Blog — Matt McGarr Photography

One of the things that I enjoy on an almost daily basis, is that Scotland is littered with historical artefacts. I’ve always said that I am very fortunate to live in Scotland. Besides from things like the standard of living and free healthcare, it’s a great place to be a photographer. There is such a great variety of things to photograph. We obviously have a busy wedding industry and people want family portraits as much as anywhere else but looking away from the professional side of things and looking at personal photography, there is so much to look at. We have cities that have a mix of modern and not so modern architecture. We have a pretty progressive culture so if you wanted to photograph the gay and lesbian scene, you wouldn’t have to go to some underground club like you would in some countries. We have rural areas that provide a completely different backdrop and culture to the cities. You could photograph landscapes (which is what got me into photography in the first place) or wildlife (that you don’t need to armed to get near), or people (sometimes that qualifies as wildlife) or architecture or culture/subcultures just about anywhere in the country and you would have something that would be interesting and that you could be proud of.

And then there is of course history. This is what I mean when I say we are lucky in this country. We have lasting monuments that you can visit. And loads of them are mostly intact. We weren’t building huge cities like Rome, 2000 years ago. A lot of our castles/houses/forts etc were built 1000-700 years ago, which means a lot of them are in very good condition. Edinburgh Castle up there was probably a settlement of some sort in bronze age but the castle that we see today was built from the 12th century onwards.

The Wallace Monument (not actually a medieval castle but cool nonetheless)

We do have things that are much older of course. Humans tend to leave remnants of themselves and there are various bronze age and older sites dotted about the country. Orkney in particular seems to have a good collection. Probably because they were never built over in the middle ages.

But there’s something about being able to visit somewhere and see how daily life played out for those that came before you that really makes something feel real. I touched upon this in the Herculaneum blog. It’s much more relatable than crumbling pillars and brings things to life. Not that I would ever say no to visiting crumbling pillars, by the way. I like all sorts.

The crumbling ruins of Castle Urquhart at Loch Ness

Alloa Tower. Completely restored with recreated rooms inside.

I think what I like best though is finding things that I never knew existed. Edinburgh Castle is one of the most well known castles in the world. While it’s a handsome bugger, no-one is surprised to see it when they get off the train at Waverly. Both Alloa Tower and Urquhart Castle are popular attractions in their areas. But there are castles, towers, churches, houses and all sorts that are hidden from view and don’t have pamphlets at other visitor attractions.

Torwood Castle is about 5 or 6 miles from my house. I had never heard of it until about a day or two before I photographed it. It’s crumbling which is why it’s location isn’t exactly advertised. It was apparently being restored by a local trust, albeit rather slowly, although they no longer seem to exist so who knows how it will turn out. I didn’t trust the structure with my weight so I photographed the outside!

Cambuskenneth Abbey is another one that not many people know about, despite it being in the heartland of historical buildings in the Stirling area. I only really know about it because Historic Environmental Scotland put on a tour with a local archaeologist who showed us around the building. Among other things, it was where Robert The Bruce had summoned the Clan Chiefs to tell them that they were with him or against him when it came to the battle of Bannockburn. So it’s maybe a little surprising that so few people know about it. I’m sure it’s well known enough to the locals but beyond that it would likely only be known to those with an interest in history.

Muthill Old Church is actually something that I’ve seen mentioned on a few websites/ pamphlets etc but I’ll include it here because I used to live in Muthill and didn’t know this was there! That’s quite funny because if you were to drive through Muthill heading north (which is how we approached after visiting family in Stirling), you would hardly be able to miss it. Now, in my defence, I was a child when I left Muthill and the church was on the other side of the village (and more importantly the main road) so it’s entirely possible that I had to stay on ‘our’ side of the road, which kept me away from the church. More likely though, is that I had just forgotten in the nearly 30 years that have come between.

Still, I was back in Muthill, looking for things to photograph for “Paul: Memories of my Father” when I saw this for what was really the first time. It was such a nice surprise to discover something about my old home that I had no idea existed.

In 2017, I was in the privileged position of being one of the first photographers to photograph Bannockburn House in decades. It was (and still is) going through a refurbishment after a fairly controversial recent history. It’s a great building that has unfortunately been stripped of most of its treasures but will hopefully be restored to the point that visitors will be able to picture it in its heyday once more.

It’s another one that not many people know about. In fact, having mentioned it to people who actually live Bannockburn, it seems that even they haven’t heard about it. I’m sure that’s mostly because it was in private hands and essentially kept away from the public for so long.

