View allAll Photos Tagged fractions
As I end this fraction of my Black Gold project/series which reflects on self loathing. I'm extremely grateful for having this model participate in my method/madness, not only did he understand and relate to the concept but he willingly went beyond the call to allow it to be fluid and together we were able to create exactly what I envisioned, exactly what I wrote a couple months ago. "12 years thinking my shade too dark" - understanding yourself is always challenging but the beauty you find in making peace with who you are and how you look isn't only liberating, it's monumental! It's a pivotal part to achieving that eternal pursuit of happiness, the ever changing and elusive. Growing up in a house where I was the only dark one I often wondered how would it be if I was lighter. Would I be pretty? Would I now be attractive? Would I be free of one more stigma? Would the general public love me more? And without me even noticing this transcended into deeper and subconscious personality traits. I started to only see beauty in what was fair and the media only cemented this vision by displaying and monopolizing what shades were deemed alluring, coincidentally the lack of love and appreciation for melanin is exactly what made me love it even more, what made me love me even more. So in this series I've exaggerated complexions to fully explore the contrast in the narrative. In some cases making it exactly as it is, BLACK AND WHITE.
So this series begins with Pride meanders through perspective, decisions and ends with a hopeful fade.
Pride, he stood looking out with all his darkened splendor thinking he could take on the world, thinking he's ready for any challenge but as the look lingers on he begins to experience doubt, a doubt that plays with his mind. Which leads to a myriad of conflicting emotions.
Here's the piece I wrote that started it all.
I look at my skin and I think that it isn’t enough somewhere my hue falls short my shade just isn’t right and therefore my life isn’t worth as much. I look at my skin and I wonder why I hate this shade, was I somehow subconsciously indoctrinated, somewhere I was taught that my shade would never be enough, that it would always be poorly represented, corporately BLACKlisted, aggressively persecuted. I look at this skin and think that there isn’t any beauty in it, I loathe this skin, this skin that acts a certain way, this stereotypical skin, this melanin. I look away from this skin to find acceptable beauty, they must be lighter than me, brighter than me, fairer than me, redder than me, whiter than me. RIGHTER THAN ME. More commercially represented than me. They just mustn’t be me! And even though mama tried to teach me that nothing was wrong with it, I just somehow fail to see, how this could ever be true so with pride in everything other than myself I walk to the sea, to be washed clean, to become a new, fairer, lighter, beautiful me. - Complexion.
in the friction, in a flash, when your eyes are glittering at the top of my thick cable thigh high socks, this is where I stand, this is when I take another step, give you permission to grab at my hips, to hold me steady while you work to make me lose my concentration.
flickr.com/groups/mdpd2008/discuss/72157603942206059/#com...
( I don't do html :( but this is the link to my diary. I've decided to write different text on my diary page :)
In a fraction of a second
This little lizard is getting out this red "flag" to scare me.
Tuxpi photo editor: www.tuxpi.com
I had probably been at Heroescon for half the day before I decided to look at the back of my press pass, which gave me the glorious news that I got to stay in the convention center after the con was over for the day to talk to artists.
Chip Zdarsky and Matt Fraction had a line all day long like so many other artists at the show, so I just happened to run into them before my time ran out after the con. The were kind enough to let me take a Polaroid, and after it developed I knew that I'd peaked at the show. I could have stopped taking photos after this, because there was no topping this excellence. Thanks guys.
possibly mycena subcaerulea, but the blue is so faint that it might not be. These grow in my yard kind of all over, but I liked this arrangement in the leaves - the light and dark really work well together. OM 90mm at f4 or so.
This diagram was simpler to make than it looks. I made it in Microsoft's Excel using only two basic mathematical operations: subtraction and division. Every double-digit fraction between 0 and 1 is shown as a black dot (a double-digit fraction is something like 27/98 or 13/73). On the horizontal axis is the value of the fraction (e.g. 0.27551 in the case of 27/98) and on the vertical is the distance between this number and the next higher double-digit fraction (its nearest neighbour upwards).
Although this is all basic stuff, several unexpected patterns emerge. The most obvious one is the big triangle and if you look closely you can see many similar triangles inside it. Then there are these curious arrays of dots at the bottom edges that look like laughter lines. The bottom line looks like a Morse code: This is the home of all the double-digit fractions that have siblings with the same value, for example 20/40 and 30/60. What I find most interesting is the empty space between the bottom line and the dense cloud of dots above it. Why is there such a gap and why does its upper edge look so chaotic?
I do not know.
The Walker Dam – Its Past, Present and Future
28 years I have lived in Aberdeen, never knowing this beautiful piece of land was less than a 15 minute drive through the city centre from my home.
I visited today 3rd May 2018, and walked the whole area taking photos of everything that lured me, on my walk I saw herrons, mandarin ducks , mallards etc, it was a joy.
The weather was overcast though warm and bright, I will revisit in the summer on a golden day to get the best of this beautiful area of Aberdeen.
The Walker Dam, with which many Aberdeen citizens are so familiar, is only a fraction of the size it was when - in the 1830s - it was constructed in accordance with the plans drawn by
Aberdeen’s first City Architect, John Smith.
From the second quarter of the 19th century to the early 20th century the dam was a deep and massive body of water which extended from its present location, eastward, to Springfield Road – then called Walker Dam Road – where its sluice gate would have been opened at the beginning of the working day to allow water to rush through a culvert under the road, then south-east through a deep man-made channel (which is still evident today) to feed the steam condensing ponds of the Rubislaw Bleachfield, the property Richards and Company, textile manufacturers.
Today this treasured green space is one of Aberdeen City Council's 'Local Nature Conservation Sites', the 'Walker Dam and Rubislaw Link', which is a 3.9 kilometre walk along
a series of connected paths and streets. Popular with dog walkers, joggers and ramblers, the future of this valuable charming landscaped area with its semi-natural habitats, has been secured by the initiatives and work of 'Friends of Walker Dam' who are registered with 'Keep Scotland Beautiful' - a Scottish environment charity – which, independent of governmental finance and influence, is committed to the improvement of people’s lives and the places they care for.
The Friends of Walker Dam work in partnership with Aberdeen City Council to deliver the standards of maintenance and the plans for future improvements to this amenity site.
Mr Allan Davidson, Treasurer of Craigiebuckler and Seafield Community Council who is also a member of Friends of Walker Dam, has frequent meetings with the City Council's Environment Manager.
Those meetings have been very productive and improvements to the site have already been achieved.
For example, there has been a clean-up of the Dam and the
burn which flows into it; improvements have also been made to the path on the South bank of the dam, which is part of Aberdeen's core path system. The Walker Dam sign has also
been repainted.
In the near future, a bridge will be constructed at the East bank of the dam to connect its North and South banks - thus making both banks accessible for the enjoyment of visitors to
the dam. This significant infrastructural improvement has been made possible by a final act of generosity by Aberdeen Greenspace Trust. Local Councillor Martin Greig is a member of Greenspace and worked to ensure a donation of £8000 from the Trust towards the upgrade of the Walker Dam which includes the construction of the bridge, new benches, bins and various paths and tree works. A further enhancement in the area is a community notice
board.
Thanks to the Friends of Walker Dam, Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeen Greenspace Trust and the work of many volunteers, we have much to look forward to.
Walker Dam is located within the former Royal Forest of Stocket, part of the Freedom Lands gifted by Robert I to the burgh (recorded in a charter of 1319). Now it is in the modern
Burnieboozle estate, part of the larger Craigiebuckler estate, which was sparsely populated countryside until the 1950s, when major housing development began in that area.
Walker Dam is bounded by Springfield Road (which replaced a roadway called Walker Dam Road) to the east and Woodburn Gardens to the north.
The dam is fed by the Holburn (‘Burn of the Howe’), which has two head waters, the northern and greater one coming from Hazlehead and through Walker Dam.
The section entering Walker Dam is the West Burn of Rubislaw. The two head streams of the Holburn joined together between Rubislaw Quarry and Springbank Cemetery, and this united stream fed the steamcondensing
ponds at Rubislaw Bleachfield before flowing eastward together as far as Hartington Road, where they separate.
The south branch, the original burn, crossed Union Grove and passed under the old Holburn Bridge, while the north branch, an artificial mill-lead, went to the Upper and Lower Justice Mills.
As a consequence, Walker Dam was at one time closely associated with the city’s milling operations and, especially, with textile manufacturing. In the nineteenth century it was a resource integral to the firm once called Maberly’s (established between 1808 and 1811) and later Richards, which had the Broadford Works on Maberly Street and which was
the principal user of the bleachfields. An 1866-67 Ordnance Survey description of Walker Dam gives it as ‘a very large dam built by the proprietors of the Rubislaw Bleach Field for their own use.’
Bleachfields were a development of the eighteenth century Scottish textile and thread industries. The first bleachfield in Scotland was established in the late 1720s as an alternative to
either small, burnside bleaching operations which were of variable quality, or sending the unbleached cloth to England, Ireland or Holland for treatment.
In March 1801, the lands of Springfield were offered for sale. They were described as comprising about 63 acres, ‘inclosed and subdivided’, and held feu of ‘the Community of Aberdeen’ at the annual feu-duty of £2 14s 2d sterling. A large house was included in the sale, and it was noted that ‘the dam for the Justice-mills is situated within this property, and the millburn
passes thro’ it, by which considerable benefit may be derived by a purchaser.’
In 1833 Aberdeen Town Council agreed to have Walker Dam cleaned out and deepened, in partnership with Messrs Richards and Company, manufacturers in Aberdeen.
Richards was the instigator of the plan, to which the Council agreed because the work was expected to be ‘highly
beneficial to the Upper and Nether Justice Mills by affording them an additional supply of water,’ and authorised it providing that the Town’s share of the costs would not exceed £20; the work would be executed under the sole charge of John Smith, Town Superintendant; and Richards, which must not spend less than the Council on the project, should not use this as a means of claiming any right over Walker Dam in future.
In 1837, Richards proposed to the Council that Walker Dam should be excavated and extended, citing an 1829 agreement to this effect between the Town and Messrs Maberly and Company, the previous owners of the manufacturing works now operated by Richards (Maberley’s folded in 1832).
Richards sought a lease of the dam water at a fixed rent once the work had been completed.
The Council remitted consideration of this to a committee previously established to look at a proposal to move Justice Mill Dam westwards to Rubislaw. Early in 1839, the Council
approved the recommendation of this committee that Walker Dam should be excavated and enlarged so that it would hold an additional 700,000 cubic feet of water, again on the grounds that it would provide a more reliable source of water for the town’s mills, especially in the dry
season.
The new capacity of the dam was expected to be more than adequate for the needs of the mills. The estimated cost of the works at this stage was £360: should the eventual cost exceed £400, Richards was to pay the excess.
The company was also to pay the Council £75 a year for its
lease of the water, and would be responsible for repair and maintenance of the extended dam, to the satisfaction of the Town, during the life of its lease. (Richards continued to own rights over the water for several decades.)
After further negotiations, a Council meeting of 15 April 1839 approved implementation of the project and authorised the Town Treasurer to enter into a contract with Richards and Co.
Work included the construction of a spillwater tunnel and breast mound for the dam extension,with additional dykes and the installation of a new cast-iron tunnel pipe and sluice.
The plans,drawings and a detailed specification produced by the Council formed the basis of the contract, signed on 17 April 1839.
The revised estimate of costs based on the plans drawn up by the Town considerably exceeded the original £400 anticipated; the Council minutes do not record the new estimate but note that Richards offered to pay the full amount, on the basis that Richards would receive the original £400 from the Town once the work was completed.
The Council had earlier noted that implementation of the project would require the purchase of an adjacent piece
of land owned by Alexander Bannerman and instructed that he should be approached to sell part
of his property near Springfield
The necessary land was obtained from Bannerman at a feu-duty of £20, recorded in a feu charter of 19 April 1839.
On 1 August 1860, the lands and estates of Craigiebuckler and Burnieboozle, including Walker Dam, were offered for sale by public roup, as part of the sequestrated estate of John Blaikie,
advocate. (John Blaikie went to Spain in 1860, following the collapse of his business and financial ruin. He was a son of James Blaikie of Craigiebuckler, Provost of Aberdeen from 1833 to 1835.) Walker Dam is described in the sale notice as ‘an Ornamental Sheet of Water, from which there is an yearly Revenue of £20 sterling from the Town of Aberdeen’.
The estates evidently failed to sell at the advertised ‘upset price’ (the lowest price consistent with the valuation of a property) of at £5,771 2s 6d, since the estate of Burnieboozle, within which Walker Dam is situated, was again offered for sale on 3 September 1860, now at £5,500, with neighbouring lands at Springfield for sale separately.18 Again it failed to realise this amount and was offered for sale on 5 October 1860 at the further reduced upset price of £5,200.19.
