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We’re delighted to be back with a new ‘Hidden Scotland Weekly’. We really hope that you enjoy reading.

Have a great Sunday!

Product of the week - East End Press Tree Hanging Ornaments

Add a touch of woodland charm to your decor with the East End Press Tree Hanging Ornaments! This delightful set features four unique fold-out fir trees, showcasing a palette of muted yellows and rich greens. Each tree boasts its own intricate design, folding out to create a stunning three-dimensional shape that captures the essence of nature.

£10 for this weekend only.

6 Unusual Places in Scotland

Scotland offers more than its famous landmarks, with hidden spots that reveal its unique character and history. These six unusual places showcase curious geological features, intriguing history, and unexpected attractions, providing an opportunity to experience a different side of the country beyond the well-trodden paths.

Hermit's Castle

Designed to blend in expertly with the rocks surrounding it, Hermit’s Castle is one of the most unique structures in the region. Built in the 1950s, this miniature castle overlooks the turquoise clear waters of the sea below and is backed by rugged cliff-edge scenery to give this Lochinver landmark a touch of drama. Hermit’s Castle is possibly the most unusual of all Scotland’s castles. It is certainly the smallest and the newest. It was built by David Scott, an English architect in the 1950s and was designed to blend in with the surrounding rocks so don’t be surprised if you have difficulty spotting it.

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The Pineapple

At once alluring and amusing, the Pineapple is a unique fixture atop a grand country house. Built in the 1780s by the Earl of Dunmore, a pineapple sculpted in stone sits above the front door – believed to show off the Earl’s great wealth (pineapples were very rare at the time). The Pineapple – and the adjoining house and grounds – are now cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.

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The Fortingall Yew

The Fortingall Yew in Perthshire, Scotland, is one of Europe’s oldest living trees, estimated to be over 5,000 years old. Located in the village of Fortingall, this ancient yew holds significant historical and cultural value, reflecting Scotland's rich natural heritage and longstanding traditions of reverence for ancient woodlands.

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The Clootie Well

The Munlochy Clootie Well on the Black Isle in Scotland is a significant site of ancient tradition. Visitors tie cloth strips to nearby trees as part of a ritual for healing or granting wishes. This well reflects Celtic practices, blending folklore and spirituality in a unique cultural landmark.

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The Balmoral Cairn

The Balmoral Pyramid, also known as Prince Albert's Cairn, is a striking monument on Balmoral Estate in Aberdeenshire. Erected by Queen Victoria in 1862, it commemorates her husband, Prince Albert. Set amid the picturesque Scottish Highlands, the granite structure offers sweeping views and serves as a poignant historical tribute.

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Fingal’s Cave

Fingal’s Cave, located on the uninhabited Isle of Staffa in Scotland, is a natural marvel known for its basalt columns and cathedral-like acoustics. Formed by ancient volcanic activity, the sea cave inspired composer Felix Mendelssohn and has links to Celtic mythology, making it a striking and culturally significant destination.

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The Wolves Warning

Images of wolves can be found all around Stirling, the symbol relating to a legend that supposedly took place over 1000 years ago. As the gateway to the north of Scotland, Stirling has always been of great strategic importance. Long ago the town was caught between competing forces of Picts, Northumbrians and Vikings.

One night, under cover of darkness a group of Vikings attempted to sneak up on the sleeping inhabitants. The invaders almost succeeded in capturing Stirling for themselves, while slaughtering the townsfolk in their beds. However, they hadn’t taken into account a large pack of wolves that roamed this part of countryside. No matter how stealthy the Vikings were, it was no match for a wolf’s heightened senses.

Just as they were approaching the silent village, a wolf began to howl. Then another picked up the call and another after that. Soon the air was full of howling wolves and the people of Stirling were awake, scrambling to defend themselves from whatever had disturbed the animals. All they discovered were a band of frightened warriors, running off into the distance.

The wolves had foiled the Vikings plan and saved the locals from a nasty surprise. From then on, the animals would be a proud symbol of Stirling.

Words by Graeme Johncock

Around Scotland with Graeme Johncock

Graeme Johncock, the travel blogger and storyteller behind Scotland's Stories, is now bringing his adventures to us in a weekly column. He will journal about his explorations around Scotland, sharing fascinating stories and highlighting unique places to visit. Accompanied by his dog Molly, Graeme continues to uncover and share the rich history and beauty of Scotland.

I was back on the road again last week, following the final story of the most famous King of Scots – Robert the Bruce. Paying your respects to the “Outlaw King” takes a bit more travelling than most since he’s actually buried in three separate places!

In 1329, Bruce’s body was buried around 500 metres away from where I stay now, beneath the altar of Dunfermline Abbey. It was an important act of symbolism for the King, joining his direct ancestors David I, Saint Margaret and Malcolm Canmore to demonstrate the authority of this new royal house.

Most of the King lies beneath a golden panel set in the modern parish church, although it had been lost for centuries. After the destruction of Scotland’s abbeys and royal tombs during the Reformation, the precise location of almost all graves of Kings and Queens were lost.

