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Between a Broch and a Hard Place - Caithness Broch Project - Episode 11
700 Plays4 years ago
What time is it? It’s time to Broch! In this episode I speak to Iain Maclean and Kenneth McIlroy of the Caithness Broch Project about building a Neolithic monument, the beginnings of the project and whether you should play music inside a Broch. Find out about the history of this ancient building structure and what the future is in the Caithness area in Scotland.
If you want to find out more you can head on over to their website or follow them on Twitter and Facebook
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Transcript
Introduction to Modern Myth Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:50
Speaker
Hello
Exploring Brochs in Caithness
00:00:51
Speaker
and welcome to this episode of Modern Myth. This is Tristan, the anarchiologist, speaking once again with you all. Obviously it's a difficult time at the moment for everybody, but we're getting through it, and in order to make everybody's lives a little brighter, I've decided to go as north as I can in Scotland, to the wonderful world of Caithness. And Caithness is probably very famous now, along archaeological circles, for one thing, for one project.
00:01:20
Speaker
And to talk about being between a brock and a hard place, I have the wonderful Kenneth and Ian here from the Kettner Sprott project to talk about building a brock. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on to the show.
00:01:36
Speaker
Hello. Not a problem. It's an honour. So I'm just wondering, and obviously some of my listeners are probably not familiar with what a brock is. So Ian, I'm going to pass it to you first. Could you describe to the listeners, what is a brock? Well, a brock is basically a large dry stone tower. Some people, some archaeologists have described them as basically a roundhouse on steroids. It's a huge 20 metre across
00:02:05
Speaker
up to 13 metres high, dry stone construction. And these were prevalent throughout the north of Scotland, particularly the islands and Caithas and Sutherland throughout the Iron Age. So it's hard to say, I mean, there's modern interpretations of buildings where we have a fire station and that's for the fire service and a house is for living in. But a brooch is a strange kind of structure because it seems to be the catch-all structure of the Iron Age where
00:02:35
Speaker
lots of different activities are going on inside Brox. There's domestic activities, iron working, potry making, storage of grains and food. So it really is the castle of the Iron Age, if you like. And obviously, you call it the castle of the Iron Age, but it wasn't really a castle as we would understand the word castle. Obviously, it's not got the same kind of connotation, does it?
00:03:04
Speaker
No, it's not primarily a defensive structure, although a lot of people have looked at Brocks and thought they must have had a military application because of these huge stone towers that look like they've got a defensive purpose. But really,
Personal Experiences with Brochs
00:03:19
Speaker
it's more of a homestead with aspects of defense to it, you could say. Yeah. So Kenneth, I want to actually draw to you. When was the first time that you saw a Brock in person?
00:03:34
Speaker
It's a good question. I don't think I can, I can truthfully answer that because I may or may not have been taken around such sites as a child. I think that's how I kind of first developed my interest in archaeology and history was, was by taking to, taking around the places by my dad, my mum and my dad actually, to the likes of campster cairns and things like that. So I may have seen one as a child and not remember it, but I think probably the one that sticks in my head sort of visiting for the first time would be Nybster
00:04:04
Speaker
which I helped excavate in 2011. So not only did I see a brock, I kind of saw it kind of unshod, if you like. I hope they're being sort of stripped away of all the turf and all the kind of bushes and everything that might obscure a brock normally and make it a little bit more impressive. So it's probably sometime before 2011, but certainly when I did my first excavation there in Nybster Broch in Caithness,
00:04:32
Speaker
I was really impressed, I think, with just the extent of the stonework of the buildings and of the kind of activity that would have gone on there as well. So was it that kind of feeling that inspired the Kate Nesbrock project or how did the Kate Nesbrock project come together? What happened to form that? Well, Ian formed our Facebook page in 2000
00:05:02
Speaker
and it might be in 2012, even earlier perhaps. And before this, he had always had the sort of idea to build a brooch encateness as a means of encouraging growth and prosperity in the region. And that's especially important given that Dunry, the main employer of the area, is due to close down in potentially as early as 2045. And that was kind of the catalyst for
00:05:32
Speaker
the creation of the project. And so in 2013, the Facebook page was created and I just was keen on this idea, I was keen on archaeology, but also keen on ensuring that Caithness had a means to sustain itself and support itself over the next few generations. And so
Tourism and Cultural Identity in Caithness
00:05:51
Speaker
I thought that this was a really good idea and I offered my services kind of to Ian. And from then on, we've done a lot of things actually.
00:06:01
Speaker
I'm just wondering, Ian, was there a kind of like a vision and a broch angel came down from the heavens and you woke up the next morning, threw the door open and said, I need to make a Facebook page. What was going through your head at the time when you, what was the catalyst to that, you know? I mean, at the time, it is a kind of a master project and a culmination of many ideas that all came together at one kind of time.
00:06:31
Speaker
But I'd been working in Orkney and I'd spent a lot of time in the islands. I was quite resentful to be honest with you. A lot of my friends had moved away and I was stuck on these islands. And what happened at the time was I'd just seen lots and lots of tourists coming there. And I thought, I'm, I'm sitting here and I'm a bit annoyed that I'm stuck on these islands, but these people have come from all around the world to come and visit Orkney. And then I was thinking more about what goes on in Caithness that the tourists tends to just drive right through Caithness to go to Orkney. And I thought, well,
00:06:59
Speaker
What is it that Orkney has that Caithness doesn't have? Why do people pass through Caithness to go to Orkney all the time to see the just exact same things? Because if you know anything about Caithness archaeology, it's got the exact same things to offer as what Orkney does, you know? So it kind of came upon me. I thought, what Caithness needs to do is offer something bigger, better and better than what's on offer in Caithness.