At some point after this date it was purchased by John Stewart, Esq.
The lands of Burnieboozle and Walkerhill were once again offered for sale in August 1865, with Walker Dam included - the sale notice mentions the annual feu-duty of £20 paid by the Town Council on it.20 In early September, the Aberdeen Journal reported that ‘The estates of Craigiebuckler, Burnieboozle, Walkerhill, and others, lately belonging to John Stewart, Esq., were on Friday purchased for the sum of £31,500 by Lauchlan McKinnon, junior, advocate, on behalf
of John Cardno Couper, Esq., lately of Whampoa, China.’ (Whampoa is now usually known as Classifed advertisement inviting tenders for the work, The Aberdeen Journal, 30 Jan 1839.
urgh, had served as an apprentice in the Aberdeen shipbuilding
firm of Alexander Hall and Co. before going to Hong Kong and working with his father in their
own highly successful ship-building and repairing company. By the time he returned to Aberdeen
in the 1860s, he had amassed a fortune. He was involved in a number of Aberdeen business
enterprises and in the Church of Scotland. Couper gave a portion of land close to Walker Dam to
be the site of Craigiebuckler Church, built in 1883, of which he was an elder. He died in January
1902 at the age of 82. His son, Lieutenant-Colonel John Cardno Ogston Couper (1st Highland
Brigade), succeeded to the property but died at the age of 48 in 1913. His widow and two young
children remained at Craigiebuckler; his daughter, Florence, went on to marry the ministe
Dr S. Marshall, 2014
The Council’s Finance Committee visited the dam in the aftermath of the tragic incident and
agreed to recommend the repair of the surrounding walls. They also instructed that information
boards should be erected at the site warning of the dangers. During this site visit, one of the
councillors slipped by the side of the stream entering the dam, and fell into the mud. It is not
clear if the children had similarly slipped and landed in the water, or if they had intended to enter
it.
The future of Walker Dam was the subject of two proposals of 1933. Council minutes of 4 December that year record that Aberdeen Land Association intended to donate to the Council the wooded den lying between Johnston House on Springfield Road and Viewfield Road, on condition the den should be maintained by the local authority as an open space and that the Council pay half the cost of a proposed road to be built along the west boundary of the property.
The Council formally accepted this proposal in January of 1934.26.
Also in December 1933, the City Engineer, Thomas F. Henderson, wrote to the Council’s Streets and Works Committee, which was then looking at the widening of Springfield Road and the layout and construction of a new road between it and Queen’s Road. Henderson asked the
committee to consider the future use of the Council-owned Walker Dam at the same time.
According to Henderson: ‘This dam is formed on a burn which rises in the grounds of Hazlehead and flows through the dam and joins the West Burn of Rubislaw at a point south-east of
Kepplestone Nursing Home and later forms what is known as the Ferryhill Burn.’
On 12 July that year, very heavy rainfall had flooded the electricity works and caused damage to property in
Crown Street and Ferryhill Terrace. To prevent further flooding, the water was run out of the dam on 1 September and although here had been no heavy rain since then, ‘we know that, by controlling the flow at the outlet of the dam we can reduce the risk of flooding in the lower parts
very considerably.
‘In conjunction with the Superintendant of Parks, I have prepared a plan showing how the Walker Dam could be laid out as a pleasure ground where the public could leave Springfield Road and walk through the gardens on to the grounds of Hazlehead.
The superintendant of parks is of the opinion that during storm periods the gardens could be flooded without doing much damage to the grass or plants. As the Dam is the property of the Common Good, I would suggest that the sub-committee confer with the Finance Committee and Town Planning Committee and submit a report.’
The next meeting of full Council on 3 January 1934 agreed that the committee should investigate further, though it also wanted the remarks of the Superintendant of Parks about flooding not doing damage to the proposed gardens to be deleted. Also presented to the Council at the same
meeting was a letter to the Town Clerk from Professor James Ritchie of the University of Aberdeen, suggesting the Council should consider making Walker Dam a bird sanctuary. This
was remitted to Streets and Works Committee for consideration. (The two schemes were possibly
not wholly compatible - some residents opposed turning the site into a pleasure park on the grounds that it would interfere with the natural beauty and the birdlife of the site.)
It seems that these two proposals had been prompted by the threat of the dam being filled in or otherwise scrapped: two days after the Council meeting, a reader’s letter to the
Aberdeen Journal urged that the dam should be improved and made safe for children rather than ‘done away with’.
The writer suggested that a low wall could be built around it, ‘made from the old dykes that have been pulled down in the vicinity’. Whatever enclosure was erected in 1911 after the drowning incident had evidently not endured.
The same edition of the paper published an old photograph of the dam ‘before it was drained’.
This remark referred to the decision to run off the water in the dam the previous year, to obviate flood damage to the surroundings. However, doing so had created other problems – correspondents to the Aberdeen Journal in 1934 complained about the condition of the dam as ‘an evil-smelling mudhole’ and ‘horrible looking and stinking’, especially during hot weather, and recommended that the Medical Officer of Health should investigate.
Whatever schemes were mooted for the dam, they took a considerable time to be implemented.
The better part of two years later, a short Bon-Accord article of October 1935 reports work being undertaken to transform Walker Dam, ‘from its present wild state’.
From the mid-1940s and during the 1950s, Stewart Construction (Aberdeen) Ltd., which was by then the heritable proprietor of the Craigiebuckler estate, built several housing developments on the land around Walker Dam.29
The minute of a meeting of the Links and Parks Committee of Aberdeen Town Council, held on 24 August 1964, notes that the committee considered a report by the Director of Parks and agreed the recommendation that the Council lay out an amenity area on ground lying to the south of the woodlands at Walker Dam extending to c. 0.75 of an acre. This was one of three proposed (and agreed) amenity areas to be created in the vicinity and included in the report, the others being a
strip of ground on the south side of Hazledene Road (c. 0.4 acre), and two strips of ground adjoining Craigiebuckler Avenue (c. 3,150 square yards).
The total estimated cost is given as £1,470.30
By this time Walker Dam had become home to a community of swans. The Press & Journal reported that the Links and Parks Committee of 30 September 1964 considered a letter from the
Aberdeen Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, requesting the committee ban fishing in Walker Dam, so as to protect the swans living on it. The committee recommended no action.
This was the second attempt by the association to have fishing banned: it had submitted a similar request at the previous meeting. The renewal of the request was prompted by the discovery of a cygnet badly injured by a fishing hook and line.
Walker Dam is no longer a swan habitat, but they were a popular feature of Walker Dam for many years. When Walker Dam Infant School opened in 1966, it adopted the emblem of swans on water as its school badge. (The swans have also inspired the song, ‘Walker Dam’, by Aberdeen singer-songwriter Bob Knight.)
A Springfield resident, Mrs Nanette Grieve, had left the Council a bequest on her death in 1955 to
fund the services of a warden to protect them.
At times, much effort was put into ensuring this protection: the Evening Express in 1972 reported that the Council had mounted a vigil of ‘almost Loch Garten proportions’ to see that swan eggs made it to hatching. In previous years eggs had
been stolen or lost due to flooding.
As this suggests, the problem of flooding at Walker Dam, highlighted by the City Engineer in 1933, was still an issue over thirty years later.
In 1965, the Evening Express published ‘before and after’ photographs of the flooded area: the latter image shows Council parks and recreation staff laying out grounds and planting shrubs and other flora capable of surviving immersion for a Craigiebuckler Chartulery (Charter Register of Craigiebuckler, 1958-1959), CA/4/21 in Records of the Royal Burgh and City of Aberdeen, Aberdeen City Archives.
The newspaper also reported that the works were to include provision for the dam water to be diverted at times into a burn, so relieving the pressure and reducing the silting that had caused flooding problems in the past.
A 1969 article in the Aberdeen Press & Journal refers
to Walker Dam being a body of water ‘shaped and even bottomed by the combined operations of the Aberdeen Corporation Cleansing and Links & Parks Departments,’ and to a plan by Links & Parks to provide an amenity walk or nature trail along the course from Johnston Gardens to Hazlehead, via Walker Dam.
Today (2014) Walker Dam (with Rubislaw Link) is a 3.38 hectare Local Nature Conservation Site, run by Aberdeen City Council’s Countryside Ranger Service.33 Comprising a mix of open water, landscaped areas and semi-natural habitats, with a footpath running through it, Walker Dam is animportant recreational and educational resource, being one of the few larger bodies of water in the city.
When exposures last hours rather than fractions of a second, there is much time for watching. Sometimes it is a basic concern for security but at others it is a more meditational activity. I watch the sky and imagine what patterns the clouds and stars will make on my film. I watch the water, the leaves on the trees, passing cars, changing shadows, smoke from chimneys, whatever is around. Wind, rain, mist, etc., all have effects on the eventual image. We live pretty fast-paced lives so it is a luxury to be able to slow down and better appreciate some of the more subtle effects of nature that we can so easily miss or take for granted.
~ Michael Kenna - On the question: "In one of your books, you wrote, "I feel closer to the elements when I photograph at night, close to nature because I have to watch." What are you watching?" in "Photo Review" - January 2003 by Carole Glauber
The Walker Dam – Its Past, Present and Future
28 years I have lived in Aberdeen, never knowing this beautiful piece of land was less than a 15 minute drive through the city centre from my home.
I visited today 3rd May 2018, and walked the whole area taking photos of everything that lured me, on my walk I saw herrons, mandarin ducks , mallards etc, it was a joy.
The weather was overcast though warm and bright, I will revisit in the summer on a golden day to get the best of this beautiful area of Aberdeen.
The Walker Dam, with which many Aberdeen citizens are so familiar, is only a fraction of the size it was when - in the 1830s - it was constructed in accordance with the plans drawn by
Aberdeen’s first City Architect, John Smith.
From the second quarter of the 19th century to the early 20th century the dam was a deep and massive body of water which extended from its present location, eastward, to Springfield Road – then called Walker Dam Road – where its sluice gate would have been opened at the beginning of the working day to allow water to rush through a culvert under the road, then south-east through a deep man-made channel (which is still evident today) to feed the steam condensing ponds of the Rubislaw Bleachfield, the property Richards and Company, textile manufacturers.
Today this treasured green space is one of Aberdeen City Council's 'Local Nature Conservation Sites', the 'Walker Dam and Rubislaw Link', which is a 3.9 kilometre walk along
a series of connected paths and streets. Popular with dog walkers, joggers and ramblers, the future of this valuable charming landscaped area with its semi-natural habitats, has been secured by the initiatives and work of 'Friends of Walker Dam' who are registered with 'Keep Scotland Beautiful' - a Scottish environment charity – which, independent of governmental finance and influence, is committed to the improvement of people’s lives and the places they care for.
The Friends of Walker Dam work in partnership with Aberdeen City Council to deliver the standards of maintenance and the plans for future improvements to this amenity site.
Mr Allan Davidson, Treasurer of Craigiebuckler and Seafield Community Council who is also a member of Friends of Walker Dam, has frequent meetings with the City Council's Environment Manager.
Those meetings have been very productive and improvements to the site have already been achieved.
For example, there has been a clean-up of the Dam and the
burn which flows into it; improvements have also been made to the path on the South bank of the dam, which is part of Aberdeen's core path system. The Walker Dam sign has also
been repainted.
In the near future, a bridge will be constructed at the East bank of the dam to connect its North and South banks - thus making both banks accessible for the enjoyment of visitors to
the dam. This significant infrastructural improvement has been made possible by a final act of generosity by Aberdeen Greenspace Trust. Local Councillor Martin Greig is a member of Greenspace and worked to ensure a donation of £8000 from the Trust towards the upgrade of the Walker Dam which includes the construction of the bridge, new benches, bins and various paths and tree works. A further enhancement in the area is a community notice
board.
Thanks to the Friends of Walker Dam, Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeen Greenspace Trust and the work of many volunteers, we have much to look forward to.
Walker Dam is located within the former Royal Forest of Stocket, part of the Freedom Lands gifted by Robert I to the burgh (recorded in a charter of 1319). Now it is in the modern
Burnieboozle estate, part of the larger Craigiebuckler estate, which was sparsely populated countryside until the 1950s, when major housing development began in that area.
Walker Dam is bounded by Springfield Road (which replaced a roadway called Walker Dam Road) to the east and Woodburn Gardens to the north.
The dam is fed by the Holburn (‘Burn of the Howe’), which has two head waters, the northern and greater one coming from Hazlehead and through Walker Dam.
The section entering Walker Dam is the West Burn of Rubislaw. The two head streams of the Holburn joined together between Rubislaw Quarry and Springbank Cemetery, and this united stream fed the steamcondensing
ponds at Rubislaw Bleachfield before flowing eastward together as far as Hartington Road, where they separate.
