We left Stirling today and headed for Dundee. We stopped at Perth to
visit St Ninian's Episcopal
Cathedral. By UK standards, this church is still in its
infancy as it was built between 1848 and 1908. William Butterfield
was the architect.
Looking from the west end
The flowers on the font were lovely!
The font and its canopy
When Mary and Joseph present the baby Jesus at the temple,
Simeon (who has been promised by God that he will not die
before seeing the Messiah) says "Lord, now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace".
The Nativity
Sts Margaret, Elizabeth and Catherine (see below for detail)
Detail of above: St Ninian, the Patron Saint of the Cathedral.
He brought Christianity to Scotland in the 5th century.
The Pulpit dates from 1901.
One of the carvings on the font is St Patrick preaching to
Irish princesses.
The Lectern
The Quire
The High Altar
Over the high altar, this ornately carved canopy, completed in
1911, features an intricate mosaic and carvings of saints.
St George and the Dragon
St Andrew
Statue of Bishop Wilkinson who died in 1907
The Bishop's Throne
The Canons' Stalls
The Choir Stalls
The ceiling
Flower in the Cathedral Garden
Our next stop was a brief visit to Morgan
Academy where our friend Anne Geddes went to school and also our
friend Clare Rush's mother. We were not permitted inside and
were told we could only stay on the property for 10 minutes in
order to take photos of the exterior. Not the warmest of
welcomes! Amazingly, the building was almost totally destroyed
by fire in 2001 but it was rebuilt and opened again 2004!
Next on our list was the Verdant Works Jute
Museum. We learned that Dundee was the jute capital of
the world. At one time, there were hundreds of mills which
employed 40,000 people. Jute is a plant (grown in India) the
fibres from which hessian is made. Hessian was
used to make sacks, rope, nets, and the backing for carpets
and linoleum. Women and children were employed more than men
because their wages were cheaper.
These scales, set into the
pavement just inside the gate, were used to weigh the
carts of jute which were delivered from the ships
which had carried it from India.
The Manager and his Private Secretary
The offce photocopier. Letters and invoices were
written by hand with ink on paper. Before the ink had
dried, the letter was placed in the press with a piece
of very thin paper. Some of the ink was transferred to
the paper, making a copy. Of course it was a mirror
image but the paper was so thin that it could be read
from the reverse side. Very clever but time consuming!
It's hard to see but this is what jute looks like.
This is jute as it was deleivered to the factory.
The fibres go through a number of processes: batching,
softening, carding, drawing, roving, spinning,
winding, beaming, weaving and finishing. There was a
separate machine for each of these processes.
Some of the machines were operated for us. We could
ony imagine the noise of many similar but much larger
machines operating all at once
Working in Dundee was not good for one's health or
longevity!
Children and adults were smaller than the general
population as seen by the size of these desks in
comparison to the teacher's desk at the right of the
photo.
Our last visit of the day was to
Discovery Point, the home of RSS Discovery.
Launched in 1901, she was the last traditional wooden
three-masted ship to be built in the United Kingdom. Her
first mission was the British National Antarctic
Expedition, carrying Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest
Shackleton on their first, and highly successful,
journey to the Antarctic, known as the Discovery
Expedition.
Salt Boxes: Throughout
the ship there are letter box type slots cut in
the sides which give access to the space between
the inner and outer hulls and between the frames.
These spaces were filled with rock salt.
The salt would mix with any water that entered
these areas, absorb the moisture and help to
preserve the timber.
The Crew's Mess
Edward Wilson's Cabin (which later became the
Hydrological Laboratory)