00:07:23
Speaker
and then what's on offer in Orkney. And the only way to do that really is to recreate the archaeology so that people go to Orkney, they look around, they see standing stones and ruins of Brochs, but then Catherines says, on your way back through the county, why don't you come and see a Broch fully rebuilt? And that that would be a spectacular attraction that would entice people to come to Catherines. It wasn't really just that, I kind of had a feeling that
00:07:52
Speaker
Caithness lacks a sense of cultural identity whilst areas like Shetland have got their Vikings and Orkney's got their standing stones and the west coast has got the mountains. It's like, what has Caithness got to offer? What is our sense of cultural identity? What is it? What's the remaining thing that people have in their minds once they've visited Caithness? And at the moment, it has very much been known for Dunnery only. That as Ken says, Dunnery is being decommissioned.
00:08:19
Speaker
So in a few years' time, Caithness will really have to reinvent its sense of cultural identity. The hope was that by rebuilding a broch and creating an iconic tourist attraction, that that would reinstall a sense of cultural identity because Caithness has more brochs than anywhere else in Scotland. So I'd like to think it's like the home of the broch.
00:08:39
Speaker
And the state of research into Brochs in Scotland in general, what does that look like? Are Brochs well studied? Or do we know a lot about them? Or is it actually something that's not that well studied? I think Brochs actually, in terms of the Iron Age in Scotland, I was about to say the UK there, but of course there's no Brochs anywhere else other than Scotland. But the Iron Age in general, I think Brochs have
00:09:09
Speaker
I managed to amass quite a lot of academic interest and writing and understanding. And this stretch is way, way back to sort of antiquarian times as well, when you had a real flurry of activity, especially in Caithness, when you had the likes of Joseph Anderson, Tress Barrie, John Nicholson, and Alexander Reind as well, who all excavated or were interested in Brookes. And this has kind of continued, I think it maybe weaned a little bit,
00:09:39
Speaker
throughout the middle of the 20th century. But even there were people like Horace Fairhouse who came and excavated Crosskirk Brock in the 70s. There were other brooks in the 40s. I can't quite remember the name of the person who excavated Skittinbroke, for example. And then even through the 21st century, we have people like Martin Carruthers excavating brooks in Orkney. We have Clack Toll. We have AOC archaeology investigations.
00:10:07
Speaker
into into Baroque structures as well as elsewhere in Scotland too. So I think that Baroques are relatively well researched but I think there's always room for further to be more and I think
Conservation and Reconstruction Efforts
00:10:20
Speaker
that's you know people want to see more as well people want to join the excavations and I think there's just so much that we don't quite know about Baroques that they certainly merit further investigation. Yeah I think Ken's got hit the nail on the head and saying that
00:10:36
Speaker
Brochs have been done to death really. I don't think there's a structure, historic structure that's been investigated as much as a Broch. But what seems to be lacking in the research of Brochs is not the excavation of more Brochs, it's to synthesise all the data that's actually been found over these years into one. I think it's that Broch research kind of lacks a solid picture. If I say Romans, then straight away you get a Roman in your mind. But when I say Broch, there's so many
00:11:07
Speaker
unanswered questions and there's not a great picture of that going forward. So I think what really needs to happen now is to synthesise all that that's been understood about this into one picture and that's what the Brock project really hopes to do is to look at all the different areas of research whether it's in foodstuffs or structural things and to put it all together into an image of what irony's life was really like. I think it's really at one of the great levelers of archaeology too Brock's because
00:11:35
Speaker
Christine McLagan was one of Scotland's first archaeologists who was really interested in brocks in the Stirlingshire area as well to create models of brocks and drawings and wrote extensively on the subject. So they are, you know, historically, they've been a real interesting point of Scottish archaeology.
00:11:55
Speaker
I'm just wondering, obviously, the Cathars project has done a lot of things in the last number of years, and you've hit quite a few milestones. What do you think the kind of the last couple of years, what's been the kind of the biggest celebrations that you've had with the project? What are the big, biggest steps forward? Well, I would say that recently we've just about completed a conservation of Oustilbroch, and that's been a £180,000 project.
00:12:25
Speaker
We had done community archaeology projects and small conservation jobs and other broths, but this was our first foray into big projects with bigger figures on them. And I'll show you, you'll appreciate that when we started this, neither of us were archaeologists. So I think it's a reasonable milestone for us to get to the point of working on projects that are so big.
00:12:52
Speaker
especially as Ousdale Brock is probably Keithness's best preserved Brock and we can affix that up and made it safe for public access and put a path in down to it. It's all part of the steps or process that the Brock Project's got to take to get to our end goal. Nothing we've done has been a fluke or an accident. Everything we've done has been small steps towards a bigger goal. You don't just walk into the office of funders and say,
00:13:21
Speaker
I've got a great idea. Give us a million pounds. You really got to start with some small projects and work your way up to it. So I'd like to think that our Ousdale project has been kind of icing on the cake in terms of steps up to those levels of funding that we need to build abroad.
