Caithness Stonefest event to feature in a film
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THE Stonefest festival, which was held in Caithness, is to feature in a film being made to chronicle the traditional art of drystone building.
The film is being made by storyteller Griogair MacAllein from Lochinver. He recorded the events at the festival – the only one of its kind in the UK – as part of his film.
Griogair was awarded the Andy Hunter Bursary Award by the Hunter family and the Scottish Storytelling Centre and wants to make the film to illustrate what he describes as "the under-appreciated" skills of drystone dykers.
He attended the fifth festival, which was held in Thurso at the end of last month for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic three years ago.
The event is organised by local master drystone waller, George Gunn, who pointed out it continues to build useful features for the public.
He said: "The artistic, traditionally built seats we have made in Thurso are well known and loved by many."
This year those taking part built a feature wall, connecting Thurso Bay camp site and Victoria Walk, which is a favourite local promenade.
"It’s not been easy. At one point, I wondered whether we could go ahead but Caithness, like everywhere else, needs to come out of Covid hibernation and give local folk and visitors a reason to get out and enjoy what the county has to offer."
Built into the wall is a decorated stone painted by a youngster during a pebble-painting session led by Ruth Campbell.
Numbers were down on previous festivals, but still included an international representation of talented participants. Rod Keays from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada joined two Irish builders, a Glasgow-based leader of conservation volunteers and other Scottish and local enthusiasts.
The Northfest Stonefest, held over three days, also featured several guest speakers, including Gunn. Cork-based Karl Kennedy’s talk and slides presentation The Gathering of the Stones was on a memorial built over three years in Loch Boora Sculpture Park in the heart of Ireland. It was created to pay tribute to Irish emigrants forced into exile in America.
The project attracted the imaginations of people across Ireland and the rest of the world, with stone donated and shipped from the New York docklands where the emigrants disembarked.
Charlie Juhlenski from Ulbster, spoke about his single-handed repairs to the historic Whaligoe Steps. Originally built in 1792 to facilitate distribution of fish landed at the foot of the cliffs below Ulbster, the 365 masonry steps were in a bad way when Charlie began his repairs in 2017. Whole flights of steps had to be rebuilt, along with one retaining wall which had been vandalised.
George Gunn's presentation was on The Famine Wall on top of Suilven in Assynt, Sutherland. Built during the Highland Clearances the wall is one of many 'destitution' projects thought up by landowners. Rather than pay out money to starving crofters, some landowners gave a meagre in-kind wage for work carried out on construction projects. The famine wall on Suilven was a folly, conceived to pay men 680 grams of oatmeal daily for a six-day week for building a wall that served no purpose. Gunn is planning to carry out necessary repairs to sections of wall on behalf of the Assynt Foundation.
