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Hilltop Monuments

@totheobelisk.bsky.social

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Occasional posts by @[email protected] recording visits to #hilltopmonuments and other curiosities in high, remote or unexpected places, mostly in Scotland. Formerly on the other place @totheobelisk.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 20d

All the locations featured on this account are on this Google Map ⬇️, including:
📷 an image of each monument or site
🔗 a link to the relevant post/thread.
www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/e...

Hilltop monuments and other curiosities - Google My Maps

Sites featured on the Twitter microblog @totheobelisk (and now at @totheobelisk.bsky.social): monuments and other curiosities in high, remote or unexpected places, mostly in Scotland

www.google.com

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 15h

Nevertheless, the park is a distinctive and attractive greenspace and well worth seeking out.

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 15h

It's a robust bit of creative landscaping and still in pretty good shape but the absence of its animating waterfalls lends the site a somewhat forgotten feel - amplified by the faded mural on an adjacent gable end.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 15h

... though the segmented pyramid has a Mesoamerican look to it. A spiral stair leads to a viewing platform.

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 15h

Lighting completed the effect - it's perhap these paper lantern-like lamps that led to the park being known locally - so I've heard - as 'the Chinese Gardens'...

Looking down from the pyramid viewing platform to the now dry rocky cascades and their attendant paper-lantern-like lights.

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 15h

The landscape artwork, titled Waterworks, was designed by German artist Dieter Magnus as a legacy of Glasgow's year as European City of Culture in 1990. Opening in 1991, water once cascaded from the pyramid over a series of rocky channels and terraces below.

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 15h

The Garnethill Pyramid.
Part of a 35-year old artwork that fills much of Garnethill Park, a small greenspace north of Glasgow city centre, and close to Glasgow School of Art.
Thread 🧵

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 20d

All the locations featured on this account are on this Google Map ⬇️, including:
📷 an image of each monument or site
🔗 a link to the relevant post/thread.
www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/e...

Hilltop monuments and other curiosities - Google My Maps

Sites featured on the Twitter microblog @totheobelisk (and now at @totheobelisk.bsky.social): monuments and other curiosities in high, remote or unexpected places, mostly in Scotland

www.google.com

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 20d

The roof is not entirely gone yet and some wood panelling remains around the lancet windows on the first floor.

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 20d

...while its front overlooks a largely inaccessible field.

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 20d

At the time, it was likely to have been visible from the nearby road, but today, it's almost completely obscured by the woodland along the little brook running between them...

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 20d

Receding into a band of woodland at the edge of a field near Kirknewton, West Lothian, the folly was apparently erected by one William Pagan sometime after the famous battle in 1815.

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · 20d

A hidden gem this attractive Gothic tower, built to commemorate Wellington's victory at Waterloo.
Thread 🧵

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

It’s also possible Nelson’s monument would have been visible from here at the time, though the current tree cover on the high ground between them obscures it now. (At least, I couldn't spot either monument from the other's location, no matter how hard I squinted!)

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

The view from the cross would have been impressive when it was put up but is now largely obscured by trees and the monument is only visible from the plateau behind.

Looking towards the Wellington monument from Eagle Rock, a large boulder on the plateau between Blackstone Edge and Baslow Edge. The cross is visible against the dark green trees in the centre of the image.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

An inscription on the arms of the cross carries the dedication to Wellington and records that it was erected by Wrench. The pedestal is also inscribed with what appear to be the dates of one D.L.H. though it’s hard to read – and these look like a later addition.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

The monument was erected at the behest of the local doctor, one E M Wrench, who’d been an army surgeon in the Crimea and during the Indian Mutiny, and who felt that Wellington’s military achievements merited a memorial in line with that of Admiral Nelson nearby.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

The second monument was erected in 1866 in a similarly precipitous location on nearby Blackstone Edge. The stone cross commemorates Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who had died in 1852.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

On the plateau just behind sit a distinctive trio of rock formations, each inscribed with names of ships from Nelson’s navy: Victory, Defiance and Royal Soverin (sic).

The first of 'The Three Ships' gritstone boulders on the plateau of Birched Edge, just behind the Nelson monument. VICTORY, the name of Nelson's own ship is inscribed on the vertical rock face.

The central of the Three Ships boulders carries the name DEFIANCE, which took part in the Battle of Trafalgar where she was described as 'the fastest 74-gun ship in the British fleet'.

The third of the Three Ships boulders is etched ROYAL SOVERIN. Royal Sovereign served as the flagship of Admiral Collingwood at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 Oct 1805, leading one column of ships whilst Victory led the other. It was the first ship to engage the enemy. Collingwood commanded the fleet during the latter part of the battle following Nelson's death.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

It stands on the edge of the rocky escarpment called Birchen Edge, a spot popular with climbers.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

The earliest, commemorating Nelson, was erected in 1810, five years after his death at Trafalgar, and takes the unusual form of an obelisk-like tapering column, about 10 feet high – carved from a single piece of the local gritstone – topped with a stone ball.

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 9

Two #HilltopMonuments to heroes of the Napoleonic Wars, a mile apart, near Bakewell in Derbyshire’s Peak District. Modest in scale and not highly visible from a distance, they are interesting curiosities, nonetheless.
(Thread 🧵)

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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 8

Stone inscribed with lines from a 2007 poem by local poet Judi Hill extolling her love of Northumberland. Created by sculptor Luke Batchelor in 2024, the stone sits on Bracken Hill, overlooking the beach at Alnmouth.
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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 8

It’s a perfect love
Large, bold, generous, expansive, a little wild.
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Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 7

In the 1860s, there was a plan to re-consecrate Church Hill as a burial ground and a mortuary chapel in Romanesque style was built at its foot, funded by public subscription. The plans appear to have fallen through and today the chapel is a roofless ruin.

Hilltop Monuments @totheobelisk.bsky.social · Aug 7

Who erected the elegant wooden cross and how long it’s been here, I don’t know. But it seems hard to imagine the hill without it.