00:13:38
Speaker
So obviously there are a number of brochs in the Caithness area. Are brochs contemporaneous with each other or are they signs of like somebody wanted to build a broch in this century and then somebody else wanted to build another one close to it in another century? What do we actually know about how these brochs link to each other? I mean, when you say there's a lot of brochs in Caithness, what does that actually mean? How much is a lot of brochs?
00:14:09
Speaker
Well, there's about 200 brooks and cave nests, but there's maybe a falsity in believing that that means there was 200 brooks occupied at any given time, or that there even is exactly 200 brooks. There's a lot of structures out there that fit the pattern of a brook, but haven't been excavated yet. And upon further inspection, there could be complex Atlantic roundhouses or just roundhouses, so they never reached the towering heights of Musa Broch, really.
00:14:37
Speaker
But until these brocks have been excavated and studied properly, we'll never really know what they really are. So it could be a bit misleading to say there's 200 brocks in Caithys. There's 200 structures that could be brocks. And I think looking at those different types of structures, within that you can see a progressing and development of structural design over a longer period of time. So instead of seeing that brocks have been invented and all of a sudden there's 200 built over Caithys in a space of two centuries, you might be looking at
00:15:07
Speaker
some older structures there with the precursor to the brooks basically. And over time, this design has been developed until, obviously, there's more of them, you know? So you might see a few rudimentary structures. And then nearby, find another brook that looks a bit bigger. It doesn't mean that the structures were contemporary with each other. It might show that there's actually the progression and development of the design going on, living in the landscape.
00:15:35
Speaker
And so, it's a Parliament of Isles, it's a gaggle of geese, what is the collective noun for brochs? A devilment. Broch-eye. Broch-eye. And yes, maybe, I feel like I'm giving a bad, but I've just spent about two hours, two and a half hours tweeting everybody a picture of a broch who wanted a picture of a broch on Twitter. And I think I'm done in with brochs right now, actually. Can we talk about crannocks?
00:16:07
Speaker
Well, I do want to kind of get a little bit deeper into what's quite important about these aspects of history that we come in contact with. You know, Kenneth, when you were talking about visiting Brox when you were younger, it seems to be quite very much tied to the landscape.
00:16:35
Speaker
and to the place. What I think generally
00:16:40
Speaker
I think a lot of people care about monumental structures a lot, especially if they're old. And I find it quite interesting of why do you think people are interested in brocks? What is the thing about that monumentality, that kind of shape, the fact that it's still there? What is the draw? Why do people respond to it?
00:17:09
Speaker
really said it there is the monumentality, the size, the kind of impressive scale and scope of these structures. And to think that they're 2000 years old, that people were capable of creating such impressive constructions, you know, long before the introduction of kind of power tools and complex kind of engineering solutions that we have today is just quite spectacular. But I think the other reason is that we don't
00:17:39
Speaker
Although they are present on the landscape and we see them everywhere and we can post as many photographs of them as we like, we still don't really understand what they were used for fundamentally. I think they still hold that kind of mystique and that powerful kind of mysticism about them, given that they are still kind of relatively difficult to interpret, or that they certainly throw up contradictory interpretations
Mystical Significance of Brochs
00:18:06
Speaker
and understandings of what they might have been used for.
00:18:09
Speaker
They're also just quite beautiful, I think, set in the landscape. They seem almost natural. In fact, in many cases, they are mistaken for natural tours or hills. Many people didn't know that a broch was a broch, and they thought it was just a hill as well. But to think that these things were created by people 2,000 plus years ago, and they still exist on the landscape, I think is very touching. And in many ways, Lynx,
00:18:38
Speaker
You know, I think touching back on what Ian said about providing people with a kind of sense of identity, I think archaeology, certainly for me and probably for other people as well, is a really important part of my culture and my identity as someone from Kateness and as someone from Scotland. And we can kind of talk about these things as being emblematic of being Scottish. And I think that's perhaps a kind of rambling answer to your question there, I think Tristan.
00:19:08
Speaker
I think, yeah, certainly, long story short, they're quite mysterious. They're impressive to look at and, you know, above all else, they're Scottish. Yeah, part of what the Brock project wants to do is encourage people to come to KFS and to go out into the landscape and explore. And the fact that we've got 200 broths spread out over the whole county, it means that you can't really go anywhere in the county without coming across a
00:19:31
Speaker
So to encourage people, it's not like we expect people to be obsessed with brocks is what we are. But what we hope to do is to send them on a little mission, a little adventure out there to go and find a brock. But it's not all about just the brock itself. It's about the journey from the car park through the landscape to find the brock. And sometimes that's as rewarding as the brock itself. There's the nature. There's other things on the way. There's castles, cairns, standing stones. So we're trying to use brocks as a tool to get people to open their eyes and explore the county.
