In the last episode of the landmark series, Scotland From The Sky explores Castle Kennedy Near Stranraer, Dumfries and Galloway to show how aerial photography has revealed Scotland’s hidden ancient past and uncovered secrets buried right beneath our feet.
Wednesday 30 May
BBC One Scotland, 9.00-10.00pm
In an exhilarating mix of aviation adventure and historical detective work, presenter James Crawford takes to the skies to explore Scotland’s cities, coasts and countryside from the air.
Using rare archive from Scotland’s National Collection of Aerial Photography and stunning graphics, places that exist only as photographs are brought back to life.
In the last episode of the landmark series, Scotland From The Sky explores how aerial photography has revealed Scotland’s hidden ancient past and uncovered secrets buried right beneath our feet.
From an Aberdeenshire field where the very concept of time emerged, to the ghostly outline of a lost ornamental garden, to the discovery of hundreds of pizza ovens that once fed Rome’s mighty legions, presenter James Crawford reveals how our ancestors have written their story on Scotland’s landscape.
His journey in this third and final episode starts with what was just a non-descript field near Crathes…until an aerial shot revealed a quirky set of holes which then emerged to be a Neolithic lunar calendar.
And then goes onto Kintore, in Aberdeenshire and the site of one of the Roman’s most extensive encampments in Britain and then onto southern Skye and an astonishing harbour from the Viking invasion, rounding up in Castle Kennedy in Dumfries and Galloway and the ghost of a former Jacobean garden.
This extraordinary archive, managed by Historic Environment Scotland, is a unique record of a century of change and shows how lives and communities on the ground have been transformed in incredibly dramatic ways. Together with dramatic sweeping aerial shots from our current times, they tell the story of the making of a modern nation.
The accompanying book to the series is published by Historic Environment Scotland (RRP £25), and is available from all good booksellers.
