Categories
Field Trip Found Art Happenstance I Remember Observation Psychogeography rag-pickings Signs and Signifiers Some Questions of the Drift

Two Hours in the Lang Toun

Two hours.

I have just dropped off a bunch of excited teenagers at Kirkcaldy Ice Rink (now rebadged as Fife Ice Arena) for the afternoon skating session. With too little time to return home and do anything meaningful, it seems like a good opportunity to start walking into the locality and see what draws the attention. I increasingly find that often the most interesting walks develop out of  the imposed time constraints of everyday life. Start from where you are and see where it leads.

Two hours.

But first, I’m standing in front of an ice palace from the late Art Deco era. Designed by Williamson and Hubbard in 1937, the softened edges, horizontal lines, ribbon windows and vertical, coloured detailing conjure up a period in time when form was equally important as function. Apparently, the original restaurant featured Parker-Knoll chairs, monogrammed cutlery and curtains designed by Dame Laura Knight. This afternoon, under a high sun, the contrast of vibrant colours and ice cream white offers an elegant counterpoint to what would no doubt be constructed today as a functional leisure shed.

I’m in Gallatown at the North end of the ‘Lang Toun’ of Kirkcaldy. Initially, thinking the name may have been derived from some form of recurring gala festivities, I subsequently find out that it is a derivation of Gallows Town. Apparently, due to it being the site of numerous public executions in medieval times.

Gala

Galla

Gallo

Gallow

Gallows

Originally a small village in its own right, Gallatown, along with its near neighbours Sinclairtown and Pathhead, were parts of Dysart before becoming annexed as part of Kirkcaldy in 1876.

Walking down the main, arterial road into Kirkcaldy, Rosslyn Street merges into St Clair street. A clue to the history of this area in the street names. A reminder of how all land is property and often concentrated in the hands of a few. Sinclairtown developed from the 1750s on the estate of the Earls of Rosslyn and derives from their family name St Clair. (Also owners of Rosslyn Chapel).

This whole area developed as the industrial end of Kirkcaldy. A place of nail manufacture in the seventeenth century and site of the ‘pin factory’ studied by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. Coal mining and power-loom weaving emerged in the mid eighteenth century and pottery manufacture in the early 1800s.

I walk past the entrance to Pottery Street but after a short walk down into what is now light industrial and residential buildings there appears to be little evidence of what once existed here. It is only on returning and approaching Rosslyn Street again that I notice a plinth in the grounds of a vet’s surgery.

The original site of the world famous Wemyss Ware pottery of Robert Heron and Son. The Chief Designer of the pottery was Karel Nekola from Bohemia, recruited by Robert Heron in 1882. A skilled, imaginative artist, he continued to work until his death in 1915. His sons Joseph and Carl also worked in the pottery. The original pottery closed during the Great Depression in 1930 and the rights to Wemyss Ware passed through several hands until Griselda Hill acquired and revived the name in the 1990s.

It is perhaps heartening to know that the spirit of the original pottery and the curious Wemyss cats continue to be tended by a veterinary practice.

Wemyss Ware cats. Public Domain image.

Walking further down the road above what is now the Happy Days Chinese Restaurant is a magnificent example of a Co-op bee skep. Presumably a former Co-operative Society building. Not quite as impressive as the magnificent trio in Leven but a fine reminder of the co-operative ideals of those Rochdale Pioneers.

On the other side of the road, a narrow path into a residential area.

Sun drawn cubist angles.

“Stewart Lod”.

I’m not sure where the boundary lines of Gallatown, Sinclairtown and Pathhead merge, but for these purposes it is a delight to encounter the colourful Puffins of Pathhead.

Behind is a Ladbrokes shop. A window of lurid coloured interpellation: Grab a Grand!; Win Free Machine Play Cash BoostGoal! Price Boost; Best Odds Guaranteed; £30 Free Bets on Your Mobile; Sunday, Now Open Longer.

Ladbrokes

Lad   Broke

Never a more aptly named chain designed to part people from their money. I don’t remember that many pearls of wisdom from my dad but one that sticks is that: “you never meet a poor bookie”.

On another wall close to the puffins, a golden eagle takes flight ready to pounce on a small mouse. The disorienting sun perhaps allowing the mouse a respite today. Off it floats on the back of a golden orb.

