The worth of copper

The Whitadder

Spring is most definitely here. The arctic terns have returned from their sojourn in the Antarctic and the swallows are back from wintering in Africa. We think we are travellers!

It was time for the annual memorial walk for an old friend, six years gone. Her favourite walk was from the Whitadder river, across the suspension bridge, along the blackthorn-lined path to the accompaniment of chaffinch song, the piping of great tits and, if we are lucky, the cry of the yaffle, the green woodpecker, then up the steep slope to Edin's Hall Broch.

Blackthorn path

Edin's Hall broch

The broch is an archaeological oddity, situated far south of the broch-building areas of northern Scotland and, apparently, too big in area to have had very high walls.

It seems to date from the time between the two Roman occupations of Southern Scotland after 100 A.D. when Pax Romana meant that defence was less of a necessity. It sits within the remains of an earlier prehistoric fort and settlement.

There are copper mines on the banks of the Whitadder that were worked up until the eighteenth or even nineteenth centuries. A copper ingot was found within the broch so, in the Bronze and Iron Ages, the builders of the broch would have been rich from their local monopoly of a valuable commodity. Maybe the structure was the equivalent of the mansions of the nineteenth century coal-mine owners or the private jets to the estates of oil-barons, a display of wealth. 

Mine workings to be found in the banks of the river 

Tunnels for extracting the copper

Green coppery stone

A more demanding clamber was undertaken along the steep banks above the river to find the remains of the old workings then an easier walk back along the old pack-horse path finished off a great day's outing.

Wood anemones and dog violets above the mines

Gold is for the mistress - silver for the maid

Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade

Good said the Baron sitting in his hall

But Iron -Cold Iron - is the master of them all

R. Kipling