Heart of many a famous building
ASPC has held a photography competition, now, for 4 years. We have always been very pleased with the response and highly impressed with the quality. This year’s invitation to enter, resulted in 300 entries, which we at ASPC find very encouraging.
As is our practice, we have chosen twelve winners. In addition to receiving a modest gift, each will be featured on our website home pages -one per month.
Our June winner – Lucille Harries – has given us something intriguing – what could this seemingly innocuous rural scene be? Looking closer, despite the greenery, there sems to be a series of rocky cliffs, surrounding a lochan.
The rock is granite, and the cliffs man made. This is what remains of Kemnay quarries, once a thriving and world renowned supplier of granite. The quarries were leased to John Fyfe, from Aberdeen, in the 19th Century and, by the latter part of that century, employed around 250 men.
Like Rubislaw Quarry, in the west end of Aberdeen, the quarry was a pit, becoming ever deeper as the rock was extracted from the ground. This method of extraction created specialised problems and John Fyfe claimed that the Blondins – lifts for the stone – were his invention. Blondin was a famous high wire walker in those days and the “Blondins” used in pit quarries were wires strung above the mouth of the pit, and on which, running on the wire, was a wheel to which could be attached the lifting gear for the stone. There were two Blondins at Kemnay. I think there was, also, one at Rubislaw.
Granite from the NE was sought after, and stone from Kemnay was widely used in construction. Kemnay granite has been used in the London Cenotaph, the Forth Railway Bridge, the Thames Embankment and many other famous buildings.
Those who worked in the pit must have been phlegmatic, given that their way in and out was by means of craneage in “hutches”.
For us, looking back, the work involved in extracting the granite must have been arduous and wearying, for the men. The site, in its heyday would have been an exposed and industrial place.
Lucille’s photo shows how the hand of man can, in time, be softened by nature.
If you’re interested in learning more about each one of our images as part of our photography competition, then why not take a look at one of our previous submissions, here.