Footdee, Aberdeen

As has been clear from the last few posts (why did I delay? Just a little matter of being locked out of the blog for forgetting the password - it will happen again) I was in Aberdeen in September, and lucky enough to get a small guided tour of some key sites of the city by my colleague Quazi Zaman. One of these places surely qualifies as one of the earliest bona fide planned environments incorporating internal reserves, with the caveat that, since it dates comprehensively from the period before the automobile, one of the key 'internal reserve' components - separation of pedestrian and car - didn't apply. Nonetheless, it has existed, and persisted, through the entire automobile era, apparently relatively intact. 

A quick trip to the Aberdeen library to look at a range of press clippings got the basic story: Footdee (pronounced 'Fittie') began construction in or around 1809 (a clipping from the Aberdeen Press and Journal dated 21 December 1968 but with its title removed in the clippings collection gives this date for the Town Council's original construction of 68 houses on 'the North Square and South Square'). The original buildings were single-storey but most of Footdee today is two-storey. The majority of the clippings were from the late 1960s-early 1970s and dealt with the problems of everyday living in a conservation area. 'The harsh days and nights of toil over nets and baits and lines are only memories to the old folk who are left,' says one article, 'recollections which are eagerly sought and taped by students of folklore who descend on the village.' This from the Evening Express 11 May, 1977. 

But why even go as far as the library. By extraordinary coincidence, the Northlink Ferries magazine Northern Lights issue 9, which was available when we boarded a... Northlink Ferry, has a story on Footdee too. Here we learn that 'Extra houses were added in 1837 and 1855' and that additional storeys were added to some others in the 1870s.

Because I didn't really fully appreciate what I was going to see when Quazi took me to Footdee, these images presented here are a bit of a jumble - there are three spaces, one of which contains a church. All spaces have an arrangement of single-story, usually wooden sheds/granny flats(?) around them, apparently the property/for the use of the people who live opposite each one. Northern Lights calls these 'outhouses' and says they were or are known as '"tarry sheds", which were added to the squares opposite each dwelling in Footdee. These were originally created using driftwood and other materials...' As you can see, these have often been decorated or otherwise augmented with a high degree of imagination and individuality. The reserves themselves are often used primarily for drying clothes (this to me tips the scale more in the direction of 'private (albeit shared private) space' than 'public space', although when we were there - a Saturday - tourists were just wandering through blithely) and some limited agriculture and passive recreation, and include things like bird feeders, etc.  

See it on google maps here. Note how close it is, and yet how far, from Torry.