Cold Comfort - 31 January 2006
What a good morning to have a site visit at Prestongrange with some members of the Living Landmarks bid team. I don’t think I’ve been as cold as that since 1982. Of course I hadn’t dressed for the occasion, so I have only myself to blame. I could hardly have been unaware of the weather conditions as it had taken 15 minutes to be able to see out of my car windscreen first thing (and that involved driving up the road with my head out of the window to somewhere where the sun would shine on it.
Still, I spent a good two hours exploring the site including the areas to the south amongst the trees. It’s fascinating to see what has survived amongst the growth of the last forty years. I haven’t explored the back areas of the site during winter before, and it’s surprising how much more you can see when there are no leaves on the trees. The two reservoirs are amazing - like little walled gardens - but while some of the infrastructure of drainage pies and sluices it still visible, it mostly exists in small reminders sticking just out of the earth. As you explore you can follow these pipelines, but it’s hard to know just what they are for or when they date from. Of course on a site with a history as long as Prestongrange’s it’s not always clear to what extent later structures have wiped away or re-used existing ones. But that’s for phase 2 of the Community Archaeology Project to sort out.
We don’t make enough use of much of the site, largely because we have lacked the resources to make it more accessible and meaningful. But I can imagine how the site might be - of course I’ve been imagining how Prestongrange could look since I first saw the site when I was up here for my interview for the Museums Officer post in 1994, so I may be a serial dreamer. But this time - who knows?
So with my fingers and toes completely numb, I climbed back into my car and the windscreen wipers and screenwash wouldn’t work. Bizarrely, when I pulled the lever to wash/wipe the windscreen the rear wiper went on. But that, as they say, is another story.