You cannot walk down St Clair Street without noticing Rejects. A gargantuan store by any standards and a family owned Fife institution selling everything for the home in twelve departments. There is also something delightfully perverse about deciding to name your retail emporium Rejects. I’m not sure what the received wisdom on retail marketing is, but I suspect this breaks most of it. Rejects also houses a very fine cafe but with the clock ticking, I have to pass on that today.

This is the weekend before ‘The Beast from the East’ arrived in Scotland and I’m starting to feel the cold around my ears. However, the sun is strong, bright and warming as I take a moment to watch the swaying, skeletal trees. How they shift slightly out of phase with the moving shadow forest projected on the wall of the car park. A Steve Reich piece playing out in visual form.

 

On the corner of Commercial Street sits a curio from the days of the Kirkcaldy tram network. A Bundy Clock was used to monitor tram services to ensure that they ran on time and according to timetable. When the tram driver reached the designated terminus, they would insert a unique key into ‘the Bundy’ and the time would be recorded. The Bundy clock was patented in 1890 by Willard Le Grand Bundy and mass production of employee monitoring systems began. A practice that has had workers clocking in and out under surveillance ever since. Of course, technology advances and Bundy Time Systems still appear to be around.  Their wares now include ‘Fingertec Biometric Packages’, ‘Face ID’ and ‘Easy Clocking Time and Attendance Systems’.

Walking along Commercial Street reveals a mix of some very old buildings. largely, in various states of disrepair. However, the Spiritualist Church is looking bright and sprightly. Thursday Healing. All Welcome.

At the end of the road, The ‘A Listed’ Feuars Arms proclaims its Victorian lineage back to 1859. Impressive stained glass windows reflect a more modernist addition to the landscape in the fifteen story Ravens Craig flats built in 1964-65.

 

 

Sparkling in the sun like pink sponge fingers with frosted, glazed balconies. The image provides a jarring contrast to imagining why Flesh Wynd may have gotten its name.

Not too far away from the Ravens Craig complex is Ravenscraig Castle. Local folklore claims that John Buchan named his novel The Thirty-Nine Steps after the path that leads down by the side of the castle to Pathhead Sands. A similar claim relates to a set of steps in Broadstairs, where the final scenes of the novel take place. Both sets of stairs have more than thirty nine. However, Buchan’s father was a Free Church of Scotland minister and Buchan spent most of his formative years in Kirkcaldy. His novel Prester John opens with a scene on Pathhead Sands, with Kirkcaldy thinly disguised as Kirkcaple.

I’m becoming conscious of the time and need to start heading back towards the ice rink. I loop around and through what would once have been a colossal industrial area, dominated by the Nairn linoleum factory complex. Michael Nairn was initially involved in the weaving of ship’s sails but later entered into floor coverings. The original factory built at Pathhead, in 1847, was initially ridiculed and known locally as Nairn’s Folly. However, the venture proved a great success and by 1876, linoleum production had become a global industry centred on Kirkcaldy. The use of linseed oil in the production process was what gave the distinctive ‘queer-like smell’ highlighted in the poem The Boy in the Train written by Mary Campbell Smith in 1913:

I’ll sune be ringin ma Gran’ ma’s bell,

She’ll cry, “Come ben my laddie”

For I ken mysel’ by that queer-like smell

That the next stop’s Kirkcaddy!’

Most of the industrial complex has now gone but one operational factory unit remains, sitting in the vast empty space like some remnant from an imagined post-Packard Detroit.  The factory is clearly still productive as the distinctive, and not unpleasant, sweet smell is clearly discernible in the air. Perhaps a bit more localised these days rather than enveloping the entire town.

I meander through some of the side streets back towards the ice rink and whilst many buildings are in disarray, the sun is bringing out the best in them.  An old industrial fence morphs into beautiful, striped, colour field, minimalism.

A ‘found’ Gerhard Richter decays on an old wooden board.

An abstract landscape, framed in brick under a painted sky, sits in the alcove of a boarded up window. (Perhaps a found Howard Hodgkin, thanks to Hamer the Framer, added 07.04.2018):

Whilst a short history of building is revealed in an industrial assemblage of brick, stone, concrete and metal:

In dappled sunlight, a typographical erratic.

I am indebted to fellow travellers Laurence Mitchell and Alan Nance for the idea of the cultural erratic. This originally arose from a comment by Alan regarding Laurence’s piece  on re-purposed Kyrgyzstan railway wagons.  Alan’s comment is worth noting in full:

To use a landscape-related term, it strikes me that these wagons are like cultural (as opposed to glacial) erratics, whose presence, through interpretation, can tell us something about the forces and processes that shaped the place in which they are located).

