Castell Arberth/Narberth Castle

A few weeks ago, Raven and I went to stay with my Dad. I came across this castle by accident - My Dad got Raven to drive him on an errand, and the route went past this castle mound, which was partially obscured by how the road goes down a deep cut in the hill below it. I asked if we could visit the castle on the way back, and we did. If any of my readers are familiar with the Mabinogion, then they will recognise Castell Arberth as one of the chief courts of Pwyll, father of Pryderi. 

Narberth Cemetery

On our way to the castle we went into a cemetery by mistake - we were looking for the path up to the castle mound, and thought this might be through the cemetery, as the graveyard path initially seemed to slope up. The cemetery was founded in the 1930s, so most of the graves are 20thC, I think with some more recent ones. As it is quite a recently used/active cemetery, I only took one picture of the general cemetery area, rather than any of specific graves, and certainly no posing with the gravestones. 

Remains of the castle sticking up like fangs from the ground

The castle was up a different path. You can't see much of it from the road, only one of the towers, but once up there, a lot more of the castle is visible. It is hard, from what is left, to visualise that it was once a mighty fortress, at least the second built on that site, and was built sometime after 1246 (you can read the CADW page ::here::). There were signs around the place with artist's impressions of the original castle, but I think the windows in the paintings are a tad more Gothic than might have been based on the actual window shapes remaining. However, there may have been more pointed tracery in stone frames now long gone. 

This is just part of a broken tower, once attached to a building

It was a damp, muggy day, with a dull grey sky, so I apologise in advance for the photographs being hazy and the skies being boring. I took all the photographs on my phone, as well, as I still haven't got a replacement camera. I'm currently unemployed, so it will be a while before I can afford a decent camera.

Raven was there too, and he took a couple of pictures of me.

Window into the cellar

The most complete part of the building is the pantry/kitchen cellar, with its tough barrel vault weathering the test of time. It's the building that Raven's standing in front of in the picture above. A lot of the stone from the castle was reused to build the town/village of Narberth (Arberth in Welsh) that surrounds. It's a very craggy-looking ruin, and the exterior walls, which would have likely been rendered and whitewashed to avoid the stone walls providing hand-holds, and to add an extra layer of protection from the elements, are now bare, with much of the walls' cores exposed. 

What is left of the great hall. 

The castle was built on a promontory, with a steep drop down to the graveyard below, and even further to the current road level. Geographically, it's quite a defensible location. I think the castle walls merge into a deliberate escarpment to the right of the buildings pictured above. Looking out over the trees now is quite magical. The vegetation there is very lush - West Wales is where parts of what is known as the 'Celtic Rainforest' grows - dense and green, watered by the decidedly soggy climate and warmed by the warm air currents that pass the West of the British Isles, brought by the Gulf Stream. 

Through the windows

The buildings were stabilised in 2005, after an extensive project to stop further ruination of what is left. Unfortunately, there has been graffiti since then, limiting what I could photograph (I don't want to put swear words, crudely drawn phallic images and suchlike on my blog) and also damaging the stonework as it would be difficult to remove the spray paint from the walls without also damaging the surfaces of the stones. It saddens me that I often go to castles and other ancient monuments and there's litter, beer cans (and sometimes worse) and graffiti - the results of people disrespecting their heritage. Ones that charge for entry tend to have less, but I think it's more the supervision of stewards than the price that changes things. 

I went through that doorway.

I did see a family taking their children for a stroll, which is a good thing - nice to see children being taken to such things at young age, hopefully to grow up more respectful of the castle than those who spray-painted the graffiti. I get really angry about people damaging historical buildings.

Inside what's left of the great hall

You can see corbels jutting from the walls where once sat the joists for the first floor. I don't know if there was a second storey on this part. The towers definitely had ground floor, first floor and second floor at least, probably with battlements behind crenelations. All of that is gone now. You can also see where they changed their mind about a window and walled it up into an alcove. 

Note corbel and hole in the wall where a beam once slotted in

I probably spent longer exploring and taking photographs than we really had time for. I find such ruins quite captivating. 800 years is pretty ancient in many ways, but it's actually relatively recent in Welsh history. Near Narberth/Arberth is a truly ancient hill-fort that is thousands of years old. It's somewhat overwhelming at times just how much history there is, layered all around us. I'll have to visit more of the really ancient stuff and blog about that, too. 

