City Profile: St Andrews
Copyright S K Reid Photography
A thing of beauty is a joy forever, even if it is a bit chilly.
If Adam and Eve, on their solitary exile from Paradise, had stumbled across St Andrews they would have been able to stick two fingers up to God having found a new and better one (disregarding the weather). St Andrews rises as a blackened rocky wave to meet the bitter North Sea, on which many students have taken revenge on by secret urination. Possessing all the apocalyptic qualities of incessant rain, ruined churches and diabolical servants in red dressing gowns, the town stubbornly retains its granite beauty with a kind of ghostly fervour, warding off modernity –unless in the form of a coffee shop- with an assured vigour. Dickensian cobblestone streets, gateways, gardens, beaches, and of course, golf courses stand in a kind of postcard puzzle, slotting neatly together within a frame of farm land, turbulent sea and the purgatorial Dundee. Perched on a literal and metaphorical precipice, St Andrews has excluded itself from its native heritage, to become an English and American settlement, occasionally allowing the rightful tribe members in for a visit. Gibson’s William Wallace, sporting a kilt that had not yet been invented, would have been horrified to find a permanent tea party against a backdrop of petunia window-boxes and tweed boutiques, before being hastily directed to Edinburgh Woollen Mill.
The splendour of St Andrews has nothing to do with the cosmopolitan efforts at artful window dressing, the carefully designed dark brown cool of any of the prodigious coffee shops, chalk-board restaurants and marble drenched hotels. Such territorial statements of commercialism mask the town in that hideous desperation for tourism, subtly disguised as a rejection of branding but evident of a particularly 21st century design of subjugating villages under the city need: little caverns for finding extortionately priced items which the locals would have absolutely no practical use for, delicatessens where food is produced 20 minutes away, furniture and trinkets to be admired rather than sat on. Like a giant holiday home for a stock-market trader and his perfectly waxed, tanned and manicured girlfriend, St Andrews is spoilt by the shiny veneer of prosperity, a prosperity that leaves at the end of term and the flight back to urbanity.
Beneath the sheen, there lies that raw and romantic savagery poured over by Burns and Johnson; a landscape which should have been uninhabitable with its bitter, bitter cold, arbitrary black and grey rock protrusions and the permanent and profound gloom that seems to caress with withered fingers the roofs that crouch together against the wind. Like Milton’s Hell, the landscape forms an ‘opprobrious den’ that has somehow conceived a paradisiacal equivalent; there is an undeniable, intense beauty all around that is independent of human intervention. The smoothness of tarmac, traffic lines and double glazing are forever perturbed by the weather war in the sky, and the din of the sea. The formation of the earth is chaotic, and seems to always be moving; rising and falling at will. Ruined edifices cling on determinedly, evoking spectral images of the turbulent history that has swept through the town, whilst its academic heritage breathes through the stone pillars and steps of the quads. At night, like rows of candles at an offertory, light beats inside the houses against the opaque silhouettes of gravestones and towers.
Students have built their own little Pandemonium, namely the library, in the delectable 60s style, where they are all plotting their schemes for world domination. The desire for knowledge, the number of books and pretentious discussions travelling about town augment the eerie, spectral presence of the past and the migration of freshers and graduates creates a kind of fluidity that is so incongruous with the preserved architecture. Perhaps what most merits more hideous attempts at poetry is the relationship between St Andrews and St Andreans; the town is very slowly decrepitating despite its proud obstinacy, whilst its inhabitants come to it in youth and optimism. There is something quite poignant about the flow of life in and out of a place that has already lived quite a great deal of its own. Each student will go their own solitary way, leaving behind their Eden of learning, to make their own little course in history.
It happens often that travellers seek discovery away from home; yet it is important to appreciate the joy that is right before our eyes. St Andrews is a town that permits endless exploration, offering new discoveries with each natural phenomenon, architectural secrets and moving demography. Take time to really look on the reluctant way to that early-morning lecture, in the grey and slanting rain, you might just glimpse the Devil’s footprint.
