Map of Scotland by John Hardyng part of the Treasures on Tour: John Hardyng’s Map of Scotland, Wardlaw Museum from 20 February 2022 (C) British Library Board Lansdowne 204 f.226v
In 2022 we celebrate Visit Scotland’s Year of Stories, and the Wardlaw Museum has plenty of stories to tell through our vast collection and busy activities programme of exhibitions and events which can be accessed both in person and/or online.
Why is storytelling important?
At their root, stories help us form an emotional connection and make us care about our surroundings. The emotional connection formed by storytelling is so astounding that it can prompt our bodies to release Oxytocin, the ‘feel-good chemical’ and inspire people to make a difference in the world.
Storytelling is a way to pass on knowledge and tradition, allowing us to interpret history and expand our understanding of the world. Specifically, our museums use storytelling to share the significance of St Andrews’ contributions to the advancement of education, science, art, religion and more. With an everchanging line up of temporary exhibitions, there is no end to the possibilities for storytelling at the University of St Andrews Museums.
Why use different methods of learning?
Learning is not one-size-fits-all. Storytelling can take many forms, including through text, audio, images, video, or any combination of these formats.
Employing a variety of storytelling methods is a fantastic way to reach leave a lasting impression many people as possible.
How do we currently tell stories?
Museums must hold storytelling at its heart to illuminate the wonders of a fascinating collection to every visitor. Museums tell stories primarily and traditionally through exhibitions and coming soon we will have two exhibitions Church,Cult,City: Medieval St Andrews and an exciting touring exhibition from the British Library with Treasures on Tour: John Hardyng’s Map of Scotland. These exhibitions will use various methods of storytelling incorporating interpretive text and links to online information that can be accessed by visitors.
As technology has advanced, our museums have adapted to engage a broader audience through digital storytelling. On site, smartphone users can utilise our Smartify audio tours to explore stories behind collection highlights. If you’re unable to make it to our museums, Smartify tours can also be viewed online from home.
Many more of the University of St Andrews Museums storytelling resources can be accessed from home, including:
“Dive In! Protecting Our Ocean” at the Wardlaw Museum is an urgent call to action to stir citizen engagement on climate action. We provide audiences with actions that they can take in their daily lives to support environmental sustainability.
But museums need to take action to become more sustainable too.
Exhibitions have large carbon footprints. Museums across the globe stage major blockbuster exhibitions that showcase highlight artefacts on loan from other museums. Loans are packed up (in custom-made wooden crates and non-recyclable materials like bubble wrap) and shipped across counties, countries or entire continents in specialist climate-controlled vans or air freight. On arrival at an exhibition venue, loans are met by a courier from the lending institution who usually travels two round trips to oversee the installation of objects in an exhibition and its journey home.
The production of exhibitions is no less resource intensive. Single-use graphics, display plinths and bespoke acrylic mounts for artefacts are produced for exhibitions, and then disposed of after the exhibition closes.
But Dive In! is an exhibition; so aren’t the Museums of the University of St Andrews just hypocrites, for producing an exhibition that tells everyone else to be sustainable?
For us, it is important to practise what we preach. Sustainability was at the core of our thinking when we developed Dive In! We worked closely with the exhibition designers, Aurelia Cloup and James Poppa, to build sustainability into our design choices and also question and unlearn some of our usual exhibition processes:
‘There is a lot that needs and can be done to address sustainability in Museums, but critically you can’t aim to stir engagement on climate action without questioning the design choices that need to be made to deliver an exhibition like Dive in! There is never one magic green answer to the various parameters involved but I think that honesty and transparency are key to inspire any behaviour change and that recognising potential for improvement is as important as celebrating successes. For Dive in! we’ve questioned every design choice we’ve made through the lens of long-term reusability for future exhibitions and recyclability where single use was the only option.’ Aurelia Cloup, Exhibition Designer
‘By working closely with the client team from the outset, we were able to understand why the exhibition’s material choices and printing methods needed to be considered. Through our work, we believe we have helped create an exhibition that provides thoughtful and engaging interpretation, and where its recyclability or reusability are as important as its accessibility.’ James Poppa, Graphic Designer
Guided by Aurelia and James’ research into sustainable products, we sourced recyclable graphic materials, such as paper wall coverings instead of vinyl (plastic = landfill). We also avoided commissioning any custom-made acrylic display stands for artefacts, which we knew would never be used again. Display furniture has been designed for use in future exhibitions.