Then, in 1818 workmen building the new parish church stumbled upon Bruce’s vault. A golden shroud covered the body, the lead coffin was shaped into a crown over his skull and when opened, the sternum had been sawn open. That’s because the King’s heart had been removed before burial.

On his deathbed, Bruce had asked his right hand man James Douglas to carry his heart on Crusade to fulfil a dream he was never able to leave Scotland to complete.

Written by Graeme Johncock

Fine Lines - Malcolm Appleby

An alchemistic experiment with a blow torch and a square of 24-carat gold led Malcolm Appleby MBE to pioneer a novel technique in metalwork. Since then, the maverick silversmith has gone from commission to highprofile commission, showcasing his unique talent in delicate fine art that pays homage to Scotland’s natural world.

Malcolm Appleby’s Perthshire home grew around his atelier, so this is the first room he finds himself in after he wakes at 6am. “I like to get some work done before my assistant arrives at 8am,” says the revered silversmith and engraver, now 76, who can usually be seen sporting a jumper knitted by his mother that is now a darned kaleidoscope of yarns. On his plot of land in Aultbeag, Grandtully, which had planning permission for “a boring bungalow”, he and his wife Philippa (Swann, a writer and photographer) have built a collage of an Arts & Crafts-style house, with “bits stuck on over the years”. It is surrounded by an acreage, where a woodland garden sprouts oak and hazel saplings and is latticed with great juicy apple trees.

“I’m planting lots of trees…” says Malcolm, “which is one of my great pleasures, and it’s as important as the work”. The work: it’s exquisite, idiosyncratic and delightfully creative, melding silver and gold like fine paintwork, intertwined with more humble metals. Rare and precious stones feature too, and the result is as dainty as a butterfly’s wing. His portfolio includes gossamer-fine brooches with plaid detailing, a silver hawthorn leaf pendant wrapped so delicately around a pale amethyst it looks like it hardly dare touch the precious stone, and slashed beakers of textured metal - gilded, rubbed and engraved to add tone and depth.

His is a devil-may-care artistic talent that has always attracted high-profile clients: his commissions, right from the off, have included fine art objects for The Royal Family (he engraved the orb of the Investiture crown of the Prince of Wales in 1969), 10 Downing Street (a condiments set) and the National Museum of Scotland (a silver-gilt, rock crystal and enamel cup and cover). But he also makes production pendants, cufflinks and bangles from hand-carved casts, including a popular ‘Walk in the woods’ charm necklace with silver flowers and leaves dancing among labradorite, tourmaline and pearls. And these, he says, should have the same inspirational quality as larger works.

It all started in 1946 in a Kent suburb. “I lived in Coney Hall, which sounds very salubrious, but it wasn’t,” says Malcolm, the son of a car park attendant and a dressmaker. “It was a street of pre-war semis with ancient woodland at one end and fields at the other. It was the ancient woods and the fields that really interested me.” Inspired by the doorto- door salesmen of the 1950s, he sold his first piece of artwork to a neighbour at the age of four – a folded paper creation – and went to art school (Beckenham School of Art) at 15. During this time, he became aware of the trade of gun engraving after visiting John Wilkes, a traditional firm of gun makers on Beak Street in Soho, London with his Uncle Jerry who was in the Navy. He was seven years old at the time and never forgot it: “It was the place and the atmosphere, the dust… the smell of oils and walnut.” Malcolm was intrigued and inspired, and after relocating to Ravensbourne College of Art & Design, he began designing in his own style of gun engraving, which he touted around London gunmakers. Wilkes of Soho were the only ones to show any interest. To develop his skills he transferred to the Central School of Arts & Crafts, where his talents earned him a travel scholarship from the Goldsmiths’ Company worth £100, “which was quite a bit of dosh in 1964”. Not only was it an important introduction to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, it also marked his first foray into Scotland. Instead of going abroad, “like you were supposed to with a travel grant”, he hitchhiked with his brother to Orkney, “which was a bit of an adventure, because we went in March, sometimes travelling in the dead of night, with howling gales blowing through us.”

Malcolm thumbed lifts to Scotland and back frequently over the following years – “it was where the inspiration was” – while studying at Sir John Cass and then the Royal College of Art. It was here that he really got going, pioneering a new technique in metalwork by blasting two small squares of heavily engraved steel white hot and melting 24-carat and other colours of gold over the surface. “I wanted to see what would happen. I worked a lot with steel engraving and gold inlay, and the normal technique is punching or hammering the gold in,” he explains. When he turned the flame off, “there were two squares of filthy, black mess. It looked awful. The other students were smirking over my shoulder (…) I had to get myself out of it somehow.”

His solution? Pouring sulphuric and nitric acid onto the metal. “There was this acrid brown smoke coming out of the flask,” remembers Malcolm. “But as I watched, it all got burnt away by the acid and an amazing gold painting appeared.” He describes it as looking like a massive enlargement of a section of a Rembrandt work, rich and full of texture. “It turned me from being a metalworker into an artist. Normally you’re inspired by other people’s work, but this was something I had done myself, and I was inspiring myself,” he says.