The arches are roughly Gothic, but it's hard to tell what the windows looked like with any more detail than that. The castle, like most medieval castles, also had a chapel, which I would expect to have church-like Gothic windows, maybe once having stained glass. Now there's just a hole in the wall. I wonder what happened to the glass. 

The hat and cloak make me look particularly severe.

Raven took a picture of me looking very serious by a window. I'm such a tourist sometimes - I want an 'I was there' picture of me at the places I visit. You can see how much better the resolution is on Raven's phone camera than on mine. I visited two other castles while I was in Wales, and I'll update my blog with those in the near future. 

Cawdor Castle - 2017 Visit

Last year, Raven took me to Cawdor Castle for my birthday. I wanted to post about it nearer the time, but I lost my SD card with the photos I'd taken. I've been there ::before::, and the first time I was there, it was with the HTC smartphone that didn't have a good camera at all, no proper camera, and in dreary weather. This time, it was May, the weather was bright and sunny, and I made sure to bring a camera with me. Raven also took a lot of photographs while we were there, so there's plenty of photographs from him in this blog! If I find my SD card, I'll do a second post about this trip with my photos on it. I'm really grateful to Raven for letting me use his photographs; I'm really sad about having lost my SD card, especially as it had more than just Cawdor Castle on it. I took a LOT of photographs of the castle building itself, and I really wish they weren't lost.

Photos in this blog-post are in a carousel gallery - if you click on a photo, it will enlarge, and you can navigate between photos with the arrow keys. I've had a couple of messages about 'tiny pictures' so I thought I would clarify. 

Photo by Raven of me walking up to the castle

Cawdor Castle was initially built as a defensive castle in the 14thC by the Thanes of Cawdor. It's since become more of country mansion house with later, less defensible extensions, but it has a rich and interesting history. This time, we went inside the castle as well as seeing the grounds, paying the extra entrance fee, so I got to see more the castle and learn about the castle history - which is my favourite reason to visit castles! You can visit the official Cawdor Castle website ::here::. 

When I temporarily had blue hair!
Selfies by me. 

I went on the trip during the time I had ::temporarily blue hair::. I keep ending up with unintentional blue hair - I've currently got unintentional blue highlights in my black hair because the black dye is not quite as opaque as I imagined, and also doesn't adhere so well to where my hair was previously green. However, in this instance, my hair turned blue after I washed it, and had originally been green and purple. My current theory is that it's because I'd been using dandruff shampoo, and some ingredient in that caused it to wash out certain pigments from the dye, leaving the blue. 

The first thing I did at the castle was go and get a hot chocolate, and I think either a pain-au-chocolat or a savoury muffin - it's been over a year, I can't remember what I ate. I do remember that whatever it was, it was tasty! The hot chocolate was rather yummy, with frothy cream and marshmallows - a more luxurious hot drink than my usual tea as a birthday treat. 

My hair nearly matched the cup. Photo by Raven 

Photo by Raven, edits by me.

Once thoroughly refreshed, we went for a wander around the castle. Near the entrance to the cafe, I spotted this alcove. As well as looking out of the window at the castle grounds, and being impressed by the immense thickness of the walls, I persuaded Raven to take some aesthetic pictures of me.

The gatehouse has had to repel those who would attack the castle, so its sturdiness is not just for show. One of the daughters of the clan at Cawdor - 9th Thaness Muriel - was at the centre of a lot of clan dispute when as a teenager she was married off to Sir Campbell. It got very 'Game of Thrones' with battles, kidnaps, plots and Thaness Muriel surviving her husband, living 30 years longer than he did. (You can read about that ::here::, just scroll down to Muriel Calder). If you think the fiction of Macbeth is dramatic, then just look what was actually happening in Cawdor a few before Shakespeare.

I actually don't remember this part of the castle, but it's pretty
Photograph by Raven 

We went around the castle interior first. The castle is still lived in - by the current Lady Cawdor, so not all the rooms can be visited. There's a route through some of the castle that is opened up, with guides at various points who can be asked questions about the castle. I remember we bumped into some American tourists who were just as excited about the castle as I was (and who liked my outfit; I think I got called' Lady Macbeth' in a complimentary way.) and both they and I asked the guides plenty of questions. There was an older chap as a guide and he was incredibly knowledgeable about the castle. I perhaps asked too many questions, but I'm a glutton for knowledge.

Palantir-esque orb
Photo by Raven.