00:20:01
Speaker
it wasn't always all just about Brox, it was about trying to get people out into the county and to get to notice other things that you see on the way to on your journey to the Brox, you know? It's really like, I think, no, that that is really what I was looking for was a kind of description of how these Brox fit in with other pieces of heritage on the landscape. Do you think there's perhaps
00:20:27
Speaker
Do you think there's aspects of intangible heritage that are tied to these monuments? Is there a feeling of being inside a brock that you've ever felt yourself? Is there something special about
00:20:42
Speaker
being there, actually, that has a second question attached to it. What is the most complete broch that we have at the moment? Which is the most, like, I understand that some of them are, most of them are ruins, but are there any that are actually quite, still quite well preserved? I mean, I think I'd answer the first part of this question, then I would let Ken answer the second part about the intangible heritage that could be associated with broch. But the most intact broch in Scotland is Musa broch in Shetland.
00:21:12
Speaker
and it's situated on a small island on its own. And for that reason, it was never quarried or destroyed. It remained the same for 2,000 years. So we still have one full intact broch. But it's a bit of a bad example of a broch, really. It's a bit of a peculiar one, because it's a bit like going down the street and taking a dwarf at a house and saying, this is what everyone on the street looks like. Musa broch, the sizes and dimensions are unlike most other brochs. It's a very small,
00:21:41
Speaker
small brook, if you like. So it's a shame that that image of Musa has kind of been ingrained in people's consciousness of what a brook is, because the dimensions are unlike other brooks. But the other two mostly complete examples are Duntelve and Duntroden near Glenelg. And they're not quite as complete as Musa, but they're a better representation of the dimensions and sizes of other brooks in the landscape. And I think I'd like Ken answer the second part of the question about the
00:22:09
Speaker
intangible heritage associated with Brox and I could tell you a couple of stories about the stories that I was doing that don't necessarily relate to the Brox but they are information and heritage that we find out just by studying Brox. I think anything to do with intangible elements of archaeology is viewing dangerously close to archaeological theory there Tristan and that's something I just sat a few days ago and I don't think it went
00:22:37
Speaker
I certainly wouldn't consider myself an archaeological theorist by any means after that exam. But I think, yeah, looking at being in a broch, it is quite an... I'll look and think of it as the word interesting experience, but it is quite a magical experience as well. And you can kind of relate to people back in history who might have associated these areas with theories and trolls and
00:23:07
Speaker
of legends and dark stories things like that so there is they've always held this kind of certain place in popular imagination as just being areas of importance and certainly if you want to look at that for a you know a kind of more analytical way then the Vikings realised this the Vikings when they came to Scotland they reused a lot of say cairnsites and brocksites as areas of or kind of statements of
00:23:36
Speaker
of power by utilising areas or the mounds in the landscape, which people held in some sort of deep regard, you know, they were they were asserting their control because they understood that these places were in some way important to people and they still are. And going to Ian's story of Ousdale, I mean, there's numerous cases of there being burials at Brox as well. For instance, at Castle Hill there was a Viking burial and at Ousdale there was what's known as a
00:24:07
Speaker
a deviant burial and this is a kind of case of a burial which may or may not have been Iron Age but of a kind of a burial is just basically a deviant burial sorry it's just basically any burial that is besides the norm of your standard burial and this burial in particular was buried face down we don't really know why or for what reason they were buried face down but it's not a particularly
00:24:35
Speaker
not quite sure of the word, not a particularly distinguished burial, if you like. It's difficult to say what it could have been used for. It may have been that this person in the community was disliked. It could have been a murderer, a burglar, who knows? We don't really know, but there's certainly some uninterpretable elements to that story. But certainly, that's another story. The fact is that
00:25:06
Speaker
these brooks have held some meaning and some importance to people. And I really liked, I think you might have seen Kenny Brophy's tweet the other day, where he talks about, I believe that prehistory really matters, you know, because it retains a presence tangible and otherwise. And I think, oops, I think essentially that's the answer there, is that we don't really know why these places are important to us, but they are.
00:25:37
Speaker
I don't know if you noticed my response to Kenny's tweets the other day. I saw that as well. We are haunted by the past. I think you said something like that. Yeah, it's Derrida's kind of hauntology. It's this idea that the past is not a passive subject in the present.
00:25:54
Speaker
It's actually an active agent in creating the future through the present. I think we're constantly flitting between all these three things, because I think there's a bit of a pseudo-psychosis of imagining yourself in that past, but never being able to capture that past in itself. This is why I think... Very phenomenological there. That's a word I...
00:26:24
Speaker
a word I have learned in my archaeology. So there we go. I love that kind of stuff. I love the almost spiritual aspect of phenomenology and experience because I think there's a problem with heritage as it currently is communicated to the public that a lot of people
00:26:48
Speaker
it feels very superficial at times and it feels like heritage is this nice cute little thing that people do and you know, oh I'm gonna go and see this lovely thing and that's it. And at the end of the day you've got your culture, you've obtained your culture quota and
00:27:07
Speaker
you're going to come home and then you're going to stick the footy on. You're going to order fish and chips. And, you know, that it's got. Oh, I have got a few pictures from it. Oh, I tweeted about it. But it doesn't seem to. How do we how do we even capture the kind of like the the deeper significance of heritage? You know, the fact is that like we'd always felt like the
00:27:32
Speaker
You know, heritage, like you say, it's the kind of thing that people just go out and they see skulls and bones and dusty museum glass boxes, you know, and they don't really get a sense of
Community Engagement and Cultural Impact
00:27:43
Speaker
anything from it, really, you know, no sense of what that person was about or anything. So the Brock project, we kind of hope to build a Brock and operate as a living history tourist attraction. So instead of heritage being glass boxes and reading panels in your mind, it becomes something that you pick up that sword and make the iron age scone round a fire.
