News

Student Artist Celebrates a Milestone Achievement

10 March 2010

A lino-cut image of a puffin has been selected as the winning design for a replacement milestone to be installed within the Cape Wrath Training Centre in Sutherland.

Students from Kinlochbervie High School have been working with the Ministry of Defence and RCAHMS on a project called Defending the Past, which aims to build connections between the soldiers who train at the military base and the local residents.
The winning design was created by Jennifer Ross, an S1 pupil at the school. Her picture of a puffin with number 8 on its torso will be sandblasted onto stone sourced from the training centre grounds to create the milestone.

Defending the Past project manager, Laura Gutierrez said the milestone exercise had been a great start to the project.
“We invited students to come up with a visual that would be a fitting representation of the Cape Wrath Training Centre’s dramatic landscape and scenery,” she said. “There were some great designs, some using the distinctive shape of the Cape Wrath lighthouse, others taking elements from nature, so the choice was a difficult one.”

The milestone will be installed by Jennifer and her fellow pupils on a camping trip to the training centre in May. Milestones marking the distance to the Cape Wrath lighthouse line the public road linking it to the slipway on the Kyle of Durness. The eight mile marker, which is thought to have been erected in the 1830s, was found to be missing in the survey of the architecture and archaeology of the site carried out by RCAHMS in 2008.

The landscape and archaeology of Sutherland is key to the Defending the Past project, with a key aim being to share the information amassed by RCAHMS and Defence Estates during the 2008 survey. Defending the Past has involved students from Kinlochbervie High School, Durness Primary School and local community members who are working towards creating information about the heritage of the area to communicate to visitors, including the thousands of troops who come to Cape Wrath to train.

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project is closely tied to the principles of the Curriculum for Excellence and is designed to foster an appreciation and interest among children and young people in their local heritage. Dr Ian Smith, rector at Kinlochbervie High School said “This project brings together a range of subject areas including arts and language, science and technology and history and geography. The cross-curricular approach has helped to break down artificial subject boundaries and has given pupils more ownership over the end results of their work. They are involved in something quite outside their usual experience which has helped to expand their appreciation of local as well as global issues.”

The project will run until September 2010, culminating in a celebratory community event on the Training Centre itself.

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For further information about RCAHMS or images of the winning design and the Cape Wrath training centre please contact: Barbara Fraser or Shaheena Abbas at Pagoda PR 0131 556 0770 / Barbara.fraser@pagodapr.com; Shaheena.abbas@pagodapr.com

Notes to Editors:
1) For over one hundred years, RCAHMS has been collecting, recording and interpreting information on the architectural, industrial, archaeological and maritime heritage of the nation, creating a unique archive that offers a remarkable insight into the special nature of Scotland's Places.  Over 15 million items, including photographs, maps, drawings and documents are made widely available to the public via the web, through exhibitions and publications, and at the RCAHMS search room in Edinburgh.

2) Defending the Past is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Defence Estate.

3) Defence Training Estate is the organisation responsible for the management of the majority of MOD's training areas and ranges in the UK and overseas. Its mission is to provide a safe and sustainable training estate to meet Defence Objectives for the three services. Cape Wrath Training Centre is an important range providing facilities for naval and army gunnery training and air force air-to-ground weaponry practices.

4) Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) sustains and transforms a wide range of heritage for present and future generations to take part in, learn from and enjoy. From museums, parks and historic places to archaeology, natural environment and cultural traditions, we invest in every part of our diverse heritage.   To date it has invested over £500million in Scotland’s heritage.