There are a lot of spherical ornaments in Cawdor Castle - I think this is an aesthetic choice of the current lady Cawdor, as she commissioned several of the spherical statues in the castle grounds, and it is by her desk that one of the larger stone/crystal orbs resides. Raven took a photograph of it (to the right, click to enlarge thumbnail image). There's also one in one of the visitable bedrooms that is in a stand that makes it look like Palantir from Middle Earth. There's also an ORIGINAL Charles Addams drawing which I got completely over excited about. I don't have a photograph of that. (Lady Cawdor's art collection is intriguing, and I have so many questions in my head from it!)

There's a really fabulous room, with a tree growing in it, and an adjoining 'secret' other room that had been walled up for a long time. I don't have a photograph of it - it's something I tried hard to photograph, and there might be pictures of it on my SD card, but in the meanwhile there's a picture of it on the ::Cawdor Castle website::, second one along, click to enlarge. The tree is part of a legend about the founding of the castle. The Thane of Cawdor, whose earlier medieval castle was not too far away, wanted to build a bigger and better, stronger fortification. He had a dream in which he was instructed to put a chest of gold upon a donkey's back, and then to follow it to where it lay, and build his castle there. He did this, and the donkey went to lie down under a hawthorne tree, which the castle was built around - the tree is still there, growing through the castle basement, protected as the family's prosperity is thought to be linked to the tree. I keep saying British history is very much like Game of Thrones, but in this case it's more like the Shannara Chronicles.

Historic Kitchen at Cawdor Castle, photo by Raven

Photo by Raven. 

Looking at the historic kitchen was interesting. All those copper pots and pans! It's intriguing to see what utensils they had then compared to now - some things I have no idea what their purpose is, some things that haven't changed much, and some things that seem obvious by their absence. What was even more interesting is that one of the last things you go through in the castle, once you've been through the historic kitchen, is the modern kitchen - presumably for when there are private functions (I'm going to guess Lady Cawdor doesn't let hundreds of visitors walk through the same kitchen her dinner is cooked in each night!).

I really like the recessed windows from an aesthetic perspective - I'm guessing they are small and in such deep alcoves because the kitchen is in the basement, and the castle needs really thick, sturdy walls at that level to hold up everything that is above it, especially as it was defensive. Small windows means less of a void in the wall, and less of a space someone could climb in through - however, wide alcoves means more light as light can enter the room from a variety of angles in relation to the window.  

Modern Kitchen at Cawdor Castle, photo by Raven

Photo by Raven.  Click to expand
In front of historic kitchen window

The comparison between the two definitely makes you think about how much the functional aspects of the castle have changed, and the expected requirements for a kitchen. As an architectural technologist, and one that would like to work on residential properties, things like the types of room that have been used for kitchens over the centuries is something that interests me - for example, the historic kitchen is long and linear, almost in a basement, and with the well in the room, (Not visible in the photograph, Raven would have had his back to it when he took this picture) whereas the modern kitchen is in a much squarer room, and a storey up from this kitchen (I think? It's hard to judge when the various phases of the building aren't all on the same set of levels) - both rooms are relatively bright, with lots of white, but the modern kitchen seems much airier, even though it has dark wooden panelling - perhaps because the ceilings are much higher (high enough to be out of shot!). It's also interesting to note the HUGE copper canopy for the extract fans in the modern kitchen - no such thing centuries back, so it would have been much steamier to work in! 

Raven's really into cooking, so I think he also found the two kitchens quite interesting.

Maze with minotaur (left) and castle (right). Photograph by Raven.

There's a hedge maze (or labyrinth?) at Cawdor, but when we were there, it was closed to visitors because the roots of the shrubbery needed to recover from repetitive trampling. However, it was visible from outside, as was the mythologically suitable minotaur in the centre!

Formal gardens, before their peak, in a cloudy moment. Photo by Raven.

Walking with parasol

Photograph by Dave

After we looked around the castle as much as we could, we then went out to the grounds. Last time I went to Cawdor Castle gardens, we walked mostly through the woodland walk area and didn't go through all of the gardens, but this time we went to the gardens. In the Highlands, early May is more springtime than summer, so the gardens aren't as green and luscious as they probably are in later months. I should probably actually go there around this time of year to best appreciate the gardens! That's not to say that there wasn't greenery - as there was, it's just that the trees, hedges and shrubbery weren't at their maximum foliage. 

