BY HILL AND SHORE
Angus Martin
Allister and Agnes Stewart report two sightings of a MAGPIE at Macharioch, Southend, in May, and Agnes reports having noticed, on 13 November, while walking the Learside from Kildalloig to Polliwilline, a single plume of PAMPAS GRASS just beyond the sixth milestone, on the seaward side of the road.
Mrs Jeanette Brodie reports a sighting in August, in her garden at Seaside Cottage, Low Askomil, of a BUMBLE BEE which was all-black except for a tiny orange patch on its rear. Was it an exotic or a mutant ... or what? Just past Seaside Cottage, from the slipway opposite Isla Hattan to Richmond’s Slip, I noticed, in September, colonies of SANDHOPPERS established in the roadside wall and in leaf-choked fresh-water channels at the foot of the wall. These are ordinarily inhabitants of the seashore, though I have seen them on grassy foreshores, so their presence by the roadside was something of a puzzle to me. (Incidentally, Richmond’s Slip - formerly a popular swimming place for the youth of the town - was entirely destroyed during the laying of the sewage pipeline in 2000, and its stonework replaced the following year with a nondescript low cement structure.)
Foot and mouth restrictions put a stop to field-walking, among many other outdoor activities. Frances Hood, Lily Cregeen, my daughter Isabella and I resumed on 9 August on the 15-acre field called Low Jerusalem, formerly on Torchoillean Farm and since 1966 attached to West Drumlemble. It was cool, breezy and bright - ideal conditions - when we commenced walking at 7.30 pm, but the yield was scant: a couple of flint chunks amid the expected domestic waste of crockery shards, broken glass, cinders, etc. This was rather disappointing, because the field was no great distance from that on Ballygreggan which produced such an interesting haul the previous summer.
The Wallace brothers at West Drumlemble, James and Willie, tell me that their great-great-grandfather, William Wallace, was born at Low Tirfergus in 1793 and farmed Damascus - close to Jerusalem, and presumably then a smallholding of some kind - before taking the tenancy of West Drumlemble in 1836, at the same time as his brother John entered Torchoillean. No one seems to know when these fields were named or what inspired their Biblical identities.
Duncan McKinnon Sr, in Low Tirfergus, who’d passed us as we arrived to search Low Jerusalem, later told me that once when he was ploughing with horses in the Achnasavil field above the old schoolhouse at Kilmichael, Carradale Glen, the plough turned up a ‘large handful’ of flints - some of them big lumps - in one spot. He gathered them up and took them home, but has no idea what became of them. During the last War, there was a demand for flints as a substitute for matches, which were in short supply. The pipe-smoking brothers, Duncan and John MacKeith, who farmed Kilmichael, used flint in conjunction with sulphur-soaked paper and a bit of broken file to strike a light, a practice described, with variations, in my short article, ‘Flint-Lighters and Tobacco-Smokers’, in issue no. 26, p 15, of this Magazine. Since tractors replaced horses, farmers and farm-workers seldom - if ever - find prehistoric tools in fields because they no longer operate at ground-level and stone and flint objects must be virtually impossible to spot from a tractor, even if one knew what one was looking for.
August 15th was a sunny day, after four days of intermittent downpours. The dog Benjie and I walked High Askomil as far as Maidens Planting then cut on to the hill and followed the glen on to the marshland east of Knock Scalbert, a favourite spot of mine, being peaceful and out of sight of town. We disturbed three brown HARES, one after another in rapid succession, from a small area at the foot of Knock Scalbert, and I sought out one of the forms just for the pleasure of feeling the body-heat on the pressed grass. That vicinity yielded a couple of fine HORSE MUSHROOMS, not yet opened, therefore firm and maggot-free, and I noted the white knobs of others just pushing through the ground. (Four days later, I secured a fine haul, and enjoyed ample pickings periodically until my last, on 10 November.) A young male HEN HARRIER was the only noteworthy bird sighting. VOLE populations appear to have been low last year, hence the correspondingly low raptor numbers.
While descending the south face of Knock Scalbert, I searched the tumbled scatters of earth and stone eroded out of rabbit burrows and the crescent hollows sheep form when they lie against the hillside for shelter. I found one flint flake. It wasn’t much to look at, but I sent it anyway to Alan Saville of the Dept of Archaeology, National Museums of Scotland, and he described it as an undateable ‘struck flake from a beach pebble ... The incomplete nature of the piece makes it impossible to classify fully as a scraper and I would put it as a miscellaneous retouched piece’.
For years I’ve had a strong feeling that if I searched for long enough on and around Knock Scalbert - whose great archaeological potential, as yet untested by excavation, is apparent in its widespread settlement remains - something truly interesting would reveal itself. On 11 October I found that ‘something’, in the same scree as the flint was found, but I didn’t at the time appreciate exactly what it was. When I picked it up I assumed it to be ‘just’ a potsherd. I was in two minds whether to bother Alan Saville with it, but decided I’d be as well to find out what it was and to what period it belonged. His reply surprised me. It is a sherd of late Neolithic Grooved Ware pottery, probably the first from Kintyre.