00:28:02
Speaker
you're actually living this history out. You become part of it in the hope that it really starts to paint a far more vivid picture of the past than what a traditional museum offers. Is there any kind of like, have you ever had inspiration from what other museums and open air things are doing? Is there any place that you feel is kind of doing something similar to this?
00:28:29
Speaker
Definitely, you know, I mean, closer to home, the Cranach Centre there, I mean, that's always been an inspiration to us, even though it began as a purely experimental archaeological project. I don't think they really intended to create a tourist attraction. They were just trying to work out how to build a chronic. But the top icing of the cakes really got by Gildé on in France, where they're rebuilding a 13th century castle using completely traditional techniques as the complete purists approach. And I think the
00:28:58
Speaker
One of the fascinating things about that is they're not coming to see a finished castle. They're coming to see people building a castle. So it's not the finished attraction. It's the process of constructing it as an attraction of it in its own right. And we kind of hope that the Broth project would pan out in a similar way. It's not about quickly building to get the thing done, to charge tourists to come through the door. It's about taking our time, making sure we do this right, and to try and make a fascinating story
00:29:27
Speaker
of the construction of the brock itself and how much can be learned about the past by doing this again. I'm just wondering, how many people does it take to build a brock? When you say you want to build a brock, get people in to do it, how do you even work out how many people that would take nowadays to even do? I mean, there has been some studies and to this, John Barber has done some
00:29:55
Speaker
pretty in-depth studies into this where you'll see archaeology of his own back way. But a lot of these were database studies, so they didn't take into account human activity like needing to go to the toilet or stopping for lunch or whatever. It was just looking at how much stone could someone build in X amount of hours, you know? So although the data might have been handy, I don't think you can really inform us too much about building this in modern times because we've got so many other factors to take into account, modern health and safety.
00:30:25
Speaker
things like that. So some of the data-driven assessments, although they were quite enlightening, I don't think it's going to be transferable to us as the Broth project. So when we go to build it, I think it will be built in seasons. So we'll look at getting up to the first floor of scarcity height in one season. Part of that reason is that instead of working throughout the winter, we might ask volunteers to come along
00:30:54
Speaker
And some of that wouldn't be a true, the pace of that job wouldn't be a true reflection of the pace of an iron age job for the modern implications for those reasons.
00:31:06
Speaker
And it's quite interesting, in contrast with that place in France that was trying to do it as a pure recreation, I wonder if changing the way in which the thing is built in terms of doing it in seasons with all the modern complications and the things you have to think about nowadays, I wonder if that also makes it a modern broch at the end of the day in a manner of stacking.
00:31:36
Speaker
It definitely and then probably will have to be there's going to have to be some concessions that we're going to make through the design in order to get this passed off through modern building control standards. So say door sizes. If you want to get planning permission and building a building control certificate for a modern structure, you're going to have to have wheelchair access size fire escapes. But obviously, if you look at Brock construction, none of the doorways or openings are really that big. So we've had to
00:32:06
Speaker
look closely at different broch door opening sizes to try and find one that possibly matches modern configuration. What we tried to do is approach this purely from the purest vantage to begin with, to create a pure archaeological model and then to slowly make concessions to build a control as we go.
00:32:30
Speaker
There's, I mean, the thing is, it's not, you know, Build-a-Brock is one of the main kind of projects underneath the KthnS Brock project, but there's been a lot of stuff that you all have done in the meantime. Like I'm pretty sure there's quite a lot of Brock associated merchandise around. I've seen quite a few KthnS Brock project tees around. You do love having the t-shirts out there.
00:32:56
Speaker
What else has been made in the shape of a broch because of the Kthness Broch project? What has it? Yeah, lots of stuff, I guess. But yeah, thanks for the broch tea plug available from one good shop and our online shop as well. I think cakes seem to be a very popular medium for brochs. I'm aware of at least three cakes. Somebody built a shortbread.
00:33:25
Speaker
A gingerbread, yeah, it was a gingerbread, you're right. Brock and December, it was absolutely incredible. And yeah, cake seemed to be a very popular medium for Brock building. And of course, Lego Brock as well. And that was one of our ventures in 2017. One of this kind of steps on the ladder to getting bigger and better projects, if you like. And so, brick to the past.
00:33:53
Speaker
Everyone should go and try and follow if they can, by the way. They're absolutely brilliant. They built us a 10,000 piece Lego brook in 2017, which we displayed in Caython's Horizons for a few months. And it was a really, really big hit, I think, for all the visitors. In fact, one wee lassie drew us a wee picture of the world. And then she said underneath it, this is the best brook in the world.