But t’s also to do with our education system. Hands up, I did not take history at school once I had a choice (from 3rd year in high school) and I haven’t been to high school in a long time so I can’t really speak for what happens these days. I was in school during the Thatcher and then Major years when education was very much an after thought to the government and I still entertain the younger people I know with stories of how pathetic schools were when I was there.

Just for an example, I did drama in 6th year (the last year of high school). It was mainly to fill a space in my timetable, to be honest but it also gave me something a bit more enjoyable to do at school since 6th year is mostly study and exams. At one point, I was playing the part of some famous singer, coming to stay in a hotel. I was sent to the music department to get a guitar that I would use to mime to music. The music department actually had a load of guitars, presumably bought (or donated) in bulk some time ago. They were there when we had started the school, 6 years earlier. But not one of the guitars had 6 strings on it. Two of us checked. Out of 30+ guitars, not one was in working condition. None even had 5 strings. The best we managed to get was a guitar with 4 strings and it was a left handed guitar. That’s not a lie. The rest had between three and zero strings attached. There were no spares. We had 30+ guitars that had to be left sitting in a store cupboard, unused for god knows how many years because we didn’t have replacement guitar strings. And that’s just one example. I could go into details about a single javelin shared between an entire gym class or how our tennis equipment was the hard plastic things you buy on holiday in Benidorm before binning on the last day.

But yeah, history. I don’t remember much or anything about medieval or early modern history being taught to me. It was mainly about the Romans with a bit of WWII thrown in. All very interesting and important, of course but not exactly comprehensive and it leaves a fairly large gap in the knowledge. In fact, quite weirdly, the only time I remember there being a push to discuss Scottish history at school was when Braveheart came out and people felt the need to correct all the mistakes! Presumably looking to quell a rebellion before it started haha! Maybe that’s part of the issue as well. Scottish history in movies and TV shows isn’t exactly known for being represented accurately. The only show that I know of that looks at Jacobites is Outlander and it’s a show about time travel with fictional locations so not exactly the best form of edutainment.

So maybe you get taught all about this stuff when you choose to study history in the latter half of high school but for me, I see a missed opportunity. When you have so much available that you can go visit in person, why not teach it to everyone? Maybe if more kids visited some of these locations (don’t get me wrong, plenty of kids visit Stirling Castle, although I never did when at school) maybe more people would go on to study history or even just know more about it when they reach adulthood. I always think that the more people know about the history of a place, the more willing to get involved in things they will be as they feel more connected. For example, I bet if everyone in the area was made aware of Torwood Castle and the state that it’s in now, they’d be able to raise a chunk of money to do some work on it. Just making it safe enough for me to go in would be nice haha! But in all seriousness, while it sits hidden away from everyone without people banging a drum for it, it will be forgotten and allowed to crumble further.

When I first left school, I worked in a bar in Falkirk. We would be able to see all the way across to the Wallace Monument (maybe 12 miles away as the crow flies) from the window and would often get tourists coming in asking of there was anything local worth seeing. We had a running joke where we asked if they’d been to the Wheel, and then had nothing else to recommend other than point towards the monument and suggest that. So people would wander off with no help at all from us. There are several places of historical interest in the area that we gave no consideration or in reality had no idea about because no one had ever told us. In fact it was only when Google Maps became a thing that I was able to start finding these things that I had no idea existed. Think of how many tourists left that bar and disappeared off to visit the Wallace Monument who might have visited Torwood Castle and might have even gone on to donate some money to the restoration. Makes you think. Teach kids cool stuff, help the economy. That can’t be bad, right?

Anyway, when I started writing this blog it was going to be a fun, friendly post about how Scotland has a load of historic buildings that most people don’t know about. It kinda turned into complaints about Thatcher era school funding haha! Ah well. You can always just look at the photos if the chat doesn’t do anything for you.

Anyway the plan is this year (as every year) to get to more sites and see what else I can find. There really are things everywhere. I just need to wait on spare time and the weather to be on my side.

This is a follow up blog to the earlier one about the week in Sorrento for my Sister's wedding. I noted in that blog that two days after the wedding, we visited the town of Herculaneum and I thought it deserved a separate entry due to the volume of photos. Well here it is:

We had had a day of rest after the wedding. I had spent it lounging by the pool and then met my Mum and step Dad for a meal at a restaurant near my hotel. We needed the rest because the wedding day had been long and tiring and we would be visiting Herculaneum the next day. Which would also be long and tiring.