The south branch, the original burn, crossed Union Grove and passed under the old Holburn Bridge, while the north branch, an artificial mill-lead, went to the Upper and Lower Justice Mills.
As a consequence, Walker Dam was at one time closely associated with the city’s milling operations and, especially, with textile manufacturing. In the nineteenth century it was a resource integral to the firm once called Maberly’s (established between 1808 and 1811) and later Richards, which had the Broadford Works on Maberly Street and which was
the principal user of the bleachfields. An 1866-67 Ordnance Survey description of Walker Dam gives it as ‘a very large dam built by the proprietors of the Rubislaw Bleach Field for their own use.’
Bleachfields were a development of the eighteenth century Scottish textile and thread industries. The first bleachfield in Scotland was established in the late 1720s as an alternative to
either small, burnside bleaching operations which were of variable quality, or sending the unbleached cloth to England, Ireland or Holland for treatment.
In March 1801, the lands of Springfield were offered for sale. They were described as comprising about 63 acres, ‘inclosed and subdivided’, and held feu of ‘the Community of Aberdeen’ at the annual feu-duty of £2 14s 2d sterling. A large house was included in the sale, and it was noted that ‘the dam for the Justice-mills is situated within this property, and the millburn
passes thro’ it, by which considerable benefit may be derived by a purchaser.’
In 1833 Aberdeen Town Council agreed to have Walker Dam cleaned out and deepened, in partnership with Messrs Richards and Company, manufacturers in Aberdeen.
Richards was the instigator of the plan, to which the Council agreed because the work was expected to be ‘highly
beneficial to the Upper and Nether Justice Mills by affording them an additional supply of water,’ and authorised it providing that the Town’s share of the costs would not exceed £20; the work would be executed under the sole charge of John Smith, Town Superintendant; and Richards, which must not spend less than the Council on the project, should not use this as a means of claiming any right over Walker Dam in future.
In 1837, Richards proposed to the Council that Walker Dam should be excavated and extended, citing an 1829 agreement to this effect between the Town and Messrs Maberly and Company, the previous owners of the manufacturing works now operated by Richards (Maberley’s folded in 1832).
Richards sought a lease of the dam water at a fixed rent once the work had been completed.
The Council remitted consideration of this to a committee previously established to look at a proposal to move Justice Mill Dam westwards to Rubislaw. Early in 1839, the Council
approved the recommendation of this committee that Walker Dam should be excavated and enlarged so that it would hold an additional 700,000 cubic feet of water, again on the grounds that it would provide a more reliable source of water for the town’s mills, especially in the dry
season.
The new capacity of the dam was expected to be more than adequate for the needs of the mills. The estimated cost of the works at this stage was £360: should the eventual cost exceed £400, Richards was to pay the excess.
The company was also to pay the Council £75 a year for its
lease of the water, and would be responsible for repair and maintenance of the extended dam, to the satisfaction of the Town, during the life of its lease. (Richards continued to own rights over the water for several decades.)
After further negotiations, a Council meeting of 15 April 1839 approved implementation of the project and authorised the Town Treasurer to enter into a contract with Richards and Co.
Work included the construction of a spillwater tunnel and breast mound for the dam extension,with additional dykes and the installation of a new cast-iron tunnel pipe and sluice.
The plans,drawings and a detailed specification produced by the Council formed the basis of the contract, signed on 17 April 1839.
The revised estimate of costs based on the plans drawn up by the Town considerably exceeded the original £400 anticipated; the Council minutes do not record the new estimate but note that Richards offered to pay the full amount, on the basis that Richards would receive the original £400 from the Town once the work was completed.
The Council had earlier noted that implementation of the project would require the purchase of an adjacent piece
of land owned by Alexander Bannerman and instructed that he should be approached to sell part
of his property near Springfield
The necessary land was obtained from Bannerman at a feu-duty of £20, recorded in a feu charter of 19 April 1839.
On 1 August 1860, the lands and estates of Craigiebuckler and Burnieboozle, including Walker Dam, were offered for sale by public roup, as part of the sequestrated estate of John Blaikie,
advocate. (John Blaikie went to Spain in 1860, following the collapse of his business and financial ruin. He was a son of James Blaikie of Craigiebuckler, Provost of Aberdeen from 1833 to 1835.) Walker Dam is described in the sale notice as ‘an Ornamental Sheet of Water, from which there is an yearly Revenue of £20 sterling from the Town of Aberdeen’.
The estates evidently failed to sell at the advertised ‘upset price’ (the lowest price consistent with the valuation of a property) of at £5,771 2s 6d, since the estate of Burnieboozle, within which Walker Dam is situated, was again offered for sale on 3 September 1860, now at £5,500, with neighbouring lands at Springfield for sale separately.18 Again it failed to realise this amount and was offered for sale on 5 October 1860 at the further reduced upset price of £5,200.19.
At some point after this date it was purchased by John Stewart, Esq.
The lands of Burnieboozle and Walkerhill were once again offered for sale in August 1865, with Walker Dam included - the sale notice mentions the annual feu-duty of £20 paid by the Town Council on it.20 In early September, the Aberdeen Journal reported that ‘The estates of Craigiebuckler, Burnieboozle, Walkerhill, and others, lately belonging to John Stewart, Esq., were on Friday purchased for the sum of £31,500 by Lauchlan McKinnon, junior, advocate, on behalf
of John Cardno Couper, Esq., lately of Whampoa, China.’ (Whampoa is now usually known as Classifed advertisement inviting tenders for the work, The Aberdeen Journal, 30 Jan 1839.
urgh, had served as an apprentice in the Aberdeen shipbuilding
firm of Alexander Hall and Co. before going to Hong Kong and working with his father in their
own highly successful ship-building and repairing company. By the time he returned to Aberdeen
in the 1860s, he had amassed a fortune. He was involved in a number of Aberdeen business
enterprises and in the Church of Scotland. Couper gave a portion of land close to Walker Dam to
be the site of Craigiebuckler Church, built in 1883, of which he was an elder. He died in January
1902 at the age of 82. His son, Lieutenant-Colonel John Cardno Ogston Couper (1st Highland
Brigade), succeeded to the property but died at the age of 48 in 1913. His widow and two young
children remained at Craigiebuckler; his daughter, Florence, went on to marry the ministe
Dr S. Marshall, 2014
The Council’s Finance Committee visited the dam in the aftermath of the tragic incident and
agreed to recommend the repair of the surrounding walls. They also instructed that information
boards should be erected at the site warning of the dangers. During this site visit, one of the
councillors slipped by the side of the stream entering the dam, and fell into the mud. It is not
clear if the children had similarly slipped and landed in the water, or if they had intended to enter
it.
The future of Walker Dam was the subject of two proposals of 1933. Council minutes of 4 December that year record that Aberdeen Land Association intended to donate to the Council the wooded den lying between Johnston House on Springfield Road and Viewfield Road, on condition the den should be maintained by the local authority as an open space and that the Council pay half the cost of a proposed road to be built along the west boundary of the property.
The Council formally accepted this proposal in January of 1934.26.
Also in December 1933, the City Engineer, Thomas F. Henderson, wrote to the Council’s Streets and Works Committee, which was then looking at the widening of Springfield Road and the layout and construction of a new road between it and Queen’s Road. Henderson asked the
committee to consider the future use of the Council-owned Walker Dam at the same time.
According to Henderson: ‘This dam is formed on a burn which rises in the grounds of Hazlehead and flows through the dam and joins the West Burn of Rubislaw at a point south-east of
Kepplestone Nursing Home and later forms what is known as the Ferryhill Burn.’
On 12 July that year, very heavy rainfall had flooded the electricity works and caused damage to property in
Crown Street and Ferryhill Terrace. To prevent further flooding, the water was run out of the dam on 1 September and although here had been no heavy rain since then, ‘we know that, by controlling the flow at the outlet of the dam we can reduce the risk of flooding in the lower parts
very considerably.
‘In conjunction with the Superintendant of Parks, I have prepared a plan showing how the Walker Dam could be laid out as a pleasure ground where the public could leave Springfield Road and walk through the gardens on to the grounds of Hazlehead.
The superintendant of parks is of the opinion that during storm periods the gardens could be flooded without doing much damage to the grass or plants. As the Dam is the property of the Common Good, I would suggest that the sub-committee confer with the Finance Committee and Town Planning Committee and submit a report.’
The next meeting of full Council on 3 January 1934 agreed that the committee should investigate further, though it also wanted the remarks of the Superintendant of Parks about flooding not doing damage to the proposed gardens to be deleted. Also presented to the Council at the same
meeting was a letter to the Town Clerk from Professor James Ritchie of the University of Aberdeen, suggesting the Council should consider making Walker Dam a bird sanctuary. This
was remitted to Streets and Works Committee for consideration. (The two schemes were possibly
not wholly compatible - some residents opposed turning the site into a pleasure park on the grounds that it would interfere with the natural beauty and the birdlife of the site.)
It seems that these two proposals had been prompted by the threat of the dam being filled in or otherwise scrapped: two days after the Council meeting, a reader’s letter to the
Aberdeen Journal urged that the dam should be improved and made safe for children rather than ‘done away with’.
The writer suggested that a low wall could be built around it, ‘made from the old dykes that have been pulled down in the vicinity’. Whatever enclosure was erected in 1911 after the drowning incident had evidently not endured.
The same edition of the paper published an old photograph of the dam ‘before it was drained’.
This remark referred to the decision to run off the water in the dam the previous year, to obviate flood damage to the surroundings. However, doing so had created other problems – correspondents to the Aberdeen Journal in 1934 complained about the condition of the dam as ‘an evil-smelling mudhole’ and ‘horrible looking and stinking’, especially during hot weather, and recommended that the Medical Officer of Health should investigate.
Whatever schemes were mooted for the dam, they took a considerable time to be implemented.
The better part of two years later, a short Bon-Accord article of October 1935 reports work being undertaken to transform Walker Dam, ‘from its present wild state’.
From the mid-1940s and during the 1950s, Stewart Construction (Aberdeen) Ltd., which was by then the heritable proprietor of the Craigiebuckler estate, built several housing developments on the land around Walker Dam.29
The minute of a meeting of the Links and Parks Committee of Aberdeen Town Council, held on 24 August 1964, notes that the committee considered a report by the Director of Parks and agreed the recommendation that the Council lay out an amenity area on ground lying to the south of the woodlands at Walker Dam extending to c. 0.75 of an acre. This was one of three proposed (and agreed) amenity areas to be created in the vicinity and included in the report, the others being a
strip of ground on the south side of Hazledene Road (c. 0.4 acre), and two strips of ground adjoining Craigiebuckler Avenue (c. 3,150 square yards).
The total estimated cost is given as £1,470.30
By this time Walker Dam had become home to a community of swans. The Press & Journal reported that the Links and Parks Committee of 30 September 1964 considered a letter from the
Aberdeen Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, requesting the committee ban fishing in Walker Dam, so as to protect the swans living on it. The committee recommended no action.
This was the second attempt by the association to have fishing banned: it had submitted a similar request at the previous meeting. The renewal of the request was prompted by the discovery of a cygnet badly injured by a fishing hook and line.
Walker Dam is no longer a swan habitat, but they were a popular feature of Walker Dam for many years. When Walker Dam Infant School opened in 1966, it adopted the emblem of swans on water as its school badge. (The swans have also inspired the song, ‘Walker Dam’, by Aberdeen singer-songwriter Bob Knight.)
A Springfield resident, Mrs Nanette Grieve, had left the Council a bequest on her death in 1955 to
fund the services of a warden to protect them.
At times, much effort was put into ensuring this protection: the Evening Express in 1972 reported that the Council had mounted a vigil of ‘almost Loch Garten proportions’ to see that swan eggs made it to hatching. In previous years eggs had
been stolen or lost due to flooding.
As this suggests, the problem of flooding at Walker Dam, highlighted by the City Engineer in 1933, was still an issue over thirty years later.
In 1965, the Evening Express published ‘before and after’ photographs of the flooded area: the latter image shows Council parks and recreation staff laying out grounds and planting shrubs and other flora capable of surviving immersion for a Craigiebuckler Chartulery (Charter Register of Craigiebuckler, 1958-1959), CA/4/21 in Records of the Royal Burgh and City of Aberdeen, Aberdeen City Archives.
The newspaper also reported that the works were to include provision for the dam water to be diverted at times into a burn, so relieving the pressure and reducing the silting that had caused flooding problems in the past.
A 1969 article in the Aberdeen Press & Journal refers
to Walker Dam being a body of water ‘shaped and even bottomed by the combined operations of the Aberdeen Corporation Cleansing and Links & Parks Departments,’ and to a plan by Links & Parks to provide an amenity walk or nature trail along the course from Johnston Gardens to Hazlehead, via Walker Dam.