It’s a great expression and in this particular instance, I like how EAST FIFE has somehow survived the weathering process, much like a glacial erratic left behind.

Another abandoned looking building draws the eye, due to the panel above the door:

Langtoun Aquarists Pondkeepers Group. Another cultural erratic? Is that a fish on the door blowing a bubble?

Sadly, I can’t spend any more time pottering around and hoof it back quickly to the ice rink. So quick that I’ve a few more minutes to spare before the skating finishes. I walk round by a mysterious, mausoleum looking structure. Some form of sub station? Or perhaps a sealed vault storing all the forgotten sounds, smells and memories of Gallows Town?

Behind the vault are some of what feel like the oldest buildings I’ve seen today. The narrow passage of School Lane. Just enough Sunlight leaking down the walls to outline a set of strange material interventions close to the ground. Portals of exit or entry?

And back to the car park just in time to catch the ice rink crowd spilling out into the sunshine. The tired teenage skaters, pile into the car and I listen to their stories of careering around the chilled interior of the ice palace.

Two hours.

Oh and almost forgot. Wasn’t particularly looking for it, but it’s always good to find it …

≈≈≈

This walk took place on Saturday 24th February, 2018.

Now playing: Steve Reich – Violin Phase

Categories
Observation Psychogeography Signs and Signifiers Symbol

Ephemera: Found totem

Found Object

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Found totem

Forest clearing

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 Now playing: The Sarsen Circle – The Sarsen Circle (Live)

Categories
Field Trip Folk-Lore Observation Poetry Psychogeography

Silverburn: in the flux and flow of place

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We are walking out, along the shoreline, from Leven towards Lundin Links. Coastal energies are in full flow, our field of vision filled with an excess of sand, sea and sky.

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In the distance, an intensity of white light appears to drift in the Firth of Forth like a frosted iceberg. The Bass Rock. Invisible threads loop in the conical forms of Berwick Law and the sacred hill of Largo Law. Three nodes of a triangle that collapse North and South; earth and water; land and sky. An energy field that pulls us into an expanded world. Bardic bird yells, brine on the tongue and buffeting sea breezes whip up folding white breakers that fizz over the sand.

We soon encounter the talisman lying in the dunes. It’s protective, synthetic membrane, perished long ago by wind and water.  Now crusted with sand and water-logged, it has transmuted into a living entity. Green tendrils sprout from the surface. It appears to be an auspicious omen, a process of alchemy worthy of the legendary Wizard of Balwearie, Michael Scot, (1175 – c.1232), reputed to have form in these parts.

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Local legend has it that Scot summoned his three imp familiars, Prig, Prim and Pricker to Largo Law with a view to levelling it. A sort of job creation scheme for hyper-active familiars. As they began to dig, Scot had a change of plan and the imps were hurriedly despatched to Kirkcaldy to make ropes out of sand. This was to assist Scot in his showdown with the devil on Kirkcaldy beach.  Scot appears to have triumphed in the encounter as evidenced by a local saying: “The devil’s dead and buried in Kirkcaldy”.  As a result of the ‘Kirkcaldy interruption’, only a single shovelful of earth was thrown from Largo Law to create the cairn of Norrie’s Law at the wonderfully named farm of Baldastard.  There are also local folk tales about an abundant goldmine that supposedly exists underneath Largo Law and that sheep have returned from grazing on the foothills with golden fleeces.

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Giant stepping-stones. Largo Law ahead.

Huge concrete blocks line this part of the coast like giant stepping-stones.  Could we step all the way to Largo Law?  The blocks were part of the necklace of coastal defences installed during WW2 and were designed to frustrate any German tank invasion from the sea. The blocks were constructed and laid by the Polish army who had several divisions based in Fife during WW2.  Today, the original purpose of the blocks may be somewhat forgotten but their solidity and mass provide a pleasing sculptural rhythm to the foreshore.   

One of the blocks serves as a makeshift altar to revere the action of the natural world on our talismanic old football. A process of transmutation – of rebirth and growth.

We turn inland from the coast to take the path, called Mile Dyke, that heads between the links golf courses.  This will take us to Silverburn and we can now feel its connection to Leven and the coast.  S  i  l  v  e  r  –  b  u  r  n  is a name to roll around the mouth and along with golden fleeces and transmuted footballs we can sense that we are truly in an alchemical landscape. 

