This astonishing artwork was first put on public display at the Scottish Parliament in 2013. Queues stretched around the block and 30,000 people visited in just three weeks. The Tapestry subsequently travelled the length of Scotland, appearing at over a dozen venues. We saw the 160 hand-stitched linen panels at Kirkcaldy Museum & Art Galleries and a large crowd was present. The overwhelming success of the national tour inspired the building of a permanent home for the embroidered masterpiece. Galashiels (Selkirkshire) now hosts the Tapestry in a purpose-built museum on the High Street. The Scottish Borders region has a rich textile tradition and few could argue with the decision to base the exhibition there.
The Tapestry tells the story of Scotland's history, heritage and culture – from the country's land formation millions of years ago, right up to 2013 when the last panel was completed. It is one of the world's largest community arts projects, with 1000 volunteers from all age groups involved in the creation. The people, places and events that shaped the nation's history are celebrated. The overall concept was designed by Edinburgh-born artist Andrew Crummy, who received an MBE last year for services to Scottish cultural heritage. I had arranged to drive my mum down to Earlston (Berwickshire) to visit her cousin and his family. I suggested we also take in the Tapestry as the two towns lie just eight miles apart by road. It would also give us the chance to view the artwork in a more relaxed environment, compared to the serried ranks of onlookers jostling for position at Kirkcaldy during the tour. We drove down the A7, passing the Scottish National Mining Museum in Newtongrange, Midlothian. This popular attraction occupies the site of the Lady Victoria Colliery (closed 1981). A visit is highly recommended. I spent many Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons in Newtongrange as a child and teenager. My dad reported on the stock-car racing for the Edinburgh Evening News and I even got to present two trophies at the opening meeting. The track was demolished in 1989 to make way for a housing scheme, which we saw today from the car. I didn't know the road beyond this point but it turned out to be a pleasant drive through gently rolling countryside. The Borders Railway follows the same course as the A7 and was clearly visible for most of the journey to Galashiels. Re-opened in 2015 as far as Tweedbank, the transport link to Edinburgh has proved highly popular and there are regular calls for an extension southwards. The original route - closed in 1969 - ran all the way to Carlisle. We pulled into a large public car-park near the museum in the centre of Galashiels and were surprised to see just a handful of bays occupied. In fact, the whole High Street seemed eerily quiet. A short walk brought us to the main entrance and the adult admission charge was £10.50. By now it was lunchtime and we had a sandwich in the ground-floor café - a nice spot flooded by natural light and seemingly popular with locals. The main exhibition was located in a spacious hall upstairs and a guide explained the layout. Rather than displaying the panels in long lines, they are grouped into several oval-shaped clusters, with each zone representing a different time period. The visitor centre opened in 2021.
Each piece of the Great Tapestry is accompanied by a detailed text description. To fully appreciate the nuances of the artwork and absorb all the written information, several hours of browsing would be required. We took our time walking round, looked closely at panels that caught the eye and read about interesting events. We learned a lot, but the sheer amount of material is overwhelming. I'm sure I could go back and easily find things I'd missed. Four very different rock formations were ground together to make Scotland. The last ice age ended around 9000 BC. Glaciers carved out the landscape we know today and early peoples arrived, most likely drawn by the migrations of animals that provided food, clothing and tools. It was a harsh life. Few of these hunter gatherers lived beyond 30 and women often died in childbirth. Burgeoning tree cover attracted new forms of wildlife that nested, burrowed and nibbled. Wild cattle and boar crashed through the undergrowth. Heavy duty predators such as wolves and bears found rich pickings. Around 5000 years ago, farming became established. Far easier to fence animals in and control their breeding, rather than chase them through the forest with no guarantee of success. The human population grew - apparently fuelled by porridge! Coarse wild foods damaged infant teeth, which prompted women to breastfeed for longer periods, meaning they didn't conceive during this time. Arable grains could be mashed up to provide a softer means of nourishment, allowing young children to progress more quickly to solid foods. This development shortened the birth interval and the pitter patter of tiny feet was heard more often. The first overseas traveller to formally record a visit to Scotland was Pytheas, a Greek explorer who arrived on British shores around 320 BC. The Romans came four centuries later, marching into Scotland and reaching a place they called Graupian Mountain, reckoned to be in modern Aberdeenshire. The disciplined legions quelled local resistance but Scotland was soon abandoned by the invaders. Hadrian's Wall was erected around 122 AD, marking the northern limit of the Roman Empire. Hadrian's successor Antoninus Pius oversaw the construction of a turf barrier - the Antonine Wall - across the Central Belt of Scotland but this project proved short-lived. The Gaels sailed over from Ireland, establishing the Kingdom of Dalriada in Western Scotland. Native Picts occupied the eastern and northern areas, while Britons controlled the territory to the south. Norse influence came in the form of Viking raids and the horned-helmeted seamen colonised the extreme north and made incursions into other parts of the country. Gradually these small kingdoms disappeared and modern Scotland coalesced. Princess Margaret of Wessex married King Malcolm III and bore seven children. She organised the regular ferry service across the Firth of Forth (which lasted until 1964) and eventually became Scotland's only canonised saint. One of very few women to have a leading role in our early history.