00:34:21
Speaker
But then one of my friends pointed out that it was also the only Lego Brock in the world. So it kind of nullified the effect a little bit. No, no, no, no, no, no. It can still be both. Okay. That little girl was correct. Okay. That was also a Minecraft Brock where we acquired some laptops so that we could take the laptops around schools and to kids groups to try and get them to build a Brock and Minecraft. That's like a,
00:34:51
Speaker
that we digital Lego game, if you like, where they make their own structures by placing blocks. So we felt it was an important thing to try and teach children what broths were, because let's face it, education about us starts as a child. This is how you install a sense of cultural identity into a population by letting them know about their heritage at an early age. So we always thought that
00:35:16
Speaker
You know, a kid's history has been seen as a bit of a dry and boring subject for children. So the way that we went about doing this was basically thought, well, what were kids really into? Well, they like Lego, chocolate, and computer games. So we just thought, well, that's it. We'll just make chocolate bros, Lego bros, and Minecraft bros. And it really worked. The kids seem to absolutely love it. They all seem to know what a broch is now. So that's mission complete for us.
00:35:39
Speaker
helps if you like those things as well. Yeah, it certainly does. I'm sure one or two chocolate brocks went missing. So I'm interested, how do you, I mean, what sort of, you know, so what sort of stage are you at with the building a brock thing at the moment? The build a brock project, what stage is happening at the moment? We've been, we're still in the site selection phase.
00:36:08
Speaker
Although we had selected a site a few years ago, as the project developed, we looked at the amount of land that we're going to need, the space we're going to need to do this. And we felt that we should really go back and have another go at making sure that we've got the best site possible. So for the last 18 months to two years, we've been searching across the whole county for available pieces of land to build a brock on it. And we're working with an architect and a consultancy firm
00:36:37
Speaker
to help us to make that decision. We've also got a 3D model that we've made on construction plans, but obviously you can't bring them forward any further until you've selected the site that you put it on. So we've really been held back a little bit by site selection for the last wee while, but we're convinced that doing this slow and methodically is a way to do it rather than just rushing in with what you've got.
00:37:01
Speaker
Who helped you put together an architectural plan of a broch? Is it a bit of a Frankenbroch? Or is it a recreation of a broch in particular? Well, at the time I was actually working for the chairman of the charity at the moment, Robin Herrick. I was working with him doing his house uplink and he's obviously a design engineer.
00:37:28
Speaker
to trade. So when I explained what the BROC project we're doing and what we were trying to get put together, he offered the services to render a 3D model for us. So we both worked together to come up with a chimera BROC, if you like, that has the best aspects of most BROCs that are still there, the right door sizes, the correct height for the floors. And we worked together to put that together.
00:37:53
Speaker
But eventually Robin became part of the project rather than employed by the project. He really took the Brock pill and became ingrained in the project. And now Robin is our chairman. So that's kind of the way the Brock project goes. People get into it as an idea and then they become part of it. You've got quite a team at the moment at the KTHS Brock project. Who's all on board? What does everybody do?
00:38:22
Speaker
We have a number of committee members who've joined over the last few years. Some haven't lasted quite as long as others, some have left throughout, throughout our sort of existence. But just now we've got, we've got Don Mackay, who is a technicians assistant, I think, is that right, Ian? Draft person technicians assistant, architects assistant for, and has been kind of crucial to a lot of parts of
00:38:51
Speaker
the project, especially the Ousdale Burne Conservation Project, for instance, who was really kind of very useful in the planning of, say, or dealing with the roads department, because you've got to factor in signage installation, parking, planning applications, things like that. And so Dawn's been able to slot herself into these sort of circumstances really well. And I've no doubt when the Brock Belt comes to fruition, then Dawn will have some
00:39:20
Speaker
a huge say in these sort of aspects as well. We've also got Chris Aitken, who is an IT teacher from Wick High School, from Case. He loves Case-ness, Case-ness born and bred, and he has been really useful in, again, anything to do with IT. 3D printing, he's really involved with that. Minecraft, he's been involved with creating a kind of full-sized Minecraft map for Case-ness.
00:39:48
Speaker
But he's also got a real interest in history and local history as well. So he's been doing a lot of things to do with John Nicholson, for example, investigating sites that he looked at and has been sort of recently chatting to John Nicholson's grandson as well. So that's been really nice to have him on board, too. We recently we've had Magnus Davidson, who works at the ERI and has interesting sort of energy and the population kind of and the kind of just the economics of of Caithness and Sutherland over the last
00:40:16
Speaker
over the last century or so. Sarah Lamb works for, I think, for the Highland, well, it's gonna be the Highland Council. Again, another sort of proud Caithnasian, and we were delighted to have her on board too. Sarah Herrick deals with finance. That has just been an absolute godsend, actually. Trying to find someone who is able to do and good at, in fact, kind of finance matters, is worth their weight in gold, because that's just such an integral part of any organization
00:40:46
Speaker
And so to get someone who is so well versed in it has been brilliant. We also have Joanne Houdel, who used to work at Caithness Horizons, and I think is the only one in our group who has a degree in archaeology and a master's degree at that too. So she is able to lend that to the team. Alex Groves as well, who I think is a forensic archaeology degree to be fair, but that's no less useful. But she's been dealing with our merchandise and our shop
00:41:16
Speaker
Um, so just having people able to, you know, whether they're doing a little bit or they're doing a lot has been, I think sharing the load has been crucial to maintaining a balance for everybody because you don't want to give them nothing to do and you don't want them to be overloaded, which I think Robin is frankly, uh, certainly myself and Ian, it was really just myself and Ian for quite some time and that's, it's hard going. So you've really got to share out all the,
00:41:45
Speaker
all the kind of jobs. Everybody's got different strengths and weaknesses really, you know, and to begin with, to get the project off the ground, you feel like you're all singing, all dancing, everything, you know, but over time you realise that people are best placed in their areas of strengths and weaknesses and, you know, there's no need to keep all the cards to yourself, you know, so I think it's been a crucial part of the development of the project is extending the team out to people that are best suited for the roles, you know. Yeah, they've all got Keenan
00:42:14
Speaker
they've only got some sort of key skill that they bring to the table or they've got keen insight and to see, I don't know, Sierra Lamb for example has great insight into kind of grants funding and things like that. Or they've just got an interest in archaeology or they're all just, they want to see change in cave nests as well. So I think they've all got that kind of in bucket loads.