Today (2014) Walker Dam (with Rubislaw Link) is a 3.38 hectare Local Nature Conservation Site, run by Aberdeen City Council’s Countryside Ranger Service.33 Comprising a mix of open water, landscaped areas and semi-natural habitats, with a footpath running through it, Walker Dam is animportant recreational and educational resource, being one of the few larger bodies of water in the city.
The fraction of Americans that are smokers has fallen to an all-time low, currently addressing merely 17.8 percent of the populace, research released Tuesday identified.The tingling foot that is twitching was very unproductive and I feel a lot more relaxed today. I'm have smoked for 35 year and
The Walker Dam – Its Past, Present and Future
28 years I have lived in Aberdeen, never knowing this beautiful piece of land was less than a 15 minute drive through the city centre from my home.
I visited today 3rd May 2018, and walked the whole area taking photos of everything that lured me, on my walk I saw herrons, mandarin ducks , mallards etc, it was a joy.
The weather was overcast though warm and bright, I will revisit in the summer on a golden day to get the best of this beautiful area of Aberdeen.
The Walker Dam, with which many Aberdeen citizens are so familiar, is only a fraction of the size it was when - in the 1830s - it was constructed in accordance with the plans drawn by
Aberdeen’s first City Architect, John Smith.
From the second quarter of the 19th century to the early 20th century the dam was a deep and massive body of water which extended from its present location, eastward, to Springfield Road – then called Walker Dam Road – where its sluice gate would have been opened at the beginning of the working day to allow water to rush through a culvert under the road, then south-east through a deep man-made channel (which is still evident today) to feed the steam condensing ponds of the Rubislaw Bleachfield, the property Richards and Company, textile manufacturers.
Today this treasured green space is one of Aberdeen City Council's 'Local Nature Conservation Sites', the 'Walker Dam and Rubislaw Link', which is a 3.9 kilometre walk along
a series of connected paths and streets. Popular with dog walkers, joggers and ramblers, the future of this valuable charming landscaped area with its semi-natural habitats, has been secured by the initiatives and work of 'Friends of Walker Dam' who are registered with 'Keep Scotland Beautiful' - a Scottish environment charity – which, independent of governmental finance and influence, is committed to the improvement of people’s lives and the places they care for.
The Friends of Walker Dam work in partnership with Aberdeen City Council to deliver the standards of maintenance and the plans for future improvements to this amenity site.
Mr Allan Davidson, Treasurer of Craigiebuckler and Seafield Community Council who is also a member of Friends of Walker Dam, has frequent meetings with the City Council's Environment Manager.
Those meetings have been very productive and improvements to the site have already been achieved.
For example, there has been a clean-up of the Dam and the
burn which flows into it; improvements have also been made to the path on the South bank of the dam, which is part of Aberdeen's core path system. The Walker Dam sign has also
been repainted.
In the near future, a bridge will be constructed at the East bank of the dam to connect its North and South banks - thus making both banks accessible for the enjoyment of visitors to
the dam. This significant infrastructural improvement has been made possible by a final act of generosity by Aberdeen Greenspace Trust. Local Councillor Martin Greig is a member of Greenspace and worked to ensure a donation of £8000 from the Trust towards the upgrade of the Walker Dam which includes the construction of the bridge, new benches, bins and various paths and tree works. A further enhancement in the area is a community notice
board.
Thanks to the Friends of Walker Dam, Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeen Greenspace Trust and the work of many volunteers, we have much to look forward to.
Walker Dam is located within the former Royal Forest of Stocket, part of the Freedom Lands gifted by Robert I to the burgh (recorded in a charter of 1319). Now it is in the modern
Burnieboozle estate, part of the larger Craigiebuckler estate, which was sparsely populated countryside until the 1950s, when major housing development began in that area.
Walker Dam is bounded by Springfield Road (which replaced a roadway called Walker Dam Road) to the east and Woodburn Gardens to the north.
The dam is fed by the Holburn (‘Burn of the Howe’), which has two head waters, the northern and greater one coming from Hazlehead and through Walker Dam.
The section entering Walker Dam is the West Burn of Rubislaw. The two head streams of the Holburn joined together between Rubislaw Quarry and Springbank Cemetery, and this united stream fed the steamcondensing
ponds at Rubislaw Bleachfield before flowing eastward together as far as Hartington Road, where they separate.
The south branch, the original burn, crossed Union Grove and passed under the old Holburn Bridge, while the north branch, an artificial mill-lead, went to the Upper and Lower Justice Mills.
As a consequence, Walker Dam was at one time closely associated with the city’s milling operations and, especially, with textile manufacturing. In the nineteenth century it was a resource integral to the firm once called Maberly’s (established between 1808 and 1811) and later Richards, which had the Broadford Works on Maberly Street and which was
the principal user of the bleachfields. An 1866-67 Ordnance Survey description of Walker Dam gives it as ‘a very large dam built by the proprietors of the Rubislaw Bleach Field for their own use.’
Bleachfields were a development of the eighteenth century Scottish textile and thread industries. The first bleachfield in Scotland was established in the late 1720s as an alternative to
either small, burnside bleaching operations which were of variable quality, or sending the unbleached cloth to England, Ireland or Holland for treatment.
In March 1801, the lands of Springfield were offered for sale. They were described as comprising about 63 acres, ‘inclosed and subdivided’, and held feu of ‘the Community of Aberdeen’ at the annual feu-duty of £2 14s 2d sterling. A large house was included in the sale, and it was noted that ‘the dam for the Justice-mills is situated within this property, and the millburn
passes thro’ it, by which considerable benefit may be derived by a purchaser.’
In 1833 Aberdeen Town Council agreed to have Walker Dam cleaned out and deepened, in partnership with Messrs Richards and Company, manufacturers in Aberdeen.
Richards was the instigator of the plan, to which the Council agreed because the work was expected to be ‘highly
beneficial to the Upper and Nether Justice Mills by affording them an additional supply of water,’ and authorised it providing that the Town’s share of the costs would not exceed £20; the work would be executed under the sole charge of John Smith, Town Superintendant; and Richards, which must not spend less than the Council on the project, should not use this as a means of claiming any right over Walker Dam in future.
In 1837, Richards proposed to the Council that Walker Dam should be excavated and extended, citing an 1829 agreement to this effect between the Town and Messrs Maberly and Company, the previous owners of the manufacturing works now operated by Richards (Maberley’s folded in 1832).
Richards sought a lease of the dam water at a fixed rent once the work had been completed.
The Council remitted consideration of this to a committee previously established to look at a proposal to move Justice Mill Dam westwards to Rubislaw. Early in 1839, the Council
approved the recommendation of this committee that Walker Dam should be excavated and enlarged so that it would hold an additional 700,000 cubic feet of water, again on the grounds that it would provide a more reliable source of water for the town’s mills, especially in the dry
season.
The new capacity of the dam was expected to be more than adequate for the needs of the mills. The estimated cost of the works at this stage was £360: should the eventual cost exceed £400, Richards was to pay the excess.
The company was also to pay the Council £75 a year for its
lease of the water, and would be responsible for repair and maintenance of the extended dam, to the satisfaction of the Town, during the life of its lease. (Richards continued to own rights over the water for several decades.)
After further negotiations, a Council meeting of 15 April 1839 approved implementation of the project and authorised the Town Treasurer to enter into a contract with Richards and Co.
Work included the construction of a spillwater tunnel and breast mound for the dam extension,with additional dykes and the installation of a new cast-iron tunnel pipe and sluice.
The plans,drawings and a detailed specification produced by the Council formed the basis of the contract, signed on 17 April 1839.
The revised estimate of costs based on the plans drawn up by the Town considerably exceeded the original £400 anticipated; the Council minutes do not record the new estimate but note that Richards offered to pay the full amount, on the basis that Richards would receive the original £400 from the Town once the work was completed.
The Council had earlier noted that implementation of the project would require the purchase of an adjacent piece
of land owned by Alexander Bannerman and instructed that he should be approached to sell part
of his property near Springfield
The necessary land was obtained from Bannerman at a feu-duty of £20, recorded in a feu charter of 19 April 1839.
On 1 August 1860, the lands and estates of Craigiebuckler and Burnieboozle, including Walker Dam, were offered for sale by public roup, as part of the sequestrated estate of John Blaikie,
advocate. (John Blaikie went to Spain in 1860, following the collapse of his business and financial ruin. He was a son of James Blaikie of Craigiebuckler, Provost of Aberdeen from 1833 to 1835.) Walker Dam is described in the sale notice as ‘an Ornamental Sheet of Water, from which there is an yearly Revenue of £20 sterling from the Town of Aberdeen’.
The estates evidently failed to sell at the advertised ‘upset price’ (the lowest price consistent with the valuation of a property) of at £5,771 2s 6d, since the estate of Burnieboozle, within which Walker Dam is situated, was again offered for sale on 3 September 1860, now at £5,500, with neighbouring lands at Springfield for sale separately.18 Again it failed to realise this amount and was offered for sale on 5 October 1860 at the further reduced upset price of £5,200.19.
At some point after this date it was purchased by John Stewart, Esq.
The lands of Burnieboozle and Walkerhill were once again offered for sale in August 1865, with Walker Dam included - the sale notice mentions the annual feu-duty of £20 paid by the Town Council on it.20 In early September, the Aberdeen Journal reported that ‘The estates of Craigiebuckler, Burnieboozle, Walkerhill, and others, lately belonging to John Stewart, Esq., were on Friday purchased for the sum of £31,500 by Lauchlan McKinnon, junior, advocate, on behalf
of John Cardno Couper, Esq., lately of Whampoa, China.’ (Whampoa is now usually known as Classifed advertisement inviting tenders for the work, The Aberdeen Journal, 30 Jan 1839.
urgh, had served as an apprentice in the Aberdeen shipbuilding
firm of Alexander Hall and Co. before going to Hong Kong and working with his father in their
own highly successful ship-building and repairing company. By the time he returned to Aberdeen
in the 1860s, he had amassed a fortune. He was involved in a number of Aberdeen business
enterprises and in the Church of Scotland. Couper gave a portion of land close to Walker Dam to
be the site of Craigiebuckler Church, built in 1883, of which he was an elder. He died in January
1902 at the age of 82. His son, Lieutenant-Colonel John Cardno Ogston Couper (1st Highland
Brigade), succeeded to the property but died at the age of 48 in 1913. His widow and two young
children remained at Craigiebuckler; his daughter, Florence, went on to marry the ministe
Dr S. Marshall, 2014
The Council’s Finance Committee visited the dam in the aftermath of the tragic incident and
agreed to recommend the repair of the surrounding walls. They also instructed that information
boards should be erected at the site warning of the dangers. During this site visit, one of the
councillors slipped by the side of the stream entering the dam, and fell into the mud. It is not
clear if the children had similarly slipped and landed in the water, or if they had intended to enter
it.
The future of Walker Dam was the subject of two proposals of 1933. Council minutes of 4 December that year record that Aberdeen Land Association intended to donate to the Council the wooded den lying between Johnston House on Springfield Road and Viewfield Road, on condition the den should be maintained by the local authority as an open space and that the Council pay half the cost of a proposed road to be built along the west boundary of the property.
The Council formally accepted this proposal in January of 1934.26.
Also in December 1933, the City Engineer, Thomas F. Henderson, wrote to the Council’s Streets and Works Committee, which was then looking at the widening of Springfield Road and the layout and construction of a new road between it and Queen’s Road. Henderson asked the
committee to consider the future use of the Council-owned Walker Dam at the same time.
According to Henderson: ‘This dam is formed on a burn which rises in the grounds of Hazlehead and flows through the dam and joins the West Burn of Rubislaw at a point south-east of
Kepplestone Nursing Home and later forms what is known as the Ferryhill Burn.’
On 12 July that year, very heavy rainfall had flooded the electricity works and caused damage to property in
Crown Street and Ferryhill Terrace. To prevent further flooding, the water was run out of the dam on 1 September and although here had been no heavy rain since then, ‘we know that, by controlling the flow at the outlet of the dam we can reduce the risk of flooding in the lower parts
very considerably.
‘In conjunction with the Superintendant of Parks, I have prepared a plan showing how the Walker Dam could be laid out as a pleasure ground where the public could leave Springfield Road and walk through the gardens on to the grounds of Hazlehead.
The superintendant of parks is of the opinion that during storm periods the gardens could be flooded without doing much damage to the grass or plants. As the Dam is the property of the Common Good, I would suggest that the sub-committee confer with the Finance Committee and Town Planning Committee and submit a report.’