Only two shrines in Europe contained relics of the Apostles. One of them was dedicated to St Andrew, in the Fife town named after him. By the 1200s he was regarded as our patron saint and the Saltire (Scotland's national flag) is also known as the St Andrew's Cross. A grand cathedral in the town of St Andrew's was built to house the relics but was ransacked in 1559 during the Reformation and the bones of Apostle Andrew were lost. In the Middle Ages, Stirling was a key strategical location. The narrow route through the abundant marshland between the Firths of Forth and Clyde posed a significant challenge to advancing enemies. The fearsome Stirling Castle stands upon a crag overlooking miles of flat terrain and it was not easy for troops to find a way across the River Forth. When King Robert the Bruce routed the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, he had less than half the manpower available to King Edward II of England. Bruce however possessed extensive local knowledge and had the advantage of being able to choose the battleground, marshalling his soldiers superbly. Mum and I then learned some fascinating facts about the aftermath of the conflict. Flushed with success, Bruce led an invasion of England, laying siege to the border city of Carlisle. Stout resistance was offered but ultimately it was heavy rainfall that scuppered the raid. Unusually high levels fell across Europe in 1315 and Bruce's plans became bogged down. The army encampment was washed out and not much food could be sourced. It was in fact the beginning of the Little Ice Age that gripped Britain for the next four centuries. By 1317, the rain had relented but crop production took years to stabilise and around a fifth of the Scottish population perished due to famine. An ill-fated monarch featured on the Tapestry was Alexander III (pictured above) - who died in 1286 after falling from his horse at Kinghorn, Fife. Newly married, he crossed the Forth on a stormy night to be with his bride, Yolande of Dreux. Successfully landing in Inverkeithing, he rode along the coast but somewhere on the cliff path, the king's horse lost its footing and Alexander's body was found on the beach the following day. The Black Death pandemic raged through England in the middle of the 14th century - killing up to half the inhabitants - but didn't get its claws into Scotland to the same extent. Nevertheless, the consequences were dire. In one way, the disease did benefit Scotland's hard-won independent status, staving off the advancement of an invading army commanded by Edward III, grandson of Edward I who actually did subjugate the Scots.
The University of St Andrews (established 1413) is Scotland's oldest seat of higher education. Our other ancient universities are Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. The island groups of Orkney and Shetland were under Norwegian control until 1472. Their passing to the Scottish crown formalised the nation's frontiers that still exist today. The military disaster of Flodden in 1513 saw James IV killed in action, the last occasion on which this fate would befall any monarch in Britain. The large Scottish fighting force adopted poor tactics. With James in the thick of the melee, he could see nothing of the battle's course. His adversary - the Earl of Surrey - kept watch from a vantage point to the rear and dictated the necessary troop movements. The events at Flodden ushered in a century of instability in the south of Scotland - the age of the Border Reivers. Royal authority was weak and remote on both sides of the dividing line. Naturally, the Tapestry covered the Reformation in great detail. The King James Bible was completed in 1611, by which time Scotland and England shared the same monarch. Regarded as a literary masterpiece, the translation from Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin was of a very high standard and a vast number of common expressions in use today stem from this work. The complexities of the National Covenant and the resulting War of the Three Kingdoms were depicted. The financial fallout of the Darien Scheme was largely responsible for Scotland losing its standing as a political entity and the country was obliged to sign up to the United Kingdom in 1707. In an attempt to colonise part of the Panamanian isthmus, the staggering sum of £400,000 had been raised. It amounted to one fifth of the entire national wealth. The ultimate aim was to dig a canal to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the first expedition set sail in 1698 with 1200 people on board. Unfortunately, the settlers were inadequately prepared for the stifling insect-infested conditions of Central America. Their food stocks rotted and people began to die in large numbers. Only 300 survived the first summer. One ship limped back home with the news but arrived too late to prevent a second wave of emigrants departing. Disease took its toll and the colony was attacked by Spanish forces. The grand plan had turned into a complete disaster and the country was practically bankrupt. A political union with England was highly controversial but deemed the only workable solution. The repercussions have been felt from that day to this. Although the merger was hostile (at least in Scotland), it has to be said the economy improved greatly and many Scots progressed to successful careers within the expanding British Empire. Meanwhile, the Jacobite Rising began to gain traction. Much of this convoluted tale has been romanticised and mythologised over the intervening centuries (for example, it was never Scotland versus England) and this is not the place for a deep dive.