If Adam and Eve, on their solitary exile from Paradise, had stumbled across St Andrews they would have been able to stick two fingers up to God having found a new and better one (disregarding the weather). St Andrews rises as a blackened rocky wave to meet the bitter North Sea, on which many students have taken revenge on by secret urination. Possessing all the apocalyptic qualities of incessant rain, ruined churches and diabolical servants in red dressing gowns, the town stubbornly retains its granite beauty with a kind of ghostly fervour, warding off modernity –unless in the form of a coffee shop- with an assured vigour. Dickensian cobblestone streets, gateways, gardens, beaches, and of course, golf courses stand in a kind of postcard puzzle, slotting neatly together within a frame of farm land, turbulent sea and the purgatorial Dundee. Perched on a literal and metaphorical precipice, St Andrews has excluded itself from its native heritage, to become an English and American settlement, occasionally allowing the rightful tribe members in for a visit. Gibson’s William Wallace, sporting a kilt that had not yet been invented, would have been horrified to find a permanent tea party against a backdrop of petunia window-boxes and tweed boutiques, before being hastily directed to Edinburgh Woollen Mill.
The splendour of St Andrews has nothing to do with the cosmopolitan efforts at artful window dressing, the carefully designed dark brown cool of any of the prodigious coffee shops, chalk-board restaurants and marble drenched hotels. Such territorial statements of commercialism mask the town in that hideous desperation for tourism, subtly disguised as a rejection of branding but evident of a particularly 21st century design of subjugating villages under the city need: little caverns for finding extortionately priced items which the locals would have absolutely no practical use for, delicatessens where food is produced 20 minutes away, furniture and trinkets to be admired rather than sat on. Like a giant holiday home for a stock-market trader and his perfectly waxed, tanned and manicured girlfriend, St Andrews is spoilt by the shiny veneer of prosperity, a prosperity that leaves at the end of term and the flight back to urbanity.
Beneath the sheen, there lies that raw and romantic savagery poured over by Burns and Johnson; a landscape which should have been uninhabitable with its bitter, bitter cold, arbitrary black and grey rock protrusions and the permanent and profound gloom that seems to caress with withered fingers the roofs that crouch together against the wind. Like Milton’s Hell, the landscape forms an ‘opprobrious den’ that has somehow conceived a paradisiacal equivalent; there is an undeniable, intense beauty all around that is independent of human intervention. The smoothness of tarmac, traffic lines and double glazing are forever perturbed by the weather war in the sky, and the din of the sea. The formation of the earth is chaotic, and seems to always be moving; rising and falling at will. Ruined edifices cling on determinedly, evoking spectral images of the turbulent history that has swept through the town, whilst its academic heritage breathes through the stone pillars and steps of the quads. At night, like rows of candles at an offertory, light beats inside the houses against the opaque silhouettes of gravestones and towers.
Students have built their own little Pandemonium, namely the library, in the delectable 60s style, where they are all plotting their schemes for world domination. The desire for knowledge, the number of books and pretentious discussions travelling about town augment the eerie, spectral presence of the past and the migration of freshers and graduates creates a kind of fluidity that is so incongruous with the preserved architecture. Perhaps what most merits more hideous attempts at poetry is the relationship between St Andrews and St Andreans; the town is very slowly decrepitating despite its proud obstinacy, whilst its inhabitants come to it in youth and optimism. There is something quite poignant about the flow of life in and out of a place that has already lived quite a great deal of its own. Each student will go their own solitary way, leaving behind their Eden of learning, to make their own little course in history.
It happens often that travellers seek discovery away from home; yet it is important to appreciate the joy that is right before our eyes. St Andrews is a town that permits endless exploration, offering new discoveries with each natural phenomenon, architectural secrets and moving demography. Take time to really look on the reluctant way to that early-morning lecture, in the grey and slanting rain, you might just glimpse the Devil’s footprint.