The next meeting of full Council on 3 January 1934 agreed that the committee should investigate further, though it also wanted the remarks of the Superintendant of Parks about flooding not doing damage to the proposed gardens to be deleted. Also presented to the Council at the same
meeting was a letter to the Town Clerk from Professor James Ritchie of the University of Aberdeen, suggesting the Council should consider making Walker Dam a bird sanctuary. This
was remitted to Streets and Works Committee for consideration. (The two schemes were possibly
not wholly compatible - some residents opposed turning the site into a pleasure park on the grounds that it would interfere with the natural beauty and the birdlife of the site.)
It seems that these two proposals had been prompted by the threat of the dam being filled in or otherwise scrapped: two days after the Council meeting, a reader’s letter to the
Aberdeen Journal urged that the dam should be improved and made safe for children rather than ‘done away with’.
The writer suggested that a low wall could be built around it, ‘made from the old dykes that have been pulled down in the vicinity’. Whatever enclosure was erected in 1911 after the drowning incident had evidently not endured.
The same edition of the paper published an old photograph of the dam ‘before it was drained’.
This remark referred to the decision to run off the water in the dam the previous year, to obviate flood damage to the surroundings. However, doing so had created other problems – correspondents to the Aberdeen Journal in 1934 complained about the condition of the dam as ‘an evil-smelling mudhole’ and ‘horrible looking and stinking’, especially during hot weather, and recommended that the Medical Officer of Health should investigate.
Whatever schemes were mooted for the dam, they took a considerable time to be implemented.
The better part of two years later, a short Bon-Accord article of October 1935 reports work being undertaken to transform Walker Dam, ‘from its present wild state’.
From the mid-1940s and during the 1950s, Stewart Construction (Aberdeen) Ltd., which was by then the heritable proprietor of the Craigiebuckler estate, built several housing developments on the land around Walker Dam.29
The minute of a meeting of the Links and Parks Committee of Aberdeen Town Council, held on 24 August 1964, notes that the committee considered a report by the Director of Parks and agreed the recommendation that the Council lay out an amenity area on ground lying to the south of the woodlands at Walker Dam extending to c. 0.75 of an acre. This was one of three proposed (and agreed) amenity areas to be created in the vicinity and included in the report, the others being a
strip of ground on the south side of Hazledene Road (c. 0.4 acre), and two strips of ground adjoining Craigiebuckler Avenue (c. 3,150 square yards).
The total estimated cost is given as £1,470.30
By this time Walker Dam had become home to a community of swans. The Press & Journal reported that the Links and Parks Committee of 30 September 1964 considered a letter from the
Aberdeen Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, requesting the committee ban fishing in Walker Dam, so as to protect the swans living on it. The committee recommended no action.
This was the second attempt by the association to have fishing banned: it had submitted a similar request at the previous meeting. The renewal of the request was prompted by the discovery of a cygnet badly injured by a fishing hook and line.
Walker Dam is no longer a swan habitat, but they were a popular feature of Walker Dam for many years. When Walker Dam Infant School opened in 1966, it adopted the emblem of swans on water as its school badge. (The swans have also inspired the song, ‘Walker Dam’, by Aberdeen singer-songwriter Bob Knight.)
A Springfield resident, Mrs Nanette Grieve, had left the Council a bequest on her death in 1955 to
fund the services of a warden to protect them.
At times, much effort was put into ensuring this protection: the Evening Express in 1972 reported that the Council had mounted a vigil of ‘almost Loch Garten proportions’ to see that swan eggs made it to hatching. In previous years eggs had
been stolen or lost due to flooding.
As this suggests, the problem of flooding at Walker Dam, highlighted by the City Engineer in 1933, was still an issue over thirty years later.
In 1965, the Evening Express published ‘before and after’ photographs of the flooded area: the latter image shows Council parks and recreation staff laying out grounds and planting shrubs and other flora capable of surviving immersion for a Craigiebuckler Chartulery (Charter Register of Craigiebuckler, 1958-1959), CA/4/21 in Records of the Royal Burgh and City of Aberdeen, Aberdeen City Archives.
The newspaper also reported that the works were to include provision for the dam water to be diverted at times into a burn, so relieving the pressure and reducing the silting that had caused flooding problems in the past.
A 1969 article in the Aberdeen Press & Journal refers
to Walker Dam being a body of water ‘shaped and even bottomed by the combined operations of the Aberdeen Corporation Cleansing and Links & Parks Departments,’ and to a plan by Links & Parks to provide an amenity walk or nature trail along the course from Johnston Gardens to Hazlehead, via Walker Dam.
Today (2014) Walker Dam (with Rubislaw Link) is a 3.38 hectare Local Nature Conservation Site, run by Aberdeen City Council’s Countryside Ranger Service.33 Comprising a mix of open water, landscaped areas and semi-natural habitats, with a footpath running through it, Walker Dam is animportant recreational and educational resource, being one of the few larger bodies of water in the city.
Inspired by Cheryl Arkison's quilt "Your Parents are Cool", I made in The Fraction Quilt in 2009. This is the quilt I most commonly get asked how to make. A pattern for this quilt is coming out it the book Quilting with a Modern Slant by Rachel May
THE CLIMATE CHANGE SCAM.
The facts:
CO2 is a trace gas, it makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere.
Expressed as a fraction, that is: four hundredths of one percent!
Only 3% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere is due to human activity
That is: three percent of four hundredths of one percent of CO2 in the atmosphere is likely to be caused by humans!
97% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere is from from natural sources
The UK only produced slightly over 1.% (1.02%) of the world's 3% total of CO2 caused by human activity!
That is: the UK produced around one hundredth
of the three percent total CO2 caused by humans!
The UK’s CO2 emissions have fallen by around 42% since 1990
CO2 is highly beneficial and crucial for life and plant growth.
An increase of CO2 would improve plant growth and reforestation.
The UK produces slightly over one hundredth of the human caused total of 3 percent (three hundredths) of the total four hundredths of one percent of CO2 in the atmosphere.
If you think that is a tiny, insignificant amount, you are perfectly correct.
All life is based on carbon, it is an essential food for plants. Plants obtain carbon from CO2 (Carbon Dioxide).
They separate the carbon from the oxygen which they release into the atmosphere.
The oxygen they release is also essential for life.
The idea that CO2 is a poison, or something undesirable, is preposterous nonsense. it is not based on good science, but politics, ideology and vested interests.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is very small compared to other gases, such as nitrogen, but it is essential.
The amount that humans contribute to the total CO2 is negligible. The vastly overwhelming amount - 97% is produced naturally. The idea that the other 3 percent, caused by humans, will destroy the planet is ridiculous.
Records going back centuries show that natural temperature rises are followed a rise in CO2, not the other way round. As the sea gets warmer it releases more CO2, a purely natural process. The most likely cause of the increase in temperature is activity on the Sun. The records show that it is an increase in temperature that causes an increase in CO2. This is not necessarily bad. A generally warmer climate caused by the Sun, with the resulting increase in CO2 is ideal for plant growth and a greener planet.
So, is CO2 a cause of global warming or climate change? Extremely unlikely!
You may ask; what about the scientific consensus, the claim that 97% of scientists agree that CO2 is a cause of climate change?
a) If something is repeated often enough, many people end up believing it. That’s how propaganda works.
b) Most scientists are not climate scientists, they work in other fields. They tend to respect the findings/opinions of other scientists, because they trust the scientific integrity of their peers, above any vested interests.
c) A consensus in science is not proof of anything. Scientific truth is not a democratic decision, it is not decided by a consensus, however large. That is a political concept, not a scientific one.
In science, empirical evidence is king.
The idea that a consensus opinion makes something beyond doubt, or unable to be challenged is an anathema to genuine scientific endeavour.
Science doesn’t work like that.
To impose a straightjacket on science is a fanatical position, which has the hallmark of ideological fanaticism. It is anti-science and a deplorable situation.
The common, political currency seems to be that anyone who dares to challenge the present, climate change opinion is a science denier, a term of abuse which is intended to imply they are wilfully ignorant, evil or even criminal.
That is an appalling situation. And very damaging for freedom of expression and the future of science. Scientific practice is a search for truth, not an ideology, or a political football. No genuine scientist, who has any integrity, can ever support such a situation. Any scientist who claims that manmade climate change is an irrefutable fact, or that issue is settled and the debate is over, is a disgrace to science.
There is no such thing as a ‘climate change denier’. It is a meaningless insult, invented by fanatical ideologues. All honest scientists would agree that any scientific opinion or hypothesis is only as good as the latest bit of evidence.
Inconvenient facts, the science that Al Gore doesn't want you to know:
binged.it/2WJoiRX
Piers Corbyn (brother of Jeremy Corbyn) - manmade climate change does not exist.
youtu.be/UvHMhZ1T964
Patrick Moore (one of the founders of Greenpeace) A dearth of carbon?
Dr. Moore says we were literally running out of carbon before we started to pump it back into the atmosphere, “CO2 has been declining to where it is getting close to the end of plant life, and in another 1.8 million years, life would begin to die on planet Earth for lack of CO2.”
According to Moore it is life itself that has been consuming carbon and storing it in carbonaceous rocks. He goes on to say, “billions of tons of carbonaceous rock represent carbon dioxide pulled out of the atmosphere, and because the Earth has cooled over the millennia, nature is no longer putting CO2 into the atmosphere to offset this.”
youtu.be/sXxktLAsBPo
Princeton physics professor William Happer explains why he describes some climate change scientists as a ‘cult.’
youtu.be/vro-yn59uso
Who trusts the MSM?
Their lies are not just fake news, they deliberately set out to slander those who don’t agree with the liberal left, globalist elite. Their lies are positively evil. Everyone should watch this video and they will never trust the media again: banned.video/watch?id=5f00ca7c672706002f4026a9
New NASA satellite data prove carbon dioxide is GREENING the Earth and restoring forests.
www.afinalwarning.com/500086.html?fbclid=IwAR2SoywjkPYu8-...
The latest Vegetation Index data from NASA shows that the Earth is getting progressively "greener" and lusher over time. The planet is 10 percent greener today than it was in 2000, NASA says, which means better conditions for growing crops. Forests are also expanding while deserts are becoming more fertile and usable for agriculture. All in all, the global Vegetation Index rose from 0.0936 to 0.1029 between 2000 and 2021, a 9.94 percent increase. "10 percent greening in 20 years! We are incredibly fortunate!" announced Zoe Phin, a researcher who compiled the data into a chart for her blog. "I just wish everyone felt that way. But you know not everyone does. To the extent that humans enhance global greening is precisely what social parasites want to tax and regulate. No good deed goes unpunished." A separate German study found that the globe has been greening for at least the past three decades. Satellite imagery suggests that vegetation has been expanding at a growing rate, contracting the gloom-and-doom narrative being spread by the climate alarmists.
Ok I am officially back from flickr holiday! And have spent a good portion of the day muddling through a small fraction of what I have missed.
I did get a fair amount done while I was gone with regards to my actual life and my college education and some other decisions that I needed to make. Still working on it though.
This pile of books is just a few of the books that I need to read (for fun) not to mention all the homework that is piling on (I know who does homework??? Gosh!)
As for the picture… Let’s just say that my creativity is on strike, but I’m trying to work things out with the union as we speak.
With a leaking roof around the Keeble station area, all I was able to do was extend platform 3. It looks close to the main lines but has been tested. If it fouls its only a matter of moving the stop a fraction.
ran out of gray, so I'm going to have to pause until my fabric order arrives.
from left to right: 35 blocks almost done. 34 done. 32 with centers only.
A change in the rates of postage, effective on July 1, 1931, to 3 cents for the 1st ounce or fraction of an ounce, on letters for Canada, the British Empire, the United States, and certain other countries - 13 cents covered both postage and registration on letters weighing not more than 1 ounce.
From April 1, 1943 - a 1 cent War Tax was added to the first weight step preferred letter rate. The preferred letter rate was 4 cents for the first ounce and 2 cents for each additional ounce. 4 cents letter rate + 10 cents registration fee = 14 cents
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An interesting registered cover which originated on the Calgary and Vancouver R.P.O. and travelled across Canada to Quebec. Railway Post Offices were not normally permitted to register mail, they did not have registration handstamps, and this explains the use of the little boxed "R" and the manuscript - "REGD MAIL".
- small boxed "R" in black ink - (normally used for registered mail bag tags)
A straight line, facing slip handstamp, (Gray WT-96 RF B / old Ludlow W-28E) - FROM C. & V. R.P.O. TR. (3) - struck in black ink, with "3" in pencil. This is the ERD for this handstamp - 4 October 1946. The LRD is - 16 November 1962.