00:42:37
Speaker
and everybody that's bought into the Brok project feels the same way about Caithness. It's not necessarily just for a love of Brox. I think everyone's seen why it is we're trying to do what we're trying to do and the actual need, palpable need for this in the county right now. And that's the reason that they've really become inspired and got on board with the Brok project. It's not just for the love of archeology and Brox. It's really for the way that we hope that this will change the community.
00:43:05
Speaker
Where do
Future Vision and Heritage Project Challenges
00:43:06
Speaker
you think the KfS Broth project will be in the next five years? Sorry, did you say KfS Broth project there?
00:43:18
Speaker
It's funny, but we went to an event once and Ken got given a name tag that said, the Kathenes Broth project. Never forget. They did think we were going to come there and make soot. That's a pretty good idea. It's probably more... That's a great idea. Honestly, tin can. Kathenes Broth. When the Broth cafe is beside our Broth belt, we will be serving Broth for sure. Broth burgers of course.
00:43:46
Speaker
That is one of the great things about Brock. Obviously, this episode would be titled between Brock and a Hard Place. Brock has a lot of funny kind of like you can make a number of puns out of it. Yeah, I think we exist on puns that Brock and Oll, that's a go to. Do you have a favourite Brock pun? I quite like we as part of the festival, kind of an archaeology festival that we did in 2017.
00:44:17
Speaker
And some pupils drew, drew brocks or what a brock might look like in the future or their interpretation of a brock. And somebody drew a brocktopus, which was the brock that A.M. arms that I quite liked. I thought that was quite silly. But yeah, it does lend itself quite, quite nicely to puns. I'm still trying to tweet Dwayne The Rock Johnson with some sort of, with some sort of pun, but he's not replying. Dwayne Johnson.
00:44:44
Speaker
Brocktoberfest is probably the most successful pun that we've had. I think we're going to try that one to Ken, but it was basically we created a yearly festival or we got involved with a yearly festival to have a conference each year to discuss the Brock's and archaeology and what we've been learning about Brock's that year, you know. So we share that alongside with the Orkney UHI and the crew in Orkney really, you know.
00:45:14
Speaker
each year we go over there and we give a talk and we get the crack with them. I just had a really good idea. You know how you're saying brock and roll? Is it possible once this brock is built to have a concert inside the brock? Maybe a nice quiet folk session. I'm not sure how health and safety would be if we said we're going to hold concerts and
00:45:39
Speaker
metal concerts in the brook. I can certainly imagine that the acoustics of a brook would lend itself quite nicely to some sort of musical dissonance. When we completed the work at a forest deal we put 16 tons of chipped stone at a forest deal brook because it had a problem with giant hogweed.
00:46:01
Speaker
So it was one of the smaller conservation projects we did. We put a tarpaulin down and put 16 tons of chips in. But as soon as that was done, when you stood in the middle of the brook, the acoustics were just remarkable. And then my partner, Dawn, had said, this would be absolutely great for a gig, you know, like a classical concert, you know. So not so much like crowds of people, but just to get a band or a group to play inside the brook, you know. And record it. That would be really cool. Record it. So it might be something that might happen yet, you know.
00:46:29
Speaker
Oh, definitely. It has to. It's on a podcast. It has to. We'll give you the honour of coming up with a pun to name that event. I will work on it. It will be my life's work. Everything I've ever wanted to work on. I think going back to the question of where we'll be in five years time, it's hard to say. I think I would like to hope that we would have started building our brock by then. I think we're probably at least a year away, at least at the very least a year away from
00:46:59
Speaker
from doing anything physical, probably more like two or three years. But I'd like to think in five years' time, we may have at least sort of got some way through the construction of a brook. I mean, it's a long slow process, but I think Ian mentioned before as well that it's got to be done right. And so we can't hurry through this. We can't rush anything. And it's not just a kind of for any kind of vain reason that we want to build this brook, it's potentially
00:47:29
Speaker
kind of a key part of the development of Cafeness over the next 20 to 30, 40, 50 years. So it is a long drawn out process, but I'm sure it'll be worth it if we do it right. Yeah, I mean the next stage for us really once we've selected the site is to try and get planning permission and building a structural engineer certificate on the design itself.
00:47:55
Speaker
And that could be quite a lengthy process of argument and concession until we've got something that we can get a couple of engineers to sign off. So it's hard to put a timescale on how long that part of the project might take. But as soon as that part's complete, we'll know how much it's going to cost. And then there's going to be what could be a long period of time trying to raise the funds to actually do this. Of course. What material would you be using for a bra?
