Having successfully pitched an article on the Gorbals Vampire (about which more later) to the American horror pop culture magazine Cryptology, I came to the Southern Necropolis, the fiend’s reputed stalking ground, to take some accompanying photos. Although a semi-regular wanderer through north of the river counterpart the Glasgow Necropolis, I had never been here …
My trips to see the sculpture Still in Loch Earn and Dunino Den in Fife were prompted by a sudden torrent of photos of each appearing on my Facebook feed, apropos of nothing. After I had been to each the torrent became a trickle and soon dried up completely. Chalk it up to the mysteries …
It is the kind of non-descript environment that could exist in any town, anywhere. A small housing estate lies next to a timber yard; across the road, a McDonald’s and a PureGym. But it was here in 1929 – 1930, just off Main Street at the point Milngavie runs into Bearsden, an alternative future was …
You would think the world’s only two-legged equestrian sculpture would be Glasgow’s most iconic statue, but no, that honour apparently falls to the regular four-legged equestrian statue of Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, located outside the city’s Gallery of Modern. Financed via public subscription – approximately 10,000 people donated – the statue was …
The Ship Builders of Port Glasgow commemorates the town’s shipbuilding heritage and was installed in the town’s Coronation Park in 2022. It is the work of the Scotland-based English sculptor John McKenna, whose submission overwhelmingly won the public vote for best design. For the most part I’ll let the pictures do the talking. One of …
After visiting the Pass of Killicrankie I have a quick consultation with the Historic Environment Scotland guidebook I keep in my glove compartment to see if they have any sites nearby. It turns out a carved Pictish stone lies just south of Pilochry, and since I haven’t visited any carved Pictish stones since I was …
The 280-year-old Meikleour Beech Hedge is officially the tallest and longest hedge in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records. The Undiscovered Scotland website states that the northern end of the hedge is at least 120ft (36m) tall and the southern end at least 80ft (24m) tall, and that it is 530 metres …
Unfortunately, I was unable to get out to bag any brown signs this week, so instead I am going to write about this little curiosity, a statue of Buffalo Bill Cody, in Dennistoun, Glasgow. William Frederick Cody (1846 – 1917) is a legend of the Old West. At fifteen, he was a rider for the …
I was blissfully oblivious that the sculpture Still, known locally as the Mirror Man, resided in the waters of Loch Earn, just off the shore at St. Fillans, between 2014 – 2017, but it was impossible to avoid its return to that spot in March 2025. Practically every Scottish media outlet reported its reinstallation, and …
Having devoted the month of March solely to sites in Edinburgh – specifically, the Royal Mile – it is time to leave the Scottish capital for awhile and explore elsewhere. And just for a change, I also want to feature something on a much smaller scale than some of my recent postings, such as Edinburgh …