The weather was quite bright - not hot, but warm enough that a lacy shrug was enough to keep away the chill. However, it was definitely bright enough for sunglasses and parasol (well, to me at least, but I think I have a low tolerance for bright light.) for most of the day. There were cloudier moments, too, but when the sun came out again it was really quite bright.

Spherical fountain, photograph by Raven. 

As mentioned before, there were several spherical garden statues/fountains at the ground. A really interesting one was made of shards of stacked glass, but I lost the photographs I took of that. The stone sphere fountain in the photograph was made by a Japanese sculptor, and there was a matching crescent moon shaped statue - I think the fountain represents the sun. It's an interesting mixture of modern art and a historical castle and grounds. I think the natural stones helps keep the fountain fitting to the site. 

Pond opposite ticket booth/entrance. Photograph by Raven

Cawdor Castle has two main areas of laid out gardens, and then plenty of grounds, wooded and more pastoral, beyond that. There is a lovely pond near the drive and ticket booth, which Raven photographed. It looked most picturesque, a wonderful capture of springtime, especially with all the white tree blossoms. There are more ponds in the woodland area, but I didn't go there that time - they are also very pretty, especially when viewed from the wooden bridges. 

Photograph by Raven, edits/filters by me.

The last photo from the Castle is me sitting at a small picnic table near the ticket booth, I think having just finished a carton of apple juice or something, and discussing with Raven what the rest of our plans would be. For some reason, sitting there was probably the thing that stuck most clearly in my head. I think it was because I looked up at the new leaves on the tree above me, and the sun, which was quite bright, was glowing through them, so they seemed so incredibly vibrant, almost glass-like. It was later in the afternoon by that point, as we had spent a good few hours at Cawdor Castle, and I tweaked the colours in the photograph just a little to try and best capture what the light felt like when I was there. Sometimes you have to bend reality a little to capture what something feels like.
 

Raven and I together, phone pic by me. 

As far as birthdays go, I think last year's was one of the best. Sometimes a trip out is better than a party (especially if you're more introverted like me. I end up poking my phone at my own parties because I get 'peopled out'!). Going to Cawdor castle was Raven's treat, so I'm very thankful to him for taking me (even over a year on!). He took me out to dinner, too (which, just before, is when I took the selfie of us together - hence the different makeup and outfit). Raven is very much the romantic, and I'm eternally grateful to him for all these years together - as well as Birthday trips out!

Also, this blog would be much less aesthetically pleasing without his photographic talent! Not just this specific entry (which would just be a big wall of text about how much I like Cawdor Castle otherwise), but in general - he's taken so many of the photographs of me for this blog over the years, and they're always really flattering. I don't look half as good in my own selfies - let alone real life - as I do in Raven's pictures of me. He's got a knack for composition and posing that does well to minimise my many physical flaws and highlight my better features (so, less turkey neck, more cheekbones) and even manages to take pretty pictures of me when I'm not trying to pose (those probably turn out better; I pose awkwardly when I know I'm being photographed) 

Glasgow Cathedral & Necropolis: A Very Gothic Lolita Meet

Graves through the trees, last
 time I visited. Click to expand

Last month I went down to Glasgow for a meet-up I was very excited about - a visit to the Cathedral and the Necropolis. It was organised by the moderator of the Scottish Lolitas group on FaceBook. Originally it was supposed to be for a guided tour on the Saturday, but it was re-arranged for the Sunday, which means we didn't get a guided a tour, but we were there for choral evensong rehearsals! I've been to Glasgow Necropolis before, once a few years back (when I had no idea how to style my wigs, or what boots suit what outfits... so I won't link back to that one!)
Getting to Glasgow from Inverness is a good 3+ hrs on the coach from Inverness, and I don't even live in Inverness itself, so I had to travel to the city first, and Lolita is not the most practical style of clothing for travel! For the most part, I kept my impractically high heels for photographs, and switched to ugly but comfortable trainers (more about how this didn't work out later on). The weather was really quite bright, and I started doubting my choice of an all-black ensemble to wear! It had been cloudy and overcast in the Highlands, but the weather got warmer and sunnier as I travelled south to the central belt.

I made some attempts to get a few photographs of the stunning Scottish scenery taken out of the window. I really like looking out of the window on long coach and train journeys, but I always end up wishing I could stop off at all of the interesting places and explore - one of  the downsides of not being able to drive is I can't go off on my own detours!

