Ravenscraig (2021)

Raven Returned

My family lived in Craigneuk at the southern boundary of Ravenscraig for more than forty years. Several of my uncles and grand uncles worked at the steelworks there. My grandfather Hugh helped to build it. 

In the nineteenth century Ravenscraig was a village. The village took its name from the cliffs along a deep winding gorge of the South Calder Water. At Ravenscraig today there are remnants of industry and other marks left by scramblers and quad bikes. There are also families of roe deer and fox, hundreds of carrion crow and jackdaw, and thousands of young birch trees, but not one single raven. 

 

To hear the deep throated kraa of ravens you must venture into the ancient woodland at the northern boundary of the old site. High up in the steel girders of the Calder Carfin Viaduct the crooked twigs of their nests protrude. Now that heavy industry has departed the great black birds have returned to the territory of their eponymous cliffs, or perhaps they never left.


The Towers


Dismantled Railway


Scramblers


Waterlogged Birch


Fox


Roe


Crow


Raven's Cliff


All images © Frank McElhinney

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