- registered letter was posted on Calgary & Vancouver rpo - / C. & V. R.P.O. / 3 / OC 4 / 46 / * B.C. * / (with ornament 158) - rpo cancel (WT-91.158 / RF A) - in use from - 5 November 1928 to - 27 April 1956 - (old Ludlow / W-30v)
- / CALGARY & VANCOUVER, R.P.O. / Tr. 3 OCT 5 / THOS. W. BENNETT / - oval rpo mail clerk handstamp in blue / black ink - (WT-136 / RF F). This is the ERD for this handstamp - 5 October 1946. The LRD is - 23 September 1947 - (old Ludlow / W-24D).
Thos. W. Bennett - Railway mail clerk
Thomas Willard Bennett
(b. 20 March 1892 in Montreal, Quebec - d. August 1980 at age 88 in Santa Barbara, California, USA / buried in Burnaby, British Columbia) - Occupation - RPO mail clerk - LINK to a newspaper article confirming that they had lived in Vancouver for 40 years and were now living in Southern California - www.newspapers.com/article/santa-barbara-news-press-thoma... - LINK to his Find a Grave site - www.findagrave.com/memorial/179045461/thomas-willard-bennett
Thomas Willard Bennett (service number 1212) served in France for 44 months during WWI. He achieved the rank of Sgt. with 4th Field Ambulance and the Postal Corps during this time period. LINK to his WWI documents - central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?op=pdf&app=CEF&id=B0...
His first wife - Edith Mary (nee Lillico) Bennett
(b. 6 December 1897 in Dunbar, Lothian, Scotland, United Kingdom - d. 10 February 1924 at age 26 in Vancouver, British Columbia) - they were married - 6 August 1920 in Vancouver, British Columbia - LINK to their marriage certificate - search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Image/Genealogy/e8... - LINK to her newspaper obituary - www.newspapers.com/article/the-province-obituary-for-edit... - LINK to her Find a Grave site - www.findagrave.com/memorial/179045439/edith-mary-bennett - LINK to a newspaper article on her will - www.newspapers.com/article/the-province-edith-mary-bennet...
His second wife - Dorothy Ellen (nee McMears) Bennett
(b. 23 June 1901 Brantford, Ontario - d. 6 May 1995 at age 93 in Los Angeles, California) - occupation - stenographer / Post Office - they were married - 3 April 1943 in Vancouver, British Columbia - LINK to their marriage certificate - search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Image/Genealogy/19... LINK to a newspaper article about their wedding - www.newspapers.com/article/the-province-thomas-willard-be...
- via - Calgary & Vancouver rpo train 2 - / CAL. & VAN. • R.P.O. / 2 / OC 5 / 46 / B.C. / - rpo transit backstamp - (Gray WT-100 / RF A) - in use from - 16 July 1911 to - 26 June 1965. Old Ludlow W-26.
Addressed to - Mrs. R. P. Lang / Apt. 5 B / 1463 Bishop Street / Montreal / P. Q. - LINK to a newspaper advertisement about the apartments - www.newspapers.com/article/the-montreal-star-bishop-court...
- arrived at - / MONTREAL / 14 / OC 9 / 46 / CANADA / - cds arrival backstamp
Robert Peregrine Lang
(b. 25 March 1912 in Hope, Steele County, North Dakota, USA - d. 11 March 2001 at age 88 in Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California, USA) - LINK to a newspaper report on visiting his relatives in Montreal - www.newspapers.com/article/the-montreal-star-robert-p-lan... - LINK to his Find a Grave site - www.findagrave.com/memorial/123338342/robert-peregrine-lang
His wife - Jean Valerie Elizabeth (nee Whitehead) Lang
(b. 1918 in Sherbroke, New Brunswick, Canada - d. 15 March 2001 at age 83 in Long Beach, California, USA) - They were married in 1944 - LINK to a newspaper article from Montreal about their wedding - www.newspapers.com/article/the-montreal-star-robert-p-lan...
Mrs. Lang, 83, died from complications of a stroke March 15, four days after her 88-year-old husband died of complications of surgery. Mr. Lang was born in Hope, N.D., and Mrs. Lang was born in Sherbroke, New Brunswick, Canada. They lived in Riverside 37 years before they moved to Long Beach in December.
Check out my set "Most Interesting 100" here!
Visit my Waldorfschool/Steinerschool related pinboards here!
Check out my set "Most Interesting 100" here!
Visit my Waldorfschool/Steinerschool related pinboards here!
Life desires love
Love hires life
Love inspires life
Life expires love
Life recreates love
Love creates life
Love impresses life
Life expresses love
Life tires love
Love fires life
So what?
Why so many lives lost for love?
Was there any love lost for life?
There was a Savior who lost His for love
Yeah, even a pure love for his people
But a phony one who wants to save all
For his love of power and glory came
And declared a great war in heaven
An eternal war of good and evil
The casualties were and are so great
And the loyalties firm to retaliate
Each time a man made his choice
Whether in plain or on sea's noise
These seemingly antonyms of old
With enmity from ancient foretold
One could receive a life eternal
While the other death infernal
One may use things to love people
The other use people to love things
But few can use both things and men
To feed their endless obsessions' den
Does this mean that man's choice a day
Will determine his eternal pathway?
Absolutely! Towards his own destiny
To cradle his life and love in continuity
With its fractions and frictions of eternity!
~ Edgar Baguio ~
A fraction of a second before I pressed the shutter to get a shot of a diverted 'Voyager' near Helwith Bridge an Oyster Catcher took off with it's characteristic piping call. This is heavily cropped from the original.
Small fraction of houses
Piccola frazione di case su Appennino tra Emilia e Toscana
Verso il raduno con gli Amici di AutoAbbandonate in Versilia
12.04.2014
Lego / NASA Imagine Our Future Beyond Earth Competition
Today there exists a number of aircraft from private organizations that have the ability to reach a low Earth orbit. Although I won’t name them here (because of the competition rules) they can reach the required orbit and then land again on earth costing only time and fuel at a fraction of what a full rocket would be. Their only limitation is they do not have the capability of leaving orbit like a conventional rocket does.
This creation is designed to eliminate the need for disposable or even re-usable rockets that NASA have planned.
How it works:
Phase 01:
The idea of the Skystation is to be a launch platform. The mission starts with the high altitude craft leaving the runway on Earth and accelerating skyward, arcing into the high atmosphere and docking with the Skystation. The docking ports are housed on the outer rim on top of large magnetic rails that are used for Phase 03.
Phase 02:
There is a docking connection under the shuttle where the astronaught can exit and move into the habitation module centered under the outer rim. This is where the stations crew live, work and where the visiting astronaught's can stay until the launch phase. This is also how the crew are relived, resupplied and the shuttle refueled incase later maneuvering is needed.
Phase 03:
Making use of the Earths powerful magnetic field the launch rails charge up and ready the shuttle for takeoff. They are essentially rail guns using the shuttle like a bullet which benefits their crew as no fuel will be expended. When the crew is ready and secure the shuttle is blasted down the rail at an immense speed and on their way to complete their mission.
Depending on the acceleration needed the shuttle would have been either targeted towards the moon for a slingshot maneuver or if given enough velocity straight shot to the destination. With time another Skystation would be present at mars or another colony meaning that travel between the two planets is more constant and cost effective.
The station itself is powered by a "solar skin" that covers 80 percent of its surface converting the sun’s rays into energy storing it into large batteries
The Pros:
Eliminates the need for any rockets
Saves Fuel
Saves Money
Saves the Environment
No wastage of vehicles
Made to a standard all countries could benefit
Opens the human race to a viable way to break free from our Earthly shackle.
The Cons:
Initial outlay would have a high cost upfront although would pay itself off with the saving of rocket fuel (and rockets!)
Construction would have to be completed in space which although not impossible is difficult.
Check out my set "Most Interesting 100" here!
Visit my Waldorfschool/Steinerschool related pinboards here!
Dec. 1 - I have been working with a former student on an essay which features the word "simple." Thus my photo eye lead me to the dictionary for my picture of the day! How interesting that the definition for "simple" is much longer than for other words. This causes me to wonder how simple is "simple"?
I chuckle to see "simple" used in mathematical terms across this dictionary page! Ha! Many of my former math students didn't think "simple fractions" and "simple equations" to be so simple.
Also, I enjoyed thinking about the etymology of the words or phrases for various words on this dictionary page. In which books or journals were these simple mathematical terms first seen in ink: simple fraction (1728) and simple equation (1758)?
Studying the word "simple" is simply fascinating! Did you know a simple fraction = common fraction = vulgar fraction? (www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-vul1.htm)
teaginnydesigns.blogspot.com/2013/04/fractions.html
inspired by Yoshiko Jinzengi and made from Angela Walters' Right Angles Panel from the Textures line by Art Gallery
Within a fraction of being blown off my feet in a 60 knot gale, I managed to capture this rather breathtaking view!!
The island has a cold, cloudy, wet and windy climate. It receives only 650 hours of bright sunshine annually and it can expect less than an hour's sunshine on 215 days (59%) of the year. Rain falls on an average of 325 days a year and wind gusts reach over 96km per hour on at least 100 days each year. Variations in daily and annual temperatures are small, with a mean annual temperature of 6°C , rarely rising above 12°C.
Campbell Island was described by the English botanist Joseph Hooker as having a flora display second to none outside the tropics.
Very warm welcome to all of you out there. Another day in paradise ;) Back at work. After a very short night. Again, there are many things to get done today. I would love to have holidays now. But I can not change this. Have to wait a little longer.
Hope you have a realy successfull day! Take care!
This was taken during our recent visit to augustusburg. Time to play with my 50mm f1.8 :)
# Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1000)
# Aperture: f/4.5
# Focal Length: 50 mm
# ISO Speed: 400
© Saúl Tuñón Loureda
Montmartre es una colina de 130 metros de altura situada en la orilla derecha del río Sena, en el XVIII Distrito de París, principalmente conocida por la cúpula blanca de la Basílica del Sacré Cœur (en español "sagrado corazón"), ubicada en su cumbre. Cerca, otra iglesia, la más antigua de la colina es Saint Pierre de Montmartre, fundada por la reina de Francia en el siglo XII. En la cripta de la capilla del Martyrium, ubicada en la calle Yvonne Le Tac, se fundó la orden de sacerdotes Jesuitas el 15 de agosto de 1534.
El barrio fue cuna de los impresionistas, de la bohemia parisina del siglo XIX e importante teatro de batallas durante la Guerra Franco-Prusiana y la Comuna.
En La Bohème (1965), quizás la canción más conocida del cantautor Charles Aznavour, un pintor rememora sus años de juventud en un Montmartre que ha dejado de existir:
Je ne reconnais plus/Ni les murs, ni les rues/Qui ont vu ma jeunesse/En haut d'un escalier/Je cherche l'atelier/Dont plus rien ne subsiste/Dans son nouveau décor/Montmartre semble triste/Et les lilas sont morts («Ya no reconozco/ Ni los muros ni las calles/Que habían visto mi juventud/En lo alto de una escalera/Busco un taller/Del que nada sobrevive/Con su nueva decoración/Montmartre parece triste/Y las lilas están muertas»).
Charles Aznavour en su canción La Boheme
La canción es una despedida de lo que, según Aznavour, fueron los últimos días del barrio como lugar de actividad bohemia.
El museo de Montmartre se ubica en la casa donde el pintor Maurice Utrillo vivió, un estudio del segundo piso. La mansión principal en el jardín trasero es el hotel más antiguo del barrio. Uno de sus primeros propietarios fue Claude Roze, también conocido como Roze de Rosimond, quien la compró en 1860. Roze fue el actor que reemplazó a Molière y, al igual que su predecesor, murió en escena. La casa fue la primera residencia de Pierre-Auguste Renoir en Montmartre y muchos otros fueron viviendo en ella por el prestigio del primer inquilino. Justo al final de la colina, se ubica el museo Espace Dalí, donde se exhibe el trabajo del artista surrealista Salvador Dalí. En las cercanías se encuentran la Place du Tertre, donde los artistas realizan sus obras al aire libre, y el cabaret del Lapin Agile. Muchos renombrados artistas están enterrados en el Cementerio de Montmartre y el de Saint-Vincent. La película Amélie está ambientada en el Montmartre contemporáneo. Un tren funicular, el funicular de Montmartre, gestionado por la RATP, asciende por la colina desde el sur, mientras que el servicio de autobús la circunda. Colina abajo, hacia el sudoeste, se encuentra la zona roja de Pigalle. Esa zona en la actualidad es mayormente conocida por la amplia variedad de sex shops y prostitutas. También alberga gran número de almacenes especializados en instrumentos de música rock, así como varias salas de conciertos utilizadas para la música rock.
En la Rue Veron Nº 18 se encuentra el Hotel Clermont, donde residió Edith Piaf a los 14 años al separarse de su padre en 1929.15 Hace su propio camino como cantante en la calle Pigalle, Ménilmontant, y los suburbios de París (véase la canción "Elle fréquentait la Rue Pigalle").Alrededor de los dieciséis años cuando se enamoró de un chico de los recados, Louis Dupont.15 Poco después tuvo su única hija, una niña llamada Marcelle, que murió a la edad de dos años de meningitis.15
En este hotel son frecuentes las presentaciones de grupos de rock en las noches.