We started off at the train station. The train that picked us up was modern, cooled and was the express train. Took barely 20 minutes, so that was a pretty good start. We passed some gorges and shipyards that would have been good to photograph if I was ever in the area again. What really caught my eye on the way in, though was the aeroplanes that were attempting to put out the fires on Mount Vesuvius. They would fly out to sea, scoop up water and then fly over the volcano and dump the water on the fires. I got great entertainment out of that and would loved to have been able to get on one.

Mount Vesuvius on fire.  I took this photograph on the wedding day. — Mount Vesuvius on fire. I took this photograph on the wedding day.

Herculaneum was a town that was destroyed when Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. A few other towns were destroyed at the time, including Pompeii. Herculaneum is much smaller and thus a bit easier to navigate. It's a pretty sad story, as you could imagine. A lot of the people fled to the docks in the hopes that the boats would come back and rescue them but for whatever reason (probably an erupting volcano), the fishermen didn't come back for the people and they all died there, hiding in coves along the water. They are still there to this day.

The modern town around it seemed to be quite a poor area. My understanding is that more or less all the towns in the Bay of Naples are quite poor, with the exception of a few that are super popular with tourists. We walked down the hill from the train station, dodging the people trying to convince you to visit their restaurant.

As incredible as Herculaneum is, my fascination lay with the flying fire engines. I kept hoping they'd get closer to us to get a better shot but I'm guessing they try avoid flying over UNESCO heritage sites.

The site itself is quite small. This photo was taken at one edge looking out to the other. There's a bit more that's still under ground but I don't think it was a particularly big place when it was functioning.

Apparently the ash that buried this town was different, or at least had a different effect than the stuff that covered Pompeii so things like wooden beams, doors and food were preserved. You can see it's in quite good condition for a town that was devastated by an unimaginable natural disaster nearly 2000 years ago.

It wasn't as busy as it might've been, considering the time of year. It may well have been the heat keeping people away. I wasn't going to complain about fewer tourists than expected. It gave me plenty of time and space to get a look about and get in close to the detais without being pushed away by crowds.

This photo gives an idea of how open everything was. There really was very little shade. And it was incredibly hot. It was the first time we had really ventured out in the midday heat and it was painful at times. My Sister and her new husband gave up after 20 minutes or so and went back to sit it out. I can't say I blame them. Sorrento is the location of their wedding. They'll be back here one day. Maybe more than one day. I might not be. I don't like wasting opportunity, especially when it comes to travel.

When we were in New Zealand, 7 years ago now, we visited White Island and climbed the Fox Glacier. White Island is a volcanic island in the bay of plenty, off the coast of the north island. And the Fox Glacier can be found on the South Island. Both were fantastic experiences and they're places I'll likely never see again. In the last few years, I've read that both sites have been declared off limits to tourists due to eruptions and retreating. I'll let you work out which situation applies to which site. Now that might change in the future and people might be allowed back on even as I type this but it shows how quickly things can go from your bucket list to your list of regrets (don't keep a list of regrets, by the way).

So I didn't want to miss out on seeing Herculaneum and its stories.

This was one of the few areas in shade. It was the part still being excavated. I only went in as it offered some respite from the sun but was interested to see that work continues. Though judging by the size of that spider web covering the entrance, work has been put on hold for a while.

The next area was the docks. You follow a path down and onto a wooden platform that takes you up to the place that so many of the town's population met their end.

It's now at least 300 yards to the sea from that position so it seems Mt Vesuvius extended the coastline a bit as well as wreaking havoc.

**WARNING** The next couple of photos are of skeletons that were once very real people.

It had been quite a sobering experience. With historical sites like this, it's often hard to relate to the people of the time. The Colosseum in Rome is mostly crumbling, worn away and is about these Gladiatorial games that we find hard to imagine. That's not how it is in Herculaneum. You can see houses, shops and restaurants and can actually stand in them. So it's not this abstract concept of fighting to the death, or feeding Christians to lions for the entertainment of a baying mob.

You can see the day to day lives of these people right in front of you. You can see the water fountain they would have visited (frequently!) and where they would have gone for food with friends. And where they ran to when they were scared. The separation isn't there the way it is with other sites. It felt similar to Dachau in the way that the people's fate was right in front of you. You couldn't distance yourself from it if you wanted to.

After reuniting with the rest of the group, we headed back to Sorrento. We would get a look at day to day life for the modern Italian, on the train. Modern Italian life is hot and sweaty. You can smell the sticky sweat just by looking at this photograph. This was not the air-conditioned express train, sadly. This was the old, window cooled, arrive home an hour and 24 stops later kind of train.

I almost sang with delight when we got off the other end.