To minimise the carbon footprint of Dive In! we selected exhibits from the University’s own collections, rather than relying on loans that needed to be transported long distances. Any artefacts that we have borrowed have been sourced from local museums.
Dive In! has helped us to become more environmentally aware in our museum practice. Looking ahead, our learning from the project will help us develop more sustainable exhibitions in the future.
Claire Robinson, Collections and Exhibitions Curator
Dive In! Protecting Our Ocean is a partnership with the Scottish Oceans Institute and the People Ocean Planet initiative from the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland. It has been generously funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) and Museums Galleries Scotland.
You’ve probably met people who say “why should I change?”, “I’m just one person, I can’t make a difference” or “why should I change when others don’t?”Maybe you have thought it yourself.
It’s true that we need governments and corporations to step up to the challenge of climate change and biodiversity loss. But it’s also true that the decisions of most governments and corporations are driven by the expectations, demands and choices made by citizens. As others have said: Lifestyle change and system change are two sides of the same coin.
voices and choices of everyday people therefore give direction and momentum to the bigger system changes. And those system changes enable more and faster lifestyle change.
What’s more, just as there are potentially calamitous tipping points in the climate and ecosystems, there are also tipping points for behaviour change. We’ve seen human behaviours around consumption and waste of resources tip into widespread bad habits. What we need to do now is to tip it back the other way, so that an accumulation of good behaviours amongst citizens and organisations become good habits, and that those start to be seen and accepted as socially normal. This is where we can take the leap from behaviour change to social and cultural change that can really accelerate positive outcomes for people and planet.
Sociologists tell us about the importance of ‘social norms’ and ‘social identity’ and their role in shaping our behaviours and actions as individuals. What’s really exciting about this is that we don’t actually need to convince everybody to change for the better: we just need to convince enough people to make personal changes and to make those changes visible or known to their friends, family and colleagues, and our tendency to copy those around us will do the rest.
If we go back to the title of this blog… you’ll notice that we actually asked, ‘why behavioural change’, rather than ‘why behaviour change’?
At the level of individuals and households, a tangible behaviour change is indeed the goal. But we need to recognise that getting to that point is a transitional journey. Most people need quite a lot of lead-in before making the leap to deliberate and positive behaviour change. As such, we think about behavioural change as including developing awareness
and understanding, to shifting values and attitudes, adopting good intentions and finding the agency (ability) to make changes… before an actual behaviour change happens.
This way of thinking about behavioural change aligns well with the concept of ‘ocean literacy’, which recognises multiple dimensions that include these psychological precursors to behaviour change. There is a big drive on for improving Ocean Literacy at the moment, as part of the UN Ocean Decade (2021-30). To this end, we recently surveyed Fife residents to understand their awareness, attitudes and actions towards the ocean environment, including climate-related behaviours. We will publish results soon on the People Ocean Planet website: A Fife-Eye View.
Behavioural change is a massive and complex area of work. Unfortunately, its commercial (mis)use has contributed to driving over-consumption of resources and all the collateral damage that can cause. But we can turn the tide and use similar methods to achieve positive outcomes for people and planet – if human behaviour can create a problem, then it can also fix it. Dive In! is a public exhibition taking up this challenge. It aims to motivate individuals with knowledge, asking people to make and socialise their positive changes, and to ease those changes with some readily accessible tools and information to help us turn good intentions in to action.
Dr Chris Leakey, Coordinator of the People Ocean Planet initiative at MASTS.
Dive In! Protecting Our Ocean is a partnership with the Scottish Oceans Institute and the People Ocean Planet initiative from the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland. It has been generously funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) and Museums Galleries Scotland.
The importance of the ocean cannot be understated, but it is often underestimated.