El barrio está declarado oficialmente distrito histórico.
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montmartre
© Saúl Tuñón Loureda
Montmartre (French pronunciation: [mɔ̃.maʁtʁ]) is a large hill in Paris's 18th arrondissement. It is 130 metres high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Right Bank in the northern section of the city. The historic district established by the City of Paris in 1995 is bordered by rue Caulaincourt and rue Custine on the north; rue de Clignancourt on the east; boulevard de Clichy and boulevard de Rochechouart to the south.[1] containing sixty hectares.[2] Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district. The other, older, church on the hill is Saint Pierre de Montmartre, which claims to be the location at which the Jesuit order of priests was founded.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Belle Époque, many artists had studios or worked in or around Montmartre, including Salvador Dalí, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro and Vincent van Gogh. Montmartre is also the setting for several hit films. This site is served by metro line 2 stations of Anvers, Pigalle and Blanche and the line 12 stations of Pigalle, Abbesses, Lamarck - Caulaincourt and Jules Joffrin.
In "La Bohème" (1965), perhaps the best-known song by popular singer-songwriter Charles Aznavour, a painter recalls his youthful years in a Montmartre that has ceased to exist: Je ne reconnais plus/Ni les murs, ni les rues/Qui ont vu ma jeunesse/En haut d'un escalier/Je cherche l'atelier/Dont plus rien ne subsiste/Dans son nouveau décor/Montmartre semble triste/Et les lilas sont morts ('I no longer recognize/Neither the walls nor the streets/That had seen my youth/At the top of a staircase/I look for a studio-apartment/Of which nothing survives/In its new décor/Montmartre seems sad/And the lilacs died'). The song is a farewell to what, according to Aznavour, were the last days of Montmartre as a site of bohemian activity.
There is a small vineyard in the Rue Saint-Vincent, which continues the tradition of wine production in the Île de France; it yields about 500 litres per year.[15]
The Musée de Montmartre is in the house where the painter Maurice Utrillo lived and worked in a second-floor studio. The mansion in the garden at the back is the oldest hotel on Montmartre, and one of its first owners was Claude de la Rose, a 17th-century actor known under the name of Rosimond, who had bought it in 1680. Claude de la Rose was the actor who replaced Molière, and who, like his predecessor, died on stage. The house was Pierre-Auguste Renoir's first Montmartre address and many other names moved through the premises.
Just off the top of the butte, Espace Dalí showcases surrealist artist Salvador Dalí's work. Nearby, day and night, tourists visit such sights as Place du Tertre and the cabaret du Lapin Agile, where the artists had worked and gathered. Many renowned artists are buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre and the Cimetière Saint-Vincent.
Montmartre is an officially designated historic district with limited development allowed in order to maintain its historic character.
A funicular railway, the Funiculaire de Montmartre, operated by the RATP, ascends the hill from the south while the Montmartre bus circles the hill.
Downhill to the southwest is the red-light district of Pigalle. That area is, today, largely known for a wide variety of stores specializing in instruments for rock music. There are also several concert halls, also used for rock music. The actual Moulin Rouge theatre is also in Pigalle, next to Blanche métro station.
Montmartre in films
The Heart of a Nation (released 1943) features a family resident in Montmartre from 1870 to 1939.
An American in Paris (1951), with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, was the winner of the Oscar for the best film of 1951. Many important scenes, including the last scenes, take place in Montmartre, although most of the film was shot in Hollywood.
Moulin Rouge told the story of the life and lost loves of painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
French Cancan (1954), a French musical comedy with Jean Gabin and Maria Felix, takes place in Montmartre, and tells the story of the Moulin Rouge and the invention of the famous dance. The director, Jean Renoir, was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who painted several important works while living in Montmartre.
The Great Race (1965), shows Professor Fate in the "Hannibal 8" driving down the Basilica steps after a wrong turn while racing to the Eiffel tower.
Amélie (2001): the story of a young Parisian woman determined to help the lives of others and find her true love, is set in Montmartre and includes a key scene in the gardens below the Basilica.
Moulin Rouge! (2001): a musical film set in Montmartre, is about the night club and a young writer who falls in love with a famous courtesan.
La Môme (2007) (La vie en rose): tells the life of French singer Edith Piaf who was discovered while singing in Pigalle. bordering on Montmartre.
Ronin (1998): Outside of the café at the beginning and end.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montmartre
Montmartre est un quartier du nord de Paris couvrant la colline de la butte Montmartre, qui est l'un des principaux lieux touristiques parisiens. C'est à Montmartre qu'est situé le point culminant de la capitale : 130,53 mètres, altitude du sol naturel à l’intérieur du cimetière du Calvaire, qui jouxte l’église Saint-Pierre de Montmartre.
Jusqu'à son annexion par Paris en 1860, Montmartre était une commune française du département de la Seine, à la superficie plus étendue que le quartier actuel. L'essentiel de son territoire constitue depuis lors les quartiers administratifs des Grandes-Carrières et de Clignancourt, dans le 18e arrondissement de la capitale, dit « quartier de la butte-Montmartre », et une fraction fut attribuée à la commune de Saint-Ouen.
Les deux accès les plus connus pour le sommet de la colline sont le funiculaire ou la rue Foyatier, un escalier de 222 marches avec paliers le longeant.
Ce quartier est desservi par la ligne (M) (2) du métropolitain avec les stations Anvers, Pigalle et Blanche ainsi que par la ligne (M) (12) (stations Pigalle, Abbesses, Lamarck — Caulaincourt et Jules Joffrin).
a scorched fraction of the pale blue dot.
location: anonimio, nea pendeli. map link on the bottom right of this page.
this picture is part of a set. please read the related blog post .
The Walker Dam – Its Past, Present and Future (William Sell, Vice Chair, Craigiebuckler and
Seafield Community Council)
The Walker Dam, with which many Aberdeen citizens are so familiar, is only a fraction of the
size it was when - in the 1830s - it was constructed in accordance with the plans drawn by
Aberdeen’s first City Architect, John Smith. From the second quarter of the 19th century to
the early 20th century the dam was a deep and massive body of water which extended from
its present location, eastward, to Springfield Road – then called Walker Dam Road – where
its sluice gate would have been opened at the beginning of the working day to allow water
to rush through a culvert under the road, then south-east through a deep man-made
channel (which is still evident today) to feed the steam condensing ponds of the Rubislaw
Bleachfield, the property Richards and Company, textile manufacturers.
Today this treasured green space is one of Aberdeen City Council's 'Local Nature
Conservation Sites', the 'Walker Dam and Rubislaw Link', which is a 3.9 kilometre walk along
a series of connected paths and streets. Popular with dog walkers, joggers and ramblers, the
future of this valuable charming landscaped area with its semi-natural habitats, has been
secured by the initiatives and work of 'Friends of Walker Dam' who are registered with 'Keep
Scotland Beautiful' - a Scottish environment charity – which, independent of governmental
finance and influence, is committed to the improvement of people’s lives and the places
they care for.
The Friends of Walker Dam work in partnership with Aberdeen City Council to deliver the
standards of maintenance and the plans for future improvements to this amenity site. Mr
Allan Davidson, Treasurer of Craigiebuckler and Seafield Community Council who is also a
member of Friends of Walker Dam, has frequent meetings with the City Council's
Environment Manager. Those meetings have been very productive and improvements to the
site have already been achieved. For example, there has been a clean-up of the Dam and the
burn which flows into it; improvements have also been made to the path on the South bank
of the dam, which is part of Aberdeen's core path system. The Walker Dam sign has also
been repainted.
In the near future, a bridge will be constructed at the East bank of the dam to connect its
North and South banks - thus making both banks accessible for the enjoyment of visitors to
the dam. This significant infrastructural improvement has been made possible by a final act
of generosity by Aberdeen Greenspace Trust. Local Councillor Martin Greig is a member of
Greenspace and worked to ensure a donation of £8000 from the Trust towards the upgrade
of the Walker Dam which includes the construction of the bridge, new benches, bins and
various paths and tree works. A further enhancement in the area is a community notice
board.
Thanks to the Friends of Walker Dam, Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeen Greenspace Trust
and the work of many volunteers, we have much to look forward to.
Walker Dam
Walker Dam is located within the former Royal Forest of Stocket, part of the Freedom Lands
gifted by Robert I to the burgh (recorded in a charter of 1319). Now it is in the modern
Burnieboozle estate, part of the larger Craigiebuckler estate, which was sparsely populated
countryside until the 1950s, when major housing development began in that area. Walker Dam is
bounded by Springfield Road (which replaced a roadway called Walker Dam Road) to the east
and Woodburn Gardens to the north.
The dam is fed by the Holburn (‘Burn of the Howe’), which has two head waters, the northern
and greater one coming from Hazlehead and through Walker Dam.1
The section entering Walker
Dam is the West Burn of Rubislaw. The two head streams of the Holburn joined together
between Rubislaw Quarry and Springbank Cemetery, and this united stream fed the steamcondensing
ponds at Rubislaw Bleachfield before flowing eastward together as far as Hartington
Road, where they separate. The south branch, the original burn, crossed Union Grove and passed
under the old Holburn Bridge, while the north branch, an artificial mill-lead, went to the Upper
and Lower Justice Mills.2
As a consequence, Walker Dam was at one time closely associated
with the city’s milling operations and, especially, with textile manufacturing. In the nineteenth
century it was a resource integral to the firm once called Maberly’s (established between 1808
and 1811) and later Richards, which had the Broadford Works on Maberly Street and which was
the principal user of the bleachfields. An 1866-67 Ordnance Survey description of Walker Dam
gives it as ‘a very large dam built by the proprietors of the Rubislaw Bleach Field for their own
use.’3
Bleachfields were a development of the eighteenth century Scottish textile and thread
industries. The first bleachfield in Scotland was established in the late 1720s as an alternative to
either small, burnside bleaching operations which were of variable quality, or sending the
unbleached cloth to England, Ireland or Holland for treatment.4
In March 1801, the lands of Springfield were offered for sale. They were described as
comprising about 63 acres, ‘inclosed and subdivided’, and held feu of ‘the Community of
Aberdeen’ at the annual feu-duty of £2 14s 2d sterling. A large house was included in the sale,
and it was noted that ‘the dam for the Justice-mills is situated within this property, and the millburn
passes thro’ it, by which considerable benefit may be derived by a purchaser.’ Other
advantages of the estate were two small plantations of trees, and the fact that the proposed
1
J. Milne, Aberdeen: Topographical, Antiquarian, and Historical Papers on the City of Aberdeen
(Aberdeen, 1911), 49.
2
Milne, Aberdeen, p49. (most of para to this point.)
3
Ordnance Survey Name Book, Aberdeenshire (Vol 69), 1865-1871, 158.
4
A.J. Durie, The Scottish Linen Industry in the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1979)
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turnpike road to Skene and Alford was to pass through the lands, which would increase their
value.
In 1833 Aberdeen Town Council agreed to have Walker Dam cleaned out and deepened, in
partnership with Messrs Richards and Company, manufacturers in Aberdeen.5
Richards was the
instigator of the plan, to which the Council agreed because the work was expected to be ‘highly
beneficial to the Upper and Nether Justice Mills by affording them an additional supply of water,’
and authorised it providing that the Town’s share of the costs would not exceed £20; the work
would be executed under the sole charge of John Smith, Town Superintendant; and Richards,
which must not spend less than the Council on the project, should not use this as a means of
claiming any right over Walker Dam in future.6
In 1837, Richards proposed to the Council that Walker Dam should be excavated and extended,
citing an 1829 agreement to this effect between the Town and Messrs Maberly and Company, the
previous owners of the manufacturing works now operated by Richards (Maberley’s folded in
1832).7
Richards sought a lease of the dam water at a fixed rent once the work had been
completed.8
The Council remitted consideration of this to a committee previously established to
look at a proposal to move Justice Mill Dam westwards to Rubislaw. Early in 1839, the Council
approved the recommendation of this committee that Walker Dam should be excavated and
enlarged so that it would hold an additional 700,000 cubic feet of water, again on the grounds that
it would provide a more reliable source of water for the town’s mills, especially in the dry
season.9
The new capacity of the dam was expected to be more than adequate for the needs of the
mills. The estimated cost of the works at this stage was £360: should the eventual cost exceed
£400, Richards was to pay the excess. The company was also to pay the Council £75 a year for its
lease of the water, and would be responsible for repair and maintenance of the extended dam, to
the satisfaction of the Town, during the life of its lease. (Richards continued to own rights over
the water for several decades.10)
After further negotiations, a Council meeting of 15 April 1839 approved implementation of the
project and authorised the Town Treasurer to enter into a contract with Richards and Co.11 Work
included the construction of a spillwater tunnel and breast mound for the dam extension, along
5
Meeting of 2 October 1833, Council Register Vol. 72, p.206.