A rather tall and craggy hill, not entirely sure where

One place I'd love to go on a detour to explore is Ruthven Barracks - I managed to get one moderately clear shot of the Ruthven Barracks out of the coach window. It used to be the site of a castle (presumably Castle Ruthven?) but due to the Jacobite Uprising, the Hanoverian government built an imposing barracks over the site to station troops. It was part of a rather bloody section of Highland history. 

Ruthven Barracks from the road, photo out of a coach window.

I did my make-up partly on the coach - probably not the smartest idea, but I don't think it worked out too badly. Trying to do my lipstick was the hardest bit, so I waited for the change at Perth, so the coach would be stationary, to do that bit. 

Black hair with blue highlights now! Veil to hide scruffy bits.

I met up with the other Lolitas at the Tempo tea shop, for some bubble tea, and then we walked up to the cathedral. I didn't realise how far the cathedral was from the tea-shop, and made the mistake of changing into my high heels at the tea-shop, and struggling to keep up with the group as I'm a) not supposed to walk in high heels because of my ankle injury, b) not exactly steady on high heels anyway because I'm dyspraxic and clumsy and c) it was roasting outdoors and I was overheating in my clothes. Now I know that there's a steep hill up to the cathedral, I won't be doing that again! I put my trainers back on to wander around the cathedral, because it is uneven paving and there are lots of stepped sections, etc. 

The Lolita group outside the cathedral, photographed by Meshya.
I'm wearing comfortable but ugly trainers, but hiding them behind my bag!

The cathedral itself is really stunning. It's a medieval cathedral, but it still has an active congregation. It's the cathedral of St. Mungo, who is said to be buried there, known fully as St. Kentigern (He's Cynderyn in Welsh). 'Mungo' is actually an affectionate nickname with its derivation in an earlier British language (I've read conflicting articles as to which one), apparently meaning 'dear one'. St. Mungo/Kentigern is the patron saint of Glasgow. 

[Random Harry Potter musing aside: There's a large and rather old hospital (it was opened in the 1790's) near St. Mungo's Cathedral, currently with a rather grand and ornate stone building from 1914 dominating the local area - I do wonder if the combination of the two were the inspiration for St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical maladies, especially as J.K Rowling lives in Scotland, but in Edinburgh, not Glasgow.]

The cathedral does have a few stained glass windows, but much less than I expected. I don't actually know why, but if I had been on the guided tour, that would have been one of the questions that I would have asked. I noticed that a lot of the stained glass was stylistically 20thC and had a lot of beautiful greens, blues and purples, especially one which I think might be the Millennium Window (I didn't get a good photograph, unfortunately), and I'd guess made in the late 1990s to celebrate the then-upcoming turn of the millennium. The cathedral was spared much of the more destructive aspects of the reformation because the local population stepped in to defend it, but maybe the windows were still smashed? - I do not know. According to the unofficial cathedral ::website::, the decision to put in stained glass was made in 1856, but it doesn't say why there wasn't stained glass previous to that, when in most other medieval cathedrals, stained glass was introduced centuries before, often right from the start, and one of the benefits of the Gothic style is how the arrangement of space and fenestration work really well with stained glass (I wrote a mini-dissertation for one of my graded units on this sort of thing last year...). 

These windows included stained glass, but my camera blew it out too bright.

Another thing I noticed about the cathedral is that it has a relatively cohesive design overall, and doesn't look like the sort of cathedral built in a lot of disjunct Gothic/Gothic-related styles in many phases over many centuries (eg. Canterbury Cathedral), but more like it was built mostly to one design, even if there's different ceiling designs in the main nave and the choir. It has quite a harmonious and balanced building because of this - no mismatched towers (like the basilica-cathedral of St. Denis in Paris)  or Romanesque arches beside late Gothic tracery, no buckled columns (like Salisbury Cathedral) or much later additions in Baroque or other Neo-Classically derived styles mixed in, no awkward 20th or 21stC modern elements stuck on.

It's a very large and long building, and I don't think ALL of it was built at once, but it is remarkably united and singular building considering its age, and that it was built between 1136 and 1197, which is not as long as some cathedrals and basilicas, but still more than 60 years. It's on a straightforward linear floor-plan, with one extension off-centre rather than a cruciform transept, and these two (the Blackadder Crypt and its above ground chapel are aligned with the south transept, and the boiler wing is off centre) are the only bits that seem outside of the original design - the sacristy/chapter house while not part of the main hall-shape building, does seem like at least a very old addition, and maybe part of the original design, or of the original construction phases. I've seen a floor-plan, and been to the building, and these are my educated guesses on the history - it's not something I've really researched, nor did I get a chance to ask a guide. I've got to go back there, with a note-book, and get some more information!