Fired by this news, I set off for Knock Scalbert at the first opportunity, which was late afternoon on Saturday, 3 November, after work. I walked from Maidens Planting and reached the hill in the darkening. I’d scarcely begun my search when the unmistakable shape of an axehead appeared in my vision, fully exposed on the grass. I was so excited, I shouted to the dog that I’d found a polished stone axehead. He too became excited, but without knowing why! A perfect HORSE MUSHROOM, picked on the way home, completed the day’s take. It was sliced and frying in the pan less than an hour after I picked it. Both the axehead and the potsherd were claimed as Treasure Trove and illustrated reports on them from the NMS will appear in the next issue.
On the following day - Sunday - I was back at the site, accompanied by Frances Hood and John and Elizabeth Marrison. Our approach was from Balegreggan and we had ample time for a more thorough search, but three flint chips were all that turned up. We enjoyed the walk, though, and had a look at the mysterious big pits excavated in various parts of the hillside. Subsequent trips to the findspot yielded nothing.
Mrs Camilla McKerral of Campbeltown had shown me a fossil cone, which she found in the bay at the Bird Observatory, Machrihanish, in July, so I sent it off to the National Museums, enclosing also another Carboniferous - roughly 300 million years old - fossil which I picked up, years ago, in the Galdrans. I was heading to the Inans, via the coast, and sliding down a high shingle-bank just beyond the gate at Fionn a Phort. I happened to look down, at the end of my descent, and there was the green-hued fossil at my feet. Ever since that find, I’ve always scanned the Galdrans shingle-banks for more fossils, but without success. There’s little doubt, however, that others await discovery.
Dr Lyall I Anderson, Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at NMS, kindly examined the specimens and described them thus:
‘The larger of the two rolled pebbles contains what I suspect to be a longitudinal cross-section through an orthocone nautiloid. This is a chambered-shell invertebrate related to the present day Nautilus and the Mesozoic ammonites. In orthocones, the gas-filled chambers of the shell are aligned consecutively giving a bullet-shaped form to the fossils. In forms such as the ammonites and Nautilus, the chambers are arranged in a coil or spiral. The matrix in which this fossil occurs is a muddy bioclastic, limestone. Bivalve shells and small ring-shaped crinoid ossicles occur in association with the orthocone. The orthocone is a marine organism preserved in marine sediment.
‘The other fossil is a three-dimensionally preserved tree cone, probably of the form genus Lepidostrobus. This is a very unusual specimen. I have seen similar fertile cones preserved in three dimensions within nodules of the iron carbonate mineral siderite from the coal seams of the northwest of England (Lancashire Coalfields). These have been wholly enclosed in the siderite. [Mrs McKerral’s] specimen differs in that the beach rolling has revealed many other aspects of the cone’s structure.’
Davie McVicar, Machrihanish, tells me that he was out one day in Peter McMillan’s boat, Kaeleigh, with Peter himself, when they noticed splashing on top of a reef to the north of the Bird Observatory. The cause of the turmoil was a large BASKING SHARK. After about five minutes of rolling around, the shark then slid off into the sea. Davie wonders if, rather than having accidentally grounded on the reef, the shark wasn’t rolling around to free itself of parasites. I know, from having spoken to elderly fishermen, that basking sharks have been known to rub themselves against the hulls of stationary fishing boats, and the fishermen’s explanation was that the sharks were ridding themselves of ‘lice’ (probably eel-like parasitic lampreys); so the theory may have some credibility. In ‘By Hill and Shore’ of autumn, 2000, I reported a similar shark-grounding on the Arranman’s Barrels reef off Polliwilline.
My daughters and I had an evening walk on 20 August to Kilchousland and picnicked on soup and fresh crusty bread. The only other person there was a wilk-picker whose head could be seen bobbing among the rocks of the lower shore near MacRingan’s Point. The highlight of the outing was Amelia’s discovery of a HEDGEHOG. It was asleep on the foreshore, but, when it sensed us, it waddled off, crept under the fence and lay down again, in the field. The girls told me its fleas could be seen jumping around constantly. That’s one reason hedgehogs are best not admitted into houses, a mistake I made once as a boy!
More next time
No 51 Spring 2002
Wee Drams E-mails, comments, queries and enlightenment from around the world
Page 2: A History of the Gilchrists...............continued
Page 3: E-mails - Machrihanish and Fessenden
Page 4: The Kintyre Armours - A New Approach to the First Generation
Page 5: The Campbeltown Book - You must look at this!
Page 6: The MacKeith Family at Kilmichael
Page 7: By Hill and Shore - Angus Martin
Page 8: The Rev. Alexander Stewart (1755 - 1798)