00:48:24
Speaker
Hopefully we'll be using the famous Caithness Stone. So Caithness is a relatively flat county and it's been famed across the world for its flat flagstones. It's often cited that the streets of New York are paved in Caithness Stone because it's flat laminar nature. I'm guessing it's only people from Caithness who say that though, come on.
00:48:48
Speaker
Yeah, I probably think so. I think that we've seen a few people in New York standing on the sidewalk going, I've got a bit of Kathenist underneath the feet. I can't even think of a New York accent at the moment. I'll leave that for another time. Yeah, the stone of Kathenist is remarkably square and flat and quite a strong hardware in stone. So we'd hope that the brock itself would be a good advertisement for
00:49:17
Speaker
case in stone itself, you know, as a county that's famed for its stone, what better advertisement could it have than a large iconic structure built purely out of stone? Yeah, absolutely. I think it would really, yeah, it's a great advertisement. But it also brings back, I think, I don't know if we've touched on this, the whole idea of another key reason for the construction of the block is promoting and developing and, I suppose, reinvigorating the
00:49:44
Speaker
the dry stone industry, or the dry stone diking industry in Caithness as well, which used to be such an important part of Caithness and of its culture, was the fact that we had so many dry stone walls and dry stone dikes in Caithness. And now there's only a handful of these dykers left. And so we'd hope that this would really bring back what was an incredibly important skill and ability in Caithness and bring it back to the forefront of traditional skills.
00:50:14
Speaker
I mean, we always say that the way the project's been planned out, it's kind of a three-pronged attack. Initially, it's a pure experimental archeological project where we hope to find out as much as we can about the past and how they built these structures by actually recreating one. The second part of it is a dry stone digging and traditional skills workshop where we would put on workshops, not just to do a cave in stone and dry stone building, but
00:50:44
Speaker
roundwood, timber framing, thatching, pottery, ironworking, all these types of skills, you'd be able to come to the brook and learn these and run courses here about these different types of skills to try and preserve some of the dying trades that are out there. And the final part of this is to create an iconic tourist attraction here. So it's kind of a project with many facets and each time we hit a milestone, we move on to a different facet of the project.
00:51:13
Speaker
And if people are interested in finding out more about the project or even getting involved, what are the kind of things that you would say to people who are interested in the Kthness Brock project? Well, there are a number of ways to keep in touch with us and to find out more, you can visit our website. It's www.thebrockproject.co.uk. And if you wish, you can join as a friend, which is completely free to do that.
00:51:42
Speaker
It will only take you 30 seconds and it really helps us to sort of show that there is support and want for this project to happen. You can also, if you're in Caithness, you can become a member. It only costs £10 a year. You can also follow us on social media, so Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We haven't yet broached TikTok. I don't think we will, unless Ian Fancy is doing a synchronised dance with me in Akhar Azdelbrok.
00:52:09
Speaker
but I don't think, here we go. That's absolutely awful. But yeah, or just you can, they can give us an email. If you have any questions in particular, then it's just the case in this project at gmail.com. We're also on YouTube, but we don't post that so often, unfortunately.
00:52:30
Speaker
Excellent, excellent. Well thank you both for coming on and talking about the KthNet Brock project. All the details for wherever you can find KthNet Brock project matters will all be in the show notes. So finally, actually I'm starting to ask all my guests, kind of like
00:52:52
Speaker
advice on doing stuff to do with heritage, if somebody was wanting to start a project like the KthNet Rock project or like a heritage project where you're kind of bringing together kind of people together where there's a sense of cultural community and stuff like that, what are the things that you would have liked to know when you started the KthNet Rock project and what sort of advice would you pass on
00:53:21
Speaker
I think some of the challenges that we face are more in organising a business really, you know. It's great to have a good idea and I would always encourage anybody who's got an idea for heritage to pursue it and to break it down into small steps but I think most people in the heritage world aren't going to be
00:53:40
Speaker
ready and equipped for the whole business side of things that comes along with us. So it really is to check out your business help and to make sure that you've got a community of people around you that understand that aspect, the financial side of it, and the governance of a group side of things. Because that's something that every group's going to have to open up a shop front. And you might be good at archaeology, and you might be good at history, and absolutely useless at business. So that would be my advice if you want to take your project forward, is to find people that aren't necessarily into the same things as you
00:54:08
Speaker
and to find out what skill sets they have. Yeah, I think that's a really good piece of advice is I think the money side of things, the finance side of things and the governance completely new. I'd never done anything like that before in my life. I worked in a call center and then all of a sudden I'm essentially running a business, if you like, or a charity. So there are organizations out there which will give you help. I think maybe my key takeaway is
00:54:36
Speaker
to try and get the, or try and gauge the interest from the community. We only kind of, we didn't have a clue if many people were interested in the BROC project until we went out and did talks. And especially when we went out and tried to get membership and people were quite happy to sign up for whatever it was a year or at the time. So that was quite important. And the other kind of point I'd like to make is kind of be nice.
00:55:03
Speaker
Network as soon as you can and get to know people in the heritage sector and the archaeology sector because you may come back to rely on them for advice or for support or for anything like that. So networking and just being a nice person will go a long way I think for you as well.
00:55:49
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.