6
Meeting of 2 October 1833, Council Register Vol. 72, p.206.
7
Meeting of 11 April 1837, Council Register Vol 74, p131; R. Duncan, Textiles and Toil: The Factory
System and the Industrial Working Classes in early Nineteenth Century Aberdeen (Aberdeen City Libraries,
1984), p.11.
8
Ibid.
9
Meeting of 7 January 1839, Council Register Vol. 75, p48.
10
Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 6 July 1880, 28 November 1889, 15 March 1894 and 27 November 1895.
11
Meeting of 15 April 1839, Council Register Vol. 75, p83.
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with additional dykes and the installation of a new cast-iron tunnel pipe and sluice.12 The plans,
drawings and a detailed specification produced by the Council formed the basis of the contract,
signed on 17 April 1839.13 The revised estimate of costs based on the plans drawn up by the
Town considerably exceeded the original £400 anticipated; the Council minutes do not record the
new estimate but note that Richards offered to pay the full amount, on the basis that Richards
would receive the original £400 from the Town once the work was completed.14 The Council had
earlier noted that implementation of the project would require the purchase of an adjacent piece
of land owned by Alexander Bannerman and instructed that he should be approached to sell part
of his property near Springfield.15 The necessary land was obtained from Bannerman at a feu-duty
of £20, recorded in a feu charter of 19 April 1839.16
On 1 August 1860, the lands and estates of Craigiebuckler and Burnieboozle, including Walker
Dam, were offered for sale by public roup, as part of the sequestrated estate of John Blaikie,
advocate. (John Blaikie went to Spain in 1860, following the collapse of his business and
financial ruin. He was a son of James Blaikie of Craigiebuckler, Provost of Aberdeen from 1833
to 1835.) Walker Dam is described in the sale notice as ‘an Ornamental Sheet of Water, from
which there is an yearly Revenue of £20 sterling from the Town of Aberdeen’.17 The estates
evidently failed to sell at the advertised ‘upset price’ (the lowest price consistent with the
valuation of a property) of at £5,771 2s 6d, since the estate of Burnieboozle, within which Walker
Dam is situated, was again offered for sale on 3 September 1860, now at £5,500, with
neighbouring lands at Springfield for sale separately.18 Again it failed to realise this amount and
was offered for sale on 5 October 1860 at the further reduced upset price of £5,200.19 At some
point after this date it was purchased by John Stewart, Esq.
The lands of Burnieboozle and Walkerhill were once again offered for sale in August 1865, with
Walker Dam included - the sale notice mentions the annual feu-duty of £20 paid by the Town
Council on it.20 In early September, the Aberdeen Journal reported that ‘The estates of
Craigiebuckler, Burnieboozle, Walkerhill, and others, lately belonging to John Stewart, Esq., were
on Friday purchased for the sum of £31,500 by Lauchlan McKinnon, junior, advocate, on behalf
of John Cardno Couper, Esq., lately of Whampoa, China.’ (Whampoa is now usually known as
12
Classifed advertisement inviting tenders for the work, The Aberdeen Journal, 30 Jan 1839.
13
Town Clerk’s Plans CA/10/1/72 and CA/10/1/76, Record of the Royal Burgh and Fonds/Collection
1179-present, Aberdeen City Archives.
14
Meeting of 15 April 1839, Council Register Vol. 75, p83.
15
Ibid.
16
Meeting of 19 April 1839, Council Register Vol. 75, p85.
17The Aberdeen Journal, 18 July 1860.
18The Aberdeen Journal, 15 and 29 August 1860.
19
The Aberdeen Journal, 12 and 19 September and 3 October 1860.
20The Aberdeen Journal, 9 August 1865.
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Huangpu.) Couper, from Fraserburgh, had served as an apprentice in the Aberdeen shipbuilding
firm of Alexander Hall and Co. before going to Hong Kong and working with his father in their
own highly successful ship-building and repairing company. By the time he returned to Aberdeen
in the 1860s, he had amassed a fortune. He was involved in a number of Aberdeen business
enterprises and in the Church of Scotland. Couper gave a portion of land close to Walker Dam to
be the site of Craigiebuckler Church, built in 1883, of which he was an elder. He died in January
1902 at the age of 82. His son, Lieutenant-Colonel John Cardno Ogston Couper (1st Highland
Brigade), succeeded to the property but died at the age of 48 in 1913. His widow and two young
children remained at Craigiebuckler; his daughter, Florence, went on to marry the ministe
Dr S. Marshall, 2014
The Council’s Finance Committee visited the dam in the aftermath of the tragic incident and
agreed to recommend the repair of the surrounding walls. They also instructed that information
boards should be erected at the site warning of the dangers. During this site visit, one of the
councillors slipped by the side of the stream entering the dam, and fell into the mud. It is not
clear if the children had similarly slipped and landed in the water, or if they had intended to enter
it.
The future of Walker Dam was the subject of two proposals of 1933. Council minutes of 4
December that year record that Aberdeen Land Association intended to donate to the Council the
wooded den lying between Johnston House on Springfield Road and Viewfield Road, on
condition the den should be maintained by the local authority as an open space and that the
Council pay half the cost of a proposed road to be built along the west boundary of the property.
The Council formally accepted this proposal in January of 1934.26
Also in December 1933, the City Engineer, Thomas F. Henderson, wrote to the Council’s Streets
and Works Committee, which was then looking at the widening of Springfield Road and the
layout and construction of a new road between it and Queen’s Road. Henderson asked the
committee to consider the future use of the Council-owned Walker Dam at the same time.
According to Henderson: ‘This dam is formed on a burn which rises in the grounds of Hazlehead
and flows through the dam and joins the West Burn of Rubislaw at a point south-east of
Kepplestone Nursing Home and later forms what is known as the Ferryhill Burn.’ On 12 July
that year, very heavy rainfall had flooded the electricity works and caused damage to property in
Crown Street and Ferryhill Terrace. To prevent further flooding, the water was run out of the dam
on 1 September and although here had been no heavy rain since then, ‘we know that, by
controlling the flow at the outlet of the dam we can reduce the risk of flooding in the lower parts
very considerably.
‘In conjunction with the Superintendant of Parks, I have prepared a plan showing how the Walker
Dam could be laid out as a pleasure ground where the public could leave Springfield Road and
walk through the gardens on to the grounds of Hazlehead. The superintendant of parks is of the
opinion that during storm periods the gardens could be flooded without doing much damage to
the grass or plants. As the Dam is the property of the Common Good, I would suggest that the
sub-committee confer with the Finance Committee and Town Planning Committee and submit a
report.’
26 Council Minute, 15 January 1934.
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The next meeting of full Council on 3 January 1934 agreed that the committee should investigate
further, though it also wanted the remarks of the Superintendant of Parks about flooding not
doing damage to the proposed gardens to be deleted. Also presented to the Council at the same
meeting was a letter to the Town Clerk from Professor James Ritchie of the University of
Aberdeen, suggesting the Council should consider making Walker Dam a bird sanctuary. This
was remitted to Streets and Works Committee for consideration. (The two schemes were possibly
not wholly compatible - some residents opposed turning the site into a pleasure park on the
grounds that it would interfere with the natural beauty and the birdlife of the site.) It seems that
these two proposals had been prompted by the threat of the dam being filled in or otherwise
scrapped: two days after the Council meeting, a reader’s letter to the Aberdeen Journal urged that
the dam should be improved and made safe for children rather than ‘done away with’. The writer
suggested that a low wall could be built around it, ‘made from the old dykes that have been pulled
down in the vicinity’. Whatever enclosure was erected in 1911 after the drowning incident had
evidently not endured.
The same edition of the paper published an old photograph of the dam ‘before it was drained’.
This remark referred to the decision to run off the water in the dam the previous year, to obviate
flood damage to the surroundings. However, doing so had created other problems –
correspondents to the Aberdeen Journal in 1934 complained about the condition of the dam as
‘an evil-smelling mudhole’ and ‘horrible looking and stinking’, especially during hot weather,
and recommended that the Medical Officer of Health should investigate.
Whatever schemes were mooted for the dam, they took a considerable time to be implemented.
The better part of two years later, a short Bon-Accord article of October 1935 reports work being
undertaken to transform Walker Dam, ‘from its present wild state’.27 An accompanying photo
depicts workers filling in part of the dam. According to the piece, Walker Dam ‘is being used by
the Cleansing Department as a tip for hard material, which is being put to a good use in filling up
the dam.’ At the time this article appeared, the newspaper thought there was no definite scheme
approved by the Council for the future of the site, but, ‘One proposal is that the site be converted
into a recreation ground.’ At around the same time, the Council made provision for the
installation of a new sewer at Walker Dam, at a cost of £500.28
27Bon-Accord 11 October 1935, p.163.
28
Minute of Finance Committee, 27 August 1935, included in Minutes and Proceedings of Aberdeen
Town Council, 2 September 1935.
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From the mid-1940s and during the 1950s, Stewart Construction (Aberdeen) Ltd., which was by
then the heritable proprietor of the Craigiebuckler estate, built several housing developments on
the land around Walker Dam.29
The minute of a meeting of the Links and Parks Committee of Aberdeen Town Council, held on
24 August 1964, notes that the committee considered a report by the Director of Parks and agreed
the recommendation that the Council lay out an amenity area on ground lying to the south of the
woodlands at Walker Dam extending to c. 0.75 of an acre. This was one of three proposed (and
agreed) amenity areas to be created in the vicinity and included in the report, the others being a
strip of ground on the south side of Hazledene Road (c. 0.4 acre), and two strips of ground
adjoining Craigiebuckler Avenue (c. 3,150 square yards). The total estimated cost is given as
£1,470.30
By this time Walker Dam had become home to a community of swans. The Press & Journal
reported that the Links and Parks Committee of 30 September 1964 considered a letter from the
Aberdeen Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, requesting the committee ban
fishing in Walker Dam, so as to protect the swans living on it. The committee recommended no
action. This was the second attempt by the association to have fishing banned: it had submitted a
similar request at the previous meeting. The renewal of the request was prompted by the
discovery of a cygnet badly injured by a fishing hook and line.31 Walker Dam is no longer a swan
habitat, but they were a popular feature of Walker Dam for many years. When Walker Dam Infant
School opened in 1966, it adopted the emblem of swans on water as its school badge. (The swans
have also inspired the song, ‘Walker Dam’, by Aberdeen singer-songwriter Bob Knight.) A
Springfield resident, Mrs Nanette Grieve, had left the Council a bequest on her death in 1955 to
fund the services of a warden to protect them.32 At times, much effort was put into ensuring this
protection: the Evening Express in 1972 reported that the Council had mounted a vigil of ‘almost
Loch Garten proportions’ to see that swan eggs made it to hatching. In previous years eggs had
been stolen or lost due to flooding.
As this suggests, the problem of flooding at Walker Dam, highlighted by the City Engineer in
1933, was still an issue over thirty years later. In 1965, the Evening Express published ‘before
and after’ photographs of the flooded area: the latter image shows Council parks and recreation
staff laying out grounds and planting shrubs and other flora capable of surviving immersion for a
29Craigiebuckler Chartulery (Charter Register of Craigiebuckler, 1958-1959), CA/4/21 in Records of
the Royal Burgh and City of Aberdeen, Aberdeen City Archives.
30Minutes and Proceedings of the Town Council 1964-1965 (Aberdeen, 1965), p. 403.
31Press & Journal, 1 October 1964.
32
Aberdeen’s Parks (City of Aberdeen Leisure and Recreation Department publication, undated but
believed to be 1980s.)
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few days. The newspaper also reported that the works were to include provision for the dam
water to be diverted at times into a burn, so relieving the pressure and reducing the silting that
had caused flooding problems in the past. A 1969 article in the Aberdeen Press & Journal refers
to Walker Dam being a body of water ‘shaped and even bottomed by the combined operations of
the Aberdeen Corporation Cleansing and Links & Parks Departments,’ and to a plan by Links &
Parks to provide an amenity walk or nature trail along the course from Johnston Gardens to
Hazlehead, via Walker Dam.
Today (2014) Walker Dam (with Rubislaw Link) is a 3.38 hectare Local Nature Conservation Site,
run by Aberdeen City Council’s Countryside Ranger Service.33 Comprising a mix of open water,
landscaped areas and semi-natural habitats, with a footpath running through it, Walker Dam is an
important recreational and educational resource, being one of the few larger bodies of water in the city.