Always one to throw whatever he wanted at the wall – he’s gone on to experiment with the artistic potential of metal throughout his career – his days at the Royal College were numbered. “I loved it, it was fantastic,” he says. “But they treated me as if I was going to be a trade engraver, which I never was going to do. It was the art that interested me.” After two years, his tutor said it was time he left. But every cloud and all that. Because everyone wanted him. “The week I left I got commissions, commissions, commissions,” says Malcolm. One of them was from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, who bought an early piece for their collection for the princely sum of £175. He was, at 22, the most wanted engraver in town.

In 1969, he finally moved to Scotland, buying the Victorian former Railway Station at Crathes, Banchory for 1,600 pounds, seven shillings and four pence. He lived and worked there for 27 years, leaving the building largely in its original state. In 1996, he moved to Grandtully, where he still lives and is inspired by the Scots pine and wildflowers, the intricate fungi and the chestnuts and acorns. His is a work of love, and commissions can take anything from months to years. “Or I can make something spontaneously and it doesn’t take long at all, but creatively it may have equal status,” explains Malcolm.

His is a work loaded with emotion, too. The commissions are not, he says, “standard jobs being knocked out”. He made a pair of candlesticks for St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, where the Queen lay in state. “The candlesticks were just next to her coffin. It was a great honour to have them there,” says Malcolm. They were a commission for an anonymous donor, whose last wish was to give them to the cathedral. “It was all made in a mad rush, and I had great help from a lot of people to get the job done on time, before he died,” recalls Malcolm sadly. “We were able to show him the piece just before it was hallmarked, and we gave him a little book all about it. He died the next day. It was a very emotional moment.”

These days, Malcolm “can’t work the hours I used to”. He remembers finishing the condiments set for Downing Street in 1987, working three shifts a day, until 2am, to get the job done. “Things have changed. The body’s changed,” he says. He’s got enough commissions. He likes doing one-off pieces for the sheer enjoyment and he still engraves guns in his Grandtully atelier. Every year he produces the Banchory Bangle to be raffled by the Children 1st Deeside Committee, which supports families in need. The 2022 design features a song thrush in a birch tree to deliver the message that our natural world is important for children’s wellbeing and the health of future generations.

“We need to bring up our children in a clean environment. It’s our lives. It’s our environment. It’s our world. And we’ve got to do as much as we can to hang onto it,” says Malcolm. “I suppose by doing these bangles, and a lot of the other work I do, I’m expressing that. But it’s no good unless something else is done to improve our environment and biodiversity.” He reuses and recycles as much as he can, and in his studio you’ll find vices he bought while at school, adjustable bench pins made from charity shop rolling pins, and doming blocks made from trees around his house. Even his designs sometimes feature recycled metal: he recently rediscovered a kilt belt buckle he made using a scrap Damascus gun barrel. “The piece had already had one lifetime of approximately 100 years before being made into this buckle,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “It could exist for many hundreds of years now.”

For his services to hand engraving, he received an honorary D-Litt from Heriot-Watt University in 2000, was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours, and was honoured by being appointed FRSE (Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh) in 2021. He also works with up-and-coming designers, sharing his skills and expertise, and regularly hosts symposiums. It’s the fact of making people feel comfortable and happy though that is, for Malcolm, “one of my greatest achievements”. He says: “If we can make people happy and make them aware of our environment around us, then all the better.”

Win Children First Banchory Bangle by hand engraver and designer Malcolm Appleby

Today is the last day for entries (24th November).

The first Banchory Bangle was made by Malcolm who lived at Crathes Station 47 years ago in celebration of his 21st year in Scotland. Recent bangles have been created at his workshop in Grandtully, Perthshire where he now lives. This year's bangle design "Hedgerow" was inspired by memories of childhood where the profusion of nature was the norm. It features Hawthorn and Hazel leaves, nuts, berries, roses, a ladybird, Hedge Sparrow, Comma butterfly and one of Malcolm's favourite foragers the Red Squirrel!The annual raffle raises money to help children and young people across Scotland and has raised over £193,000 to date for charity Children First

Find out more here

This article and more is available within Issue 06 of the Hidden Scotland Magazine

Sanaigmore Beach, Islay - Taken by Simon Hird

Issue 09 Limited Gift Edition

We are back with our gift wrapping service for our autumn/winter edition of Hidden Scotland magazine. This year we are very proud to have collaborated with Scottish illustrator Joy Nevada to create this festive wrapping paper. The gift wrapped magazines will also come with an A5 print of the front cover image as well as a bookmark.This gift is dispatched in our custom-designed Hidden Scotland box, sent directly to the recipient or to yourself.

You can also choose to add a personal message with a handwritten note.

If you would like to email us about any suggestions or feedback please email [email protected] with the subject feedback. Thanks!