I walked a patch of land to the side of the new Spiers Bruce Way, opposite the Granton Castle Walled Garden in Edinburgh and imagined who had walked there before me, human and other-than-human.
Walking the Taskscape* on the first Friday of June 2026
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I walk the grounds belonging to Granton Castle in 1160. As Head Gardener, I nurture the soil to provide vegetables, fruit, and herbs for my master’s table. King William the Lion is on the throne.
I proudly walk the land surrounding Grantoun House in 1479, a member of the Melville Family of Fife. I survey my many turrets and admire my grand old trees, rooted deep in the earth to shelter us from the gales coming off the Firth of Forth.
I walk this property in 1684. Appointed gamekeeper, my task is to tend the deer and fowl, providing cover for the breeding animals, as well as open land for my lord’s sport.
I walk across pastures in 1834, estates which belong to Walter Francis Montagu Douglas Scott, the 5th Duke of Buccleuch. His cattle thrive on this rich grass.
I walk this place in 1905, Controller of Granton Gas Works. Coal arrives from the Niddrie fields on the other side of the city, and it is heated in oxygen-free furnaces to produce combustible gas. Inside the tall, round cylinders and metal frames you can see from Princes Street, the gas levels rise and fall, providing for the for industries and homes of the city.
I walk on hard, pale-brown Craigleith stone in 1920, speculating for the new quarry. Bain’s the name, and this Castle has been in ruins for years. The Corporation may have said the heritage should be preserved, but if they did, I did not get the message.
I walk along the ridge in 1952. I’m Robert Mushet and it was my father who discovered the black iron which I now smelt in the furnaces of the Steel Foundry in front of me, the most modern factory of its kind in Britain today.
I walk in the year 2000, between rubble and stalk, stumbling over mounds of contaminated soil. This is not wasted land; it waits for fox and badger to bring barbs of herb Bennett on its fur and for the wind to spread fireweed seeds; starting the process of renewal.
I walk here in 2026, cut-off wires sticking out of the soil, debris and black plastic all around. The lone fawn over by the wall picks her way over devastated soil; recent destruction of the woods no longer offers shelter. The homeless people who lived in the Social Bite Village have been moved on to make way for blocks of flats to address the ‘declared housing emergency’.
This was in response to a prompt for the Walking the Land June 2026 First Friday Walk provided by Caroline Morris (@curioverse on instagram)
* Taskscape is an anthropological concept introduced by social anthropologist Tim Ingold. It describes the temporally unfolding field of human and non-human activities that occur within a landscape.
Walking without a donkey 