Suffice to say, the attempted restoration of the Stuart monarchy failed and Bonnie Prince Charlie never returned to these shores. One of the main reasons his army was able to penetrate England so deeply was the lack of detailed mapping and good roads. The government forces were unable to respond quickly to the fast-moving rebels. After the bloody denouement at Culloden, the Ordnance Survey was founded and the whole of the country (including remote Highland areas) closely surveyed. A mortal blow was dealt to clan culture and the native Gaelic language declined drastically. Adam Smith was perhaps the most influential thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Kirkcaldy-born economist published The Wealth of Nations which is still considered highly relevant today. Throughout the 1800s, the Highlands were slowly emptied of people. Landlords sought bigger profits from sheep grazing and shooting estates. Many folk left for America, while others found work in the growing cities as the industrial revolution gathered momentum. A more charitable soul was Robert Owen, who ran a mill in New Lanark and provided ground-breaking living conditions for the workers. The complex is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I studied the panel dedicated to our national bard Robert Burns before moving on to the display about the Scotsman newspaper - founded in 1817. My dad spent 30 years of his journalistic career with this publication, which has been printed on a daily basis since 1855. Glasgow had outgrown the capital Edinburgh by the 1820s (the population eventually topped one million) and became known as the Second City of the Empire. Shipbuilding and heavy engineering took place along the banks of the Clyde, while other industries proliferated across the expanding conurbation. Education for all children was made a legal requirement in 1872 and literacy among the masses spread from Caithness to Wigtownshire. The Irish potato famine caused immigration to reach levels previously unknown in Scotland and many found employment in the Glasgow area. We were introduced to Scots who had made a positive impact in Africa. Missionary Mary Slessor escaped the slums of Dundee to contribute greatly towards women's and children's rights. She preached in Nigeria against human sacrifice and the abandonment of twin babies, learning the local language and gaining the trust of the indigenous people. Slessor is now honoured within the Hall of Heroes at the National Wallace Monument in Stirling, one of only two women featured.
Fabulous engineering achievements such as the construction of the magnificent Forth Bridge (shown left) gave way to the outbreak of the first truly mechanised global conflict. The horrors of battles such as Passchendaele led to vast human cost while territorial gains remained negligible. Women kept the wheels of industry turning while men were away fighting and in 1918 all females over the age of 30 were given the right to vote. This was adjusted to 21 a decade down the line to ensure parity with males. The nine-day General Strike of 1926 was called by the Trades Union Congress in an effort to halt a downward spiral of wages and conditions for miners. Many workers across the land walked out in sympathy but ultimately the protest failed to achieve any meaningful guarantees. The first Labour Prime Minister was a Scot. Ramsay MacDonald - the illegitimate son of a farm worker and a housemaid - was elected to the House of Commons in 1906 and served three terms of office in the top job between 1924 and 1935. War broke out again and Clydebank suffered two devastating air raids. The town was destroyed and 528 people lost their lives. The nearby shipyards (the actual target) survived relatively intact. The inaugural Edinburgh Festival was staged in 1947 and brought colour to a difficult economic period. The event now attracts people from all over the world and the popular Fringe programme has launched many brilliant careers in the world of entertainment. 1947 was also the year in which the National Health Service was rolled out across Britain. It may be creaking at the seams these days (due in no small part to the post-war baby boom reaching their twilight years) but - remarkably - it remains free at the point of use. How long that will be the case remains to be seen. Apparently half a million Scots were prescribed spectacles within the first year of universal care. I'm certain quite a few of them also stood in line to receive false teeth! The number of smokers has collapsed, from 80% of the population in 1954 to just one fifth today. I presume vape statistics are not included in the latter measure. The television network was expanded in the 50's and three ITV franchises - Grampian, STV and Borders - covered different parts of Scotland. The channels were originally independent concerns with their own branding and scheduling but the modern ITV regions across the UK share the same programming apart from local news, weather and some political content.