Pews with fabulous Gothic arches and trefoil designs.

There's a lot of stunning carved wooden furniture in the cathedral - pews, choir stalls, and things that can't really be called 'furniture' like the organ loft and the great pipe-organ itself (which I was privileged to hear played!). The interior is impressively Gothic - I guess some of the wooden bits are Victorian-era, probably Gothic Revival, but I guess in a building like that, it's less of a revival, and more of a continuation of an ongoing tradition of ecclesiastical art and architecture.

Memorial with helm, shield and sword

There are a few graves and memorials within the cathedral itself, too. I tried to photograph many of them, but the photographs did not come out well. One that did, however, was  a grave with an effigy of the person's armour rather than the person themselves, complete with ornate helm and sword. Looking at the date, it was more symbolic of knightly things than something they would have worn in battle, as the grave is much later than the styling of the armour displayed, but it's still a rather beautifully rendered monument.

Vaulted ceilings and concentric details on the arches. Best ceiling photo.

I think the most stunning aspect of the cathedral, however, are the vaulted ceilings. These vaults are structural, not just aesthetic, and are based around intersecting Gothic arches. I took an awful lot of ceiling photographs, but it was quite hard to get good ones on just my phone - I don't have the old HTC with the 'potato camera' but my Samsung is an older model, and it struggles to get pictures that are crisp and aren't grainy (and slightly off-focus) in low light levels - at least with the standard camera app; I've downloaded Lightroom now, and I might be able to get better shots by having more control over the settings.

I took a LOT of ceiling pictures but most were terrible. This one was passable

I actually got separated from the rest of the group because I got distracted by taking photos of the ceiling. When I looked down, everyone was gone! A French tour guide said what I thought was "sur les arbres" so I went out to the trees by the entrance to look for the rest of the Lolita group, but they weren't there. In retrospect, I think she might have actually said "sur les arches" and I misheard because the Cathedral is echoey and it was quite busy in there, as they'd actually gone to the crypt - under the arches. One of the group found me, as apparently the French tour guide had run into the rest of the group, too, and told them where I was! After we were all reunited in the crypt, I changed into my high heels again for a photo by a grand candelabra.

Photograph by Meshya. Very tall candelabra.

As we left the crypt, the choir had got into full swing of their rehearsals. I'm not sure which choir it was - most of the choristers looked the usual student age, so I'm wondering if they were a university/conservatoire choir, and there was a TV crew setting up around them. They were absolutely amazing! It was Renaissance style polyphonic church music, but with the organ accompanying, and it was something really special. Hearing them was truly wonderful, and coming up out of the crypt to emerge into this sound, with the two big banks of organ pipes flanking on either side, it was something mesmerising.

Byzantine-looking mausoleum and many monuments,
photographed by me, from the bridge, on my previous visit to the Necropolis

After visiting the crypt, we concluded our visit to the cathedral, and crossed the bridge over the road, to the necropolis hill nearby. Glasgow Necropolis is somewhere I have visited before, but last time around, not many of my photographs came out, so this time I tried to take a few more. The last time I was there, the weather was hazy and dull, very overcast, and so my photographs were all very drear - I deliberately accentuated this with the use of black and white. Scotland is famous for its 'dreich' weather, but it can actually be brighter and quite sunny, so all the photographs from this trip to the necropolis are full colour with bright blue skies! I thought I'd share the ones from the last time, too, though, because I'm a cliché and I appreciate the gloomy aesthetic. 

Another of the previous photographs - grey skies and many monuments.

Neo-Classical mausoleum
Click to expand.

One of my favourite things about the necropolis is that it was functioning for so long that it's a snapshot of changing artistic and architectural movements, and a reflection of changing funereal practices, not to mention the people who were buried and the various circumstances that the choice of monument reflects - those who buried by their next of kin, those with monuments paid for by the members of institutions and societies to which the deceased belonged, those with grand mausoleums, those more simple headstones... A cemetery is a history book encoded in stone and landscaping. I think I could go to the Necropolis a good few times, and with each time, learn more.