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Silverburn – a Brief History

Silverburn is the former estate of The Russell family who were owners of the Tullis Russell paper making business.  The land was originally part of the Barony of Durie and was leased to Mr David Russell by Charles Maitland Christie of Durie in 1854.  Arthur Russell purchased the land in 1866 and rebuilt Silverburn House. A dower house known as Corriemar was also built and a flax mill was established on the site. 

David Russell died in 1906. His son, (also named David) and who later became Sir David Russell was born at Silverburn in 1872 and in 1912 married and went to live in Aithernie House. He returned to Silverburn in 1929. Sir David had a great interest in trees and many were planted including some rare and unusual species which continue to thrive today.

The flax mill closed around 1930.

In 1973, Sir David Russell’s grandson, Major Russell (Head of Tullis Russell Paperworks) gifted the houses and grounds to Leven Town Council, but also stipulated through the National Trust for Scotland that the “subjects should remain forever as a quiet area used for the benefit of the public in general and the people of Leven in particular for nature trails, quiet parkland and organised camping”. In the mid to late 1980s, the former Kirkcaldy District Council undertook a Job Creation Programme to reinstate Silverburn House for use as a Residential Centre for groups to use such as scouts and guides; school parties, caravan rallies etc. A stand alone wing to the rear of the House was used by crafters to make and show their wares throughout the Summer and Christmas/New Year periods.

Between 1990 and 1999, an average of 20,000 + people per year visited Silverburn. Its main attraction was the former “Mini-Farm” which had on show a wide range of domestic and exotic animals, birds, reptiles and insects.  However, following a Council policy decision in 2002, to cease operating Animal Centres across Fife there have been very few visitors to Silverburn, other than local people. Financial constraints have also led to year-on-year reductions in revenue expenditure with no meaningful capital investment in the Park.

Over the years, various ideas have been proposed for Silverburn including the setting up of a Scottish Music/Arts and Craft Centre and redevelopment as a crematorium.  None of these have come to fruition.

However, work is presently underway by Fife Employment Access Trust (“FEAT”) in collaboration with the local community, agencies and local authorities in the Levenmouth area on a project entitled ‘Heart Mind Soul Silverburn’. This aim of this initiative is to secure a long-term future for the park and to promote wellbeing and employment opportunities. 

We have visited Silverburn a number of times over the past few months.  Drifting around the mixed woodland trails and environs of the estate at different times, on different days and in different weather conditions.  Most apparent is observing and feeling the subtle changes of a thriving natural world; an incipient wildness forever encroaching on the deteriorating materiality of the buildings.  Silverburn is a place highly conducive to the immersive dérive. A locus of past, present and possible. 

The excellent Blacketyside Farm Shop is a wonderful place for sustenance at the start or finish of a Silverburn visit. However, this does means crossing the A915 road which is the main artery into the East Neuk of Fife. The road is a long, straight stretch which can be very busy with vehicles tanking past at high-speed:

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeejjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjggroooooooooooooooooooooooom

mmmmmm oi nnnnnnnnnnnn

nnnnnnnnnnnn oi mmmmmm

mmmmmm oi nnnnnnnnnnnn

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeejjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjggroooooooooooooooooooooooom

Enter Silverburn

Overhead, a charcoal smudged blue, heralds a chorus of rooks riffing off the traffic screech.

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Giant American redwoods stand sentinel, stretching for the sun. “Ambassadors from another time” silently announcing that this may not be your conventional Scottish woodland:

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The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stay with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.

John Steinbeck

N: “do you know you can punch a redwood and it doesn’t hurt your hand?”

Blue melts to green as sunlight showers through the tree canopy, dappling the forest floor. Traffic thrum gradually dissolves in the low lipping burr of the flowing burn.  A sunken path beckons and so our immersion into Silverburn begins. 

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 Once in the shade, a sprinkling of light and water; a scattering of silver drops:

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A network of wooded paths through and around Silverburn provide ample scope for aimless drifting. The topography is interesting with a long flat elevated plateau where Silverburn House sits which tumbles away quite steeply down to the flax mill with the golf courses and coast beyond.