Oil and gas were discovered under the North Sea bed in the late 60s. This provoked an energy boom and Aberdeen became the centre of the industry, with property prices to match. Scotland still benefits from this revenue although it's very much a case of diminishing returns as the climate agenda gathers pace and the political mood towards continued oil extraction changes. The phasing out of fossil fuels will however take many years and floating rigs will remain a common sight in the northeast for the foreseeable future. Vast reserves remain and renewable energy - for all its plus points - is nowhere near ready to supply all the country's needs. A rather less successful economic tale is that of the Linwood car plant in Renfrewshire. Opened in 1963, the factory lay close to a rail depot and production focussed on the Hillman Imp. A direct competitor of the ubiquitous Mini, the Imp initially proved popular but sales dropped off due to concerns about reliability. Half of the total output was delivered within the first three years and the drop in demand led to the small Scottish car being withdrawn in 1976, with the factory closing its doors five years later. I remember the Imp well and there's no surer sign of ageing than seeing common cars from your childhood make the transition to collectors' items. Linwood became a byword for national industrial decline and went on to feature prominently in the lyrics to the Proclaimers hit single Letter from America. The five post-war new towns (Glenrothes, East Kilbride, Cumbernauld, Livingston & Irvine) grew around technology and light industries. They were granted local authority status to promote development and were laid out with plenty of open space and green parkland. The Scottish National Party began winning parliamentary seats in significant numbers and a 1979 referendum on devolution was narrowly defeated. A majority of Scots supported the motion but the small print required 40% of the actual electorate to say yes. Nowadays we have our own government in Holyrood and arguments rage over whether (another) vote for full independence should be held. I wish I could say our 1978 World Cup campaign was more successful than the devolution matter but the trip to Argentina - with Ally McLeod at the helm - turned out to be a failure, albeit in typical Scottish sporting style, a glorious one. McLeod had Pied Piper qualities and whipped the nation into a frenzy, proudly proclaiming he would return with the trophy. Two poor opening results left us requiring a three-goal victory over world champions Holland to progress to the next round. When Archie Gemmell shot the Scots 3-1 ahead with an amazing solo goal, the dream was reignited. I vividly remember my dad bouncing around the living room and throwing me into the air as we watched on television. Unfortunately the joy was short lived and the match finished 3-2 in our favour. Not enough take us through but a notable victory over the great Dutch side of that decade. Dad was a proud man 15 years later when he met Ally McLeod at a Cowdenbeath match when the legend was in charge of Queen of the South. Despite several attempts, Scotland still haven't made it past the group stage in a major tournament but hopes are once again building for Euro 2024 in Germany.
The bitter Miners' Strike of 1984/85 signalled the end of an era. Never again would we witness such a titanic dispute flare up across Scotland, or indeed the entire UK. Working-class society changed forever as the National Union of Mineworkers was crushed by the Conservative government of the day, led by Margaret Thatcher. Although the industry was already declining by the coming of the 1980s, many men were still employed in large-scale pits across the Central Belt and trade unions remained a powerful political force. By the end of the decade however, deep mining had been decimated and our final pit closed in 2002. Prolonged industrial action is now a thing of the past, with the 1993 Dundee Timex strike generally considered to be the last to involve mass picketing and major disturbances. The Tapestry certainly offers something for everyone and your knowledge of Scottish history will be significantly improved by visiting. The downstairs gallery had a temporary exhibition on Paisley patterned textiles but we gave that a miss as we were so overwhelmed by the main attraction. A feast of epic proportions awaited us at John and Bilen's in Earlston. John is my mum's first cousin and his wife hails from Ethiopia, therefore the food on offer is always intriguing (and suitably spiced!). En route we drove below the end arch of the mighty 19-span Leaderfoot Viaduct. Standing well over a hundred feet above the River Tweed on slender columns, it carried a line that linked the East Coast route to the main Borders Railway via Duns, the county town of Berwickshire. There is no public access to the top but it's an amazing sight to behold and I'll definitely have a closer look next time.
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