The Necropolis is also somewhere I could spend a lot more than a mere hour,  especially with a camera. I really, really wish I had a camera that worked at the moment - my cheap 'point and click' camera died (it had death spasms, with the shutter and zoom mechanism suddenly going through some random glitching motions and then breaking, before it expired) and the Canon camera I have on extended loan has trouble with batteries and charging... I just have my phone at the moment, and while the photographs are not terrible, but they could be so much better quality. A new camera is something I will have to invest in when I get a job!

I was trailing behind the group, photographing the monuments, but the group
are very aesthetic from behind, so that wasn't too bad! Note monument styles.

The Necropolis is also interesting because it also shows a lot of monuments that are both historical now, and were historically inspired when they were made, harking back to ancient Rome and Greece, ancient Egypt, Byzantium, and even a few with Celtic crosses, representing a late Victorian-era Celtic Revival. Plenty of Gothic Revival monuments, too, but interestingly, much fewer than at Inverness' own necropolis at Tomnahurich. Obelisks, and Classically inspired designs seemed most popular, partly because many are older, but also I think out of stylistic choice. I do personally think that there's something about the angular geometry and severity of some variations of the Neo-Classical that is severe and sober, perfect for sombre memorials.

An angel perched in stone. Photo by myself.

There were some figurative monuments, some with a statue of the deceased, some, like the one above, with angels. I quite like this contemplative angel - the plinth is huge and solid, and many of the neighbouring monuments are stones of similar forms, so it almost looks like an angel just landed there, on top of the stone, which I guess was the idea.

Graves through the trees. Photograph by myself.

The landscaping of the Necropolis is really quite park-like - apart from the paths and terraces, there are a lot of flowers and trees, and a lot of grass! One of the reasons I love graveyards (I wrote a whole blog on the subject ::here::). The cherry blossoms were in bloom - I like cherry blossoms in graveyards, because I think of Japanese sakura blossoms, and how they can symbolise transience, which is very fitting for a graveyard. There were also plenty of bluebells. Spring happens later in Scotland than in England, I've noticed, even later where I am. 

Lolita group participant in the shade beneath a cherry tree. Photo by me.

The Lolita group, myself included, took a lot of outfit photos and pictures of each other. While they took photos by some of the graves, I wandered off, not too far because I was back in my high heels and I am precarious in them, to look for interesting graves and vistas. I actually brought my cane with me, both to stabilise myself while wearing heels, and to help me walk once I had taken them off because wearing heels all day makes my ankles pretty sore indeed.

Lou Graves ( @gravelvet on Instagram) took this.
I looked pretty aesthetic while wandering off! 

I spotted a set of steps by some trees that were a good spot to get a tiered group photo so everyone could be seen behind everyone else, but unfortunately, in my high heels I was one of the tallest members of the group, so I needed to stand right at the top of the stairs! I was quite unsteady while trying to walk up the stairs, and getting back down was even trickier. Sometimes my eye for what might look good exceeds my good sense. 

LaFantome, who was the organiser of our meet-up. Photo by me. 

On the way down the Necropolis hill, I spotted a really pretty Gothic Revival monument. I don't often like posing with gravestones (and I've explained why in the past), but this time I wanted a picture of me with a monument because I just wanted a memento of having been to what is probably my favourite monument in the whole Necropolis - a very elaborate Gothic Revival monument with ivy growing up it. It's got so many of my favourite elements of the Gothic style - having a Gothic arch within a steep triangular gable, pinnacles, and having a screen of detached tracery. 

Me standing in front of my favourite monument, photo by

After the event, the others went to The Winged Ox, a restaurant in a converted church, but I needed to get back to the bus station for my coach home again, so I walked back to the bus station - getting some sushi en route. 

Sunset from the coach window

Overall, I had a very enjoyable time. Next time I will try and find some elegant footwear that isn't heeled and is comfortable but pretty, because swapping between trainers and high heels was just holding the rest of the group up each time, and got pretty annoying for me, let alone everyone else. The 'Tea Party' style flat shoes common in Lolita tend to look better with Sweet styles, and Gothic Lolita is usually worn with chunky high heels, so I'm struggling to think of a flat alternative that will still look elegant, especially as I have big size EU 42/UK8 feet! Any suggestions from Lolitas are welcome.

I definitely want to go back to Glasgow Cathedral, especially to do a guided tour - although perhaps I'd annoy the tour guide as I'd have a LOT of questions about the building! I also want to go back there with a proper camera to capture some better quality shots of the Cathedral's interior, especially the vaulted ceilings and the stained glass windows.