a major Charles Jencks landscape: Charles Jencks, with Terry Farrell and Partners and Ian White Associates Landform UEDA 2002. There are also two works by Ian Hamilton Finlay, Seven Idylls 1987, and Six Definitions 2001, and the obligatory Henry Moore Reclining Figure 1951,and Barbara Hepworth Conservation with Magic Stones 1973, amongst other works. The SNGMA is a small gallery,with a collection on high rotation. Usual highlights are the shop and café, with another Richard Long work, Delabole Slate Cross, placed in the café garden as part of a larger exhibition within the gallery.
The original building is shortly to be redeveloped into apartments, with new housing to the rear of the site. A space to watch, to be sure. Our objective at the school site was Dovecote Studios, a privately owned weaving studio at the rear of the school, in a temporary building, and shortly to move into purpose-rebuilt accommodation in the centre of the city. Very impressive work within, another site to watch out (and return) for!
A long, but level walk followed, from West Coates, through the Haymarket, then along Princes Street, and further east to Regent Terrace,the third stage of the New Town, constructed up until the end of the 1850’s,but retaining the Georgian development controls of the earlier New Town phases.
By this stage anyone would need a rest – happily we sat for one hour on a small bus out to Little Sparta: (organised by The Little Sparta Trust, buses leave Edinburgh 2 afternoons a week, the garden is open to the public on only one day of the weekend).
Here is a Life’s Work, no question. Ian Hamilton Finlay moved out to Stonypath in 1966, with Sue Swan, and began to dig hollows into the hillside, linking a small stream from above the site to lead through a series of ponds across the garden. Sue chose the plantings,creating cover and screen for the exposed and windy site, while Ian and Sue moved boulders, mixed concrete, salvaged materials from elsewhere, cut paths in the heather, relocated native ferns and generally willed the garden into being.
The garden was renamed ‘Little Sparta’ in the 1980’s, honouring the uncompromising ideals of the Greek city state, and also referring to the Little Spartan War. The war stemmed from a local authority dispute over rates relief afforded to culturally important buildings and activities, following a protest by Finlay over actions taken by employees of the Scottish Arts Council.
Finlay sought artists and craftspeople of the highest calibre to realize the works in the garden, and the garden is a collaborative effort of all those contributors. Several themes are repeated through the garden: The Second World War, the French Revolution, sea fishing, pre-Socratic philosophy, landscape painting and classical mythology. These themes are reflected through a variety of gardens: The Front Garden; The Woodland garden; the Wild Garden; The English Parkland; The Temple Pool Garden; The Allotment; Julie’s Garden; The Roman Garden; The Lochan Eck Garden, and finally, the Memorial to the First Battle of Little Sparta.
What Little Sparta achieves is to be ‘Between Art and Nature’ expressed in the English Garden through a trellised pergola, “ built to form a crossroads and made partly from stripped but unshaped branches and partly from clean planed planks. So Art transforming the raw roughness of Nature, offering a contrast and a refinement to the eye as the visitor moves through the pergola, choosing a way at the crossing and coming out into the open garden where the tension between Art and Nature is everywhere demonstrated”.
A Hegelian inscription in a stile leading from the upper pond garden to the moorland reads:
THESIS fence ANTITHESIS gate, then, once crossing, SYTHESIS stile.
The next stile is inscribed:
STILE n. an escalation of the footpath.
Another favourite was four columns, carved one supposes for the children of the new French Revolution:
Liberty__; Equality; Eternity; 1793
I could go on, but the images speak for themselves.