2008-2009
A series of works from time spent on the east coast of the Cowal peninsula.
Three lines of communication; the waterway of the Clyde estuary, the shore road, and the 1860’s telegraph line all ran together, following the coastal edge down to Ardyne Point.
In the 1970’s, Ardyne Point was overlaid with a crisp exoskeleton of concrete to create a short-lived manufacturing yard for concrete based oil drilling platforms. The coastal erosion which once exposed a burial cist on the Bute facing side of Ardyne, is in the process of scouring out and undermining the yard’s harbours wherever it finds weak points.
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The OS map of 140 years ago shows the electric telegraph line following the shore road down to Ardyne. Only a little earlier, around 200 years ago, the aim of establishing a complete road from Dunoon to Ardyne was still only at the proposal stage. So before that, it was boats and packhorses that carried people with their goods, and their news, up and down the coast.
Along the Clyde coastline of Cowal these three lines of communication ran alongside each other, sometimes squeezed so closely by geological features that they touched or crossed over each other. And these lines have been subtly redrawn in places, as the shoreline has been lost to, or won back from, the firth.
ardyne beach : concrete panels