Scottish "park" walls

Started by pierre the shy, 04 February 2016, 09:20:25 AM

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d_Guy

Sleep with clean hands ...

Fenton

BBC for me. I still play Elite on it occasionally... I had an Atari ST after that
If I were creating Pendraken I wouldn't mess about with Romans and  Mongols  I would have started with Centurions , eight o'clock, Day One!

clibinarium

I had a spectrum for a long time and felt like I'd been jipped, it had been my Dad's, and I really envied my friends with c64s (then in due course Amigas, STs etc). I eventually got a c64 and spurned the speccy.
I now see the spectrum's limited but colourful graphics as beautiful, and the c64's odd rectangular pixels and weird washed out colours as unappealing. By chance I happened to take a rare day off today and spent it loading Spectrum games on to my 3DS; they look great on that small screen. Gaming has moved on a lot since, but they are still fun to play for 15 minute chunks.

d_Guy

Well not to waller too much in nostalgia BUT my favorite C64 game was "raid on Bungling Bay" .
Sleep with clean hands ...

Ithoriel

07 February 2016, 04:12:13 AM #34 Last Edit: 07 February 2016, 04:14:06 AM by Ithoriel
ZX80, then ZX81 with 1K RAM pack, then Spectrum with "dead squid" keyboard replaced by a proper one and a micro-tape drive for extra storage, then Amstrad CPC 464, an Amstrad CPC 6128 and finally on to real PCs and the, then cutting edge, 486 DX-2 processor!

"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose"* - Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr


* The more things change the more they stay the same :)


I too have fond memories of Raid on Bungling Bay, played on a friends C64, Guy.
There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

pierre the shy

Well this thread appears to have been well and truely hijacked - from drystone Scots boundry wallls to 1980's computers in under a page?!?  :ar!

Sometimes I used to lie awake at night dreaming about owning a 486 DX-2 PC......but you try telling the young people of today that and they won't believe you  :o
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
we are not now that strength which in old days
moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.

fsn


There are also small stone enclosures used for sheep pens.

(Spectrum ZX)
Lord Oik of Runcorn (You may refer to me as Milord Oik)

Oik of the Year 2013, 2014; Prize for originality and 'having a go, bless him', 2015
3 votes in the 2016 Painting Competition!; 2017-2019 The Wilderness years
Oik of the Year 2020; 7 votes in the 2021 Painting Competition
11 votes in the 2022 Painting Competition (Double figures!)
2023 - the year of Gerald:
2024 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!

FierceKitty

Actually, I've been meditating a few stone sheepfolds like that as terrain features. How about a few shepherd figures?
I don't drink coffee to wake up. I wake up to drink coffee.

Techno

Gang......

I've had a very nice (Not grumpy in any way)  :) request, to 'split this topic' as we seem to have veered off a really interesting thread regarding the Scottish Park Walls, to one which is now also involved with old 'computers'.....Also a very interesting discussion.  :)

Could we (for the moment, at least) keep this thread to 'the walls'....And if necessary start a new thread for the old computers ?

I CAN split threads....(Apparently....I've got a button.) .....But blank knows what will happen, if I try this before Leon is back.

(If you want me to delete or modify a post you've typed out......NO PROBLEM !  ;)..........But I'm not sure what will happen if I start trying 'splitting' threads.  X_X)

Cheers - Phil


clibinarium

I confess, it was me. I really would like a thread about computers, but don't want to continue to hijack this topic. I'll go off and start that thread then!

http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,13608.msg190879/topicseen.html#msg190879

fsn

Quote from: Techno on 07 February 2016, 12:10:13 PM
I CAN split threads....

And hairs. And doubtless hares.

I had a mate who could direct two streams of urine ... yes, he could split pees.
Lord Oik of Runcorn (You may refer to me as Milord Oik)

Oik of the Year 2013, 2014; Prize for originality and 'having a go, bless him', 2015
3 votes in the 2016 Painting Competition!; 2017-2019 The Wilderness years
Oik of the Year 2020; 7 votes in the 2021 Painting Competition
11 votes in the 2022 Painting Competition (Double figures!)
2023 - the year of Gerald:
2024 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!

d_Guy

Quote from: fsn on 07 February 2016, 12:51:31 PM

I had a mate who could direct two streams of urine ... yes, he could split pees.
;D

But to return the thread to walls (and not a new topic on micturation - which we could have slipped to earlier BTW)

In your picture of sheep enclosures (with roofless cottages behind) to what period would these date?
I had read John Prebble's The Highland Clearances years ago and have rooted in my mind that there is an explosion in building sheep pens after 1745. But I may also conflate Irish history with this. Adding to my confusion I am not overly clear as to precisely what is highland and what is not.

Quote from: WeeWars on 05 February 2016, 12:38:17 PM
For wargaming purposes I would suggest two types of wall: the lowly dry-stone type designed to contain animals and the gentrified high stone wall designed to keep people out.

Would it be correct to use the lowly dry-stone wall through-out Scotland in the seventeenth century?
Would the high stone privacy wall exist outside of the lowland cities in the same time period?
Sleep with clean hands ...

fsn

I can only talk for my own islands. There, the houses seem to have been that way for centuries. My own is supposed to date from the C15.

There are no trees on the islands, so stone dykes are the only option.   
Lord Oik of Runcorn (You may refer to me as Milord Oik)

Oik of the Year 2013, 2014; Prize for originality and 'having a go, bless him', 2015
3 votes in the 2016 Painting Competition!; 2017-2019 The Wilderness years
Oik of the Year 2020; 7 votes in the 2021 Painting Competition
11 votes in the 2022 Painting Competition (Double figures!)
2023 - the year of Gerald:
2024 Painting Competition - Runner-Up!

Sunray

Stone walls occur where you have a ready supply of the raw material in the soil.  This is pretty much all of Scotland.   The Highland clearances stimulated by the fact that sheep and game were more profitable than people .  This meant a lot less enclosed plots.  By contrast the Lowlands were to see the classical agrarian revolution in modern farming methods.  By the Victorian  era, the books and instruction on farming had changed the language.  Scottish farmers generally dropped the term 'perk' and began to talk about fields.  

Ireland had a different tale.  There were no clearances and little emigration apart from Protestant Ulster.  The 19th century population exploded.  The staple diet was the potato.  Hence the human tragedy on a biblical scale when the crop failed.  

d_Guy

Quote from: fsn on 07 February 2016, 04:24:26 PM
I can only talk for my own islands. There, the houses seem to have been that way for centuries. My own is supposed to date from the C15.

There are no trees on the islands, so stone dykes are the only option.   

Thanks.  I have never been to to the Highlands and Islands - only the lowlands around the Forth littorial and up toward Aberdeen a few times.
Have been to Aran islands (off Gaway in the Republic of Ireland) and they are much as you describe. I know they are trying re-forest areas of Scotland and trying to figure out what the Highlands looked like in 17th c.

Incidentally since you are noted for throwing curveballs that are hard to hit - if you were, in fact,  born it the house you suggested - your homeland is starkly beautiful!
Sleep with clean hands ...