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Depending which path you take you will soon stumble across one of the ghosts…

Corriemar: The Dower House

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Corriemar is thought to have been the dower house for Silverburn House.  A dower house is usually a moderately large house available for use by the widow (dowager) of the estate-owner.

Corriemar has been vacant since 1970, having previously served as day patient accommodation for Stratheden Hospital or the Fife and Kinross District Asylum as it was formerly known. (Stratheden will be a place-name that resides in the (un)consciousness of many Fifers. My mother used to say that the teenage antics of my brother and I would send her there. In hindsight, I hope that she was only joking. RIP Mum).

The house today is a crumbling ghost of a building. Buildings need capital, care and a purpose to thrive and Corriemar has had neither of these since the 1970s. Now officially classified as a dangerous building and on the Buildings at Risk register, nature is slowly restaking her claim.

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A pine tree grows out of the roof guttering. Many slate tiles have been lost to the elements, leaving the roof like a mouth full of smashed teeth.

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The building is not just boarded but sealed.

Mute.

All flow and circulation broken:

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Mute
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Broken Flow

Graffiti abhors a blank surface and Corriemar has become a canvas for a surprisingly diverse display:

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Interesting in that all of these shots, the green leaves of nature always encroach into the frame.

Silverburn House

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Once a home to the Russell family. Old, super-8 film shows children playing and running around on the lawn in front of the house. Adults relax in deck chairs, smoking and chatting…

Now, like Corriemar, Silverburn House is sealed up and dangerous:

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Broken Flows:

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The entrance to the old crafts centre:

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Stretching for the sky:

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On our last visit, we noticed a new addition. Some outdoor seating has been added, fashioned out of tree trunks:

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And at the opposite end of the lawn, a collection of shamanistic divining posts in the family sculpture area:

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As is common with any drift, with a little attention, a surreal world can reveal itself:

The shoe tree:

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The worm mound:

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One tries to wriggle free:

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The giant pencil:

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The stalled roundabout:

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The unknown and undecipherable signs:

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One visit, late Saturday afternoon, a dull twilight. No other humans around and even the bird song is subdued. Only the rustle of leaves – hopping blackbird and scurrying rabbit.  The fungi radiate a pale light:

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A message from the trees:
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Stare for long enough and the tree spirits begin to reveal themselves:

dog-bear

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Tusked boar

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Cyclops

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Preying Mantis

CIMG2844tentacle clawed … ?

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The Flax Mill & Retting Pond

On the lower level of Silverburn sits the Flax Mill and its associated retting pond.

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Retting is a process which employs the action of micro-organisms and moisture on plants to dissolve or rot away much of the cellular tissues and pectins surrounding bast-fibre bundles. This process is used in the production of fibre from plant materials such as flax and hemp stalks and coir from coconut husks.

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The flax mill was built in the mid 1800s and was one of the first industrial buildings to be roofed with a ‘new material’ called corrugated iron.  Flax fibre was prepared for spinning at Silverburn and was soaked in the retting ponds for about 10 days, after which it was thrashed. Retting Ponds were brought into play after an Act in 1806 prohibited the use of local streams due to excessive pollution which occurred from the process. The flax mill itself was run on steam power. The mill closed in 1930, although, as previously mentioned, the outbuildings were used for the mini zoo during the 1990s.  Today, the brickwork is failing in some places, with over 50% of the brick turned to dust.  An adjacent row of cottages were probably built for the flax mill workers and remain used and in good condition today.

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Look out for the face in the factory:

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and the quizzical ghost:

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The outbuildings:

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The old stables:

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Inside the old stable

the darkest corners – bleed

in slatted sunlight

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The retting pond where the flax was soaked is close by. Now heavily overgrown with vegetation, it is a meditative spot to watch the reflected trees in the water and the teeming pond life on the surface:

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The Tree House and Formal Gardens

How could anyone not be captivated by the tree house? It looks as if it could walk away at any moment on its stilted legs:

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The sense of being watched by the animal heads on either side add a touch of the uncanny:

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By complete coincidence, N has a copy of Reforesting Scotland in his bag. The cover illustration an echo of what we are standing underneath:

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The formal gardens, also comprise a sensory and walled garden. They are clearly places of meaning and memory. On our first visit, we find a wreath of knitted flowers:

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By the time of our second visit they have gone. There are also the lives commemorated and remembered. Emotional linkages between people and place.

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From the sensory garden, the gentle trickle of running water projects around the natural amphitheatre. Bees congregate upon yellow and pink petals shower down on grey.

