{"id":186,"date":"2008-07-30T21:11:53","date_gmt":"2008-07-30T21:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/blog\/?p=186"},"modified":"2025-11-07T06:02:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T06:02:19","slug":"mary-mary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/mary-mary","title":{"rendered":"trip nineteen: mary, mary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight minutes, Google Earth tells me it would take from my house. To my shame it takes me two days to reach Linn Park to locate another of Harry Bell\u2019s PSAs, the site of the old Cathcart Castle. On day one I get lost \u2013 ironic since this project relies heavily on map reading and one\u2019s ability to find places. Happily there\u2019s an upside to this since I stumbled on the Court Knowe, situated on the opposite side of Old Castle Road from Linn Park. The road, said to have been the original castle moat, gives some indication of its scale. In the end though, do I really care about buildings I can’t see? What am I supposed to conclude from these so-called ancient sites anyway?<\/p>\n

As its name suggests, the Knowe is a hill where \u2013 as mentioned on my last trip \u2013 Mary, Queen of Scots is said to have watched the Battle of Langside. Legend has it she stayed at Cathcart Castle at the invitation of its owner, Alan de Cathcart, a fierce supporter of Scottish independence. To have Mary placed at three different locations on that fateful day of May 13th 1568 is compelling, if only to confirm the vagaries of historians and the fragility of their assertions. According to an entry on the Glasgow Story<\/a> website \u2013 at the time of battle Cathcart Castle was held by Sir William Semple, who fought alongside the Regent, Earl of Moray, making Mary\u2019s stay there doubtful.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On this hot summer day, with camera kit, rucksack and heavy-duty tripod I drag myself up a tarmac path. I\u2019m on the verge of giving up when I notice a stone on top of a mound. Encouraged, I wade through tall grass. Some park this, I tell myself, about time they got the mower out. Through the foliage, I see tower blocks, a sightline of sorts because it can only be the high rises on Battlefield Road, roughly equidistant from Queen\u2019s Park and the Camphill Earthwork. If only it was winter, I tell myself, the view would be obvious. In May 1568, how different would the same view be? Would trees have stood here?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reaching the summit \u2013 not much of a summit, but an achievement anyway \u2013 I find a small marker, an orienteering point with the blurred number 18. Next to it is Queen Mary\u2019s Stone, made of rough-hewn red sandstone and erected in the late 19th century to replace a previous monument. Under recent graffiti I find Mary\u2019s insignia and the date.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I take my shots and stumble back downhill. On the tarmac path back to Old Castle Road, my Glaswegian sixth sense goes on high alert when I feel a presence behind me. How fast can I turn my tripod into a weapon? I ask myself. It turns out my pursuer is harmless, even concerned about the weight I\u2019m carrying. Chatting, I soon learn that Manus served in the army. He tells me that, despite his Irish parentage, he saw action in Northern Ireland \u2013 I had to, he confessed, you know, for the sake of the other guys \u2013 but was discharged after a motorcycle accident left him with no short-term memory. If it wasn\u2019t for my wife, I don\u2019t know where I\u2019d be, he tells me. The army didn\u2019t want to know. He describes how his wife had to fight on his behalf for appropriate treatment. He\u2019s genuine, because ten minutes later he tells me the same story.<\/p>\n

Still, it’s fitting that I should meet an ex-soldier on this of all sites. Did I give a moment\u2019s thought to the men who died here? Does anybody? It\u2019s a long time since a war was fought on these soils \u2013 if you discount events in Northern Ireland, which no right thinking person can. Today it\u2019s easy for us to filter out the wars being fought in distant countries, even when beamed to our screens in real time. Are we so inured, desensitised and complacent by images of wars now that we disavow its impact or consequence? Conversely, why do so many of us crave the spectacle of latter-day state-sanctioned violence \u2013 the amateur battle re-enactment brigades, the TV reconstruction of this-or-that skirmish, the endless documentaries of WW2? I slag off my dad, a man old enough to have seen National Service, if not a full-on war, and an avid fan of what I disparagingly call The Hitler Channel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An ornate column, designed by Alexander Skirving and erected at the top of Langside Avenue in 1887, gives no mention to the troops who died on both sides at the Battle of Langside, marking only the site of the battle. From Manus\u2019 story it seems nothing has changed to improve the lot of those who do the fighting while those waging wars stand by, as Mary did, idle spectators.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The following day I return to Linn Park and the remains of Cathcart Castle. I may be blessed with sunlight but today I\u2019m seized with a numbing futility as I gaze at a massive grass-covered lump in the ground where the castle once stood. Why am I not surprised? Cathcart Castle, built around 1450, survived for centuries until the city council decided to demolish it \u2013 \u2018for safety reasons\u2019 \u2013 in 1980. A cynic might suppose their decision was a long-term strategy, that they\u2019re still waiting to flog the land to developers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I take as many shots that make sense, but without much enthusiasm. It\u2019s a beautiful day and I\u2019m more attracted to the White Cart Water and the collie chasing the ducks. Or a tiny girl, trying to be balletic, tripping on her hoop. I pause to take a shot of an empty bench, conscious that anyone watching would think me mad. I\u2019m not. A friend recently told me that it\u2019s now city council policy to ensure no park bench is close to a bush, a bid to alleviate fear and to deter would-be attackers. Urban myth?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the roundabout in the play area, an entire extended family sits, bunched up, going round and round. They shout at me to take a shot and I oblige, hamfistedly directing. They\u2019re a decent lot, loads of kids, hard-looking tattooed dads, brusque, fearsome mothers, one fat, one thin. The kids scream, having a ball, but kept in line by their mums, ready with the baby wipes for dirty knees and sticky hands. One of the guys, whip-thin, hard-bodied, his face young yet ancient, a face that\u2019s seen a few things, tells me he\u2019s been on TV before, a Channel 4 documentary about loan sharks, him and his mother. He quite fancies being an actor. Are you sure about that? I caution, adding, I don’t want to put you off but you\u2019ll get typecast as the junkie, the ned, the alky, the loser. I know, he says, but it would be great to kid on that\u2019s who you are. That\u2019s no\u2019 me. That\u2019s no\u2019 who I am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eight minutes, Google Earth tells me it would take from my house. To my shame it takes me two days to reach Linn Park to locate another of Harry Bell\u2019s PSAs, the site of the old Cathcart Castle. On day one I get lost \u2013 ironic since this project relies heavily on map reading and one\u2019s ability to find places. Happily there\u2019s an upside to this since I stumbled on the Court Knowe, situated on the opposite side of Old Castle Road from Linn Park. The road, said to have been the original castle moat, gives some indication of its scale. In the end though, do I really care about buildings I can’t see? What am I supposed to conclude from these so-called ancient sites anyway?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,36,58,94,207],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-battle-of-langside","tag-cathcart-castle","tag-demolition","tag-glasgow-city-council","tag-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5152,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/5152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}