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Perhaps there is also evidence of the cunning folk at play. A small entrance through a hedge; a portal to another world?

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What is in a Name?

We leave Silverburn to head for the coast once again. Following the flow of the burn back down Mile Dyke to where the silver stream meets the sea.

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We reflect on the name:

Silver – precious, with, the highest conductivity of any metal, allowing energy to flow.

Burn – always in flux/flow. As Heraclitus said, you never step in the same river twice and we know we will never visit the same Silverburn twice. There is also the idea of how prescribed burning of vegetation can recycle nutrients tied up in old plant growth to invigorate new growth.  With the current FEAT and community initiative ‘Heart Mind Soul Silverburn’ perhaps new possibilities for Silverburn are emerging.

And to end. A whispered message from a beach encounter:

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To end with a name and only the name. To end with only the letters of the name:

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Silver sun sliver –

burrs liven us.

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River veils runes

in blue siren lures.

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Briers line ruins,

burn rises in

river lens.

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Vein in burn

silver in vein

burn silver

S  i  l  v  e  r  b  u  r  n.

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Now playing: The Necks – Silverwater

References:

Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland

County Folk-Lore Vol VII. Examples of Printed Folk-Lore concerning Fife with some notes on Clackmannan and Kinross-Shires collected by John Ewart Simpkins (London: Sidgwick & Jackson for the Folk-Lore Society, 1914).

RCHAMS, Canmore

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America.  (New York: Viking, 1962).

Marysia Lachowicz, Polish Army in Fife. (Work in Progress).

With very special thanks to Margaret and Aiveen for the invitation to “come and see what we make of it” and also Aiveen, Margaret, Graham and Ninian for inspiration and sharing that first visit.

Categories
Field Trip Psychogeography Signs and Signifiers Sounds of Spaces and Places Symbol Uncategorized

Echoes of the Pioneers: Three Beehives in Leven

Recently, we have been visiting the area around the coastal town of Leven.  A fairly long piece is slowly coming to fruition.  Until then, here is a short post.

Walk up Durie Street in Leven and listen out for the bees singing. Perhaps, the sound of the skep is more of a muted murmur now, but raise your eyes from street level and you may hear them. 

The first hive is above what is now the town library. Our industrious and co-operative little bees swarm around their skep as they have done since 1887.

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This symbolic image on a former building of the Leven Reform Co-operative Society reminds us of the Rochdale Pioneers. In 1844, with an economy in decline, wage reductions and strikes, a group of unemployed weavers met at the Socialist Institute to debate the philosophies of Robert Owen and Chartism.  Whilst there are many examples of co-operative societies existing before 1844, The Rochdale Pioneers formulated a set of guiding principles, upon which, an expansive version of co-operation was founded.  Looking at these principles today, it is notable how well these stand up as a set of co-operative ideals:

1. Democratic control, one member one vote and equality of the sexes.

2. Open membership.

3. A fixed rate of interest payable on investment.

4. Pure, unadulterated goods with full weights and measures given.

5. No credit.

6. Profits to be divided pro-rata on the amount of purchase made (the dividend or divi).

7. A fixed percentage of profits to be devoted to educational purposes.

8. Political and religious neutrality.

The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers raised money from 28 original subscribers to establish a shop at 31 Toad Lane, Rochdale which was equipped and stocked with basic goods and produce. The Pioneers chose the beehive as a symbol of co-operation and unity and the original stone skep stood on top of the, now demolished, central store at 45-51 Toad Lane, Rochdale.  The skep now sits preserved and incorporated into the outside wall of the Rochdale Pioneers museum. 
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(c) The Rochdale Pioneers Museum

Within ten years of the Pioneers founding efforts the co-operative movement in Britain had grown to nearly 1,000 co-operatives with many adopting the symbol of the beehive.

We are back in Leven. Follow the echoes and walk further up Durie Street. On the clock of the former Co-operative department store, a golden skep, clotting the fingers of weak, ebbing sunlight:

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Stand.  Raise your head and look to the sky.  Follow the thread of sibilant hum to the very top of the building.  A change of tone – to low dissonant drone. A sign that the bees are, once again, getting ready to swarm:

Leven

Underneath the skep

intimations of new life

still sounding – echoes

of the Pioneers.

Now Playing: Earth – The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull 

References:

The Rochdale Pioneers Museum

Manchester History