Seafood is an obvious benefit we gain: not only a nutritious source of protein, but also the basis of jobs and income for many coastal communities. At the global scale, small-scale fisheries are hugely important for the economic stability of many coastal districts. Also, seafood is often (but not always) a source of animal protein with a relatively low impact on the climate. Preferably from a local source, small pelagic fish (e.g. sprats, mackerel, herring) and farmed shellfish (e.g. mussels) can even have a lower carbon footprint than many plant-based protein options. But… all these benefits are undermined if we don’t make sustainable seafood choices, which means making sure we choose fishing and fish-farming practices that don’t damage the environment or catch so many fish that the wild stocks can’t recover naturally.
We all love a day at the beach. Those of us who venture on to, in to and under the water’s surface swear by the restorative, thrilling and life-affirming feelings this brings. The physical health benefits of walking, running, swimming or kayaking on or near the sea need no explanation, but research has also now shown the fantastic mental health benefits of this kind of connection with nature. What’s more, the better the health of our marine environment… with clean water and abundant wildlife… the better it is for us too.
The ocean environment has been providing energy for our homes and vehicles for a long time. Although we are now all too familiar with its climate consequences, North Sea oil and gas has been fundamental to our daily lives. Now, as we accelerate our transition to low-carbon energy systems, the ocean environment is again proving its worth. Offshore windfarms are going to be a significant part of our energy future; tidal energy potential is starting to reveal itself; and although slower to develop, wave energy remains an exciting possible source of clean and renewable energy.
The physics and chemistry of the ocean function on a massive scale. What happens in distant waters, in the Arctic and in the middle of the Atlantic, has very real consequences for our experience of climate and weather in Scotland, the UK and Europe. The many ways in which a rapidly changing climate effects water temperature, salinity and currents, for example, triggers a complex sequence of knock-on effects that we experience as unpredictable and unseasonal weather systems, and as changes to the creatures appearing near our shores. The ocean is, in many ways, Planet Earth’s climate-control system… and that system is on the verge of breakdown. To give the ocean its best chance of regaining control, we need to do everything we can to keep the ocean healthy and functioning in the way nature intended. In other words, the more we can reduce other pressures on the ocean environment, the easier it will be for it to get on with regaining control of our climate and weather systems.
As well as these important climate impacts playing out in distant waters, many coastal areas are also at the front line of climate change. Sea-level rise, storm surges and coastal flooding are a clear and present danger for many people who live in low-lying areas, with ‘climate-migration’ likely to become a phrase we all become familiar with as people try to unliveable conditions. But this problem would be far worse without the help of nature. Natural habitats, like sand dunes and salt marshes, reefs and kelp forests, do wonders to protect land, our homes and our infrastructure from worse outcomes. So protecting, restoring and allowing the recovery of many aspects of nature can help us adapt to the climate-driven changes that are already happening…
…and many of these very same habitats also often serve to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere, helping with longer-term mitigation of climate change. This ‘Blue Carbon’ benefit from marine habitats is a current focus for many marine scientists, as they try to better understand which habitats are best for locking carbon away and how to protect them from damage. Saltmarsh, dunes, mussel and oyster beds, seagrass and the deep mud of Scotland’s sealochs are amongst those habitats that benefit us and the planet in this and many other ways.
Clearly the ocean is of paramount importance, for a healthy planet and for the well-being of humankind. It may feel distant and alien, but we cannot afford to overlook it. Our next blog will explore the multitude of ways in which our lives and choices have consequences for the ocean. Some of these will be no big revelation, but others are less obvious and may even surprise you.
Dr Chris Leakey, Coordinator of People Ocean Planet, MASTS
Dive In Exhibition, Wardlaw Museum, University of St Andrews
Last week we opened Dive In! Protecting Our Ocean, a new exhibition at the Wardlaw Museum that takes you under the waves to find out what’s happening in the deepest, most inaccessible parts of our planet.
It’ll introduce you to some weird and wonderful creatures; seals, colourful fish, and others you’ve possibly never heard of. But it’ll also show you some of the problems our ocean faces, all of them caused by humans.
It’s a bit of a change from our last big exhibition, which presented the bright, somewhat surreal art of Philip Colbert. So why have we moved on to a much more serious subject?
The Wardlaw Museum embraces the values of its parent University, which has put social responsibility as one of the key pillars of its strategy. The University aims to make the world a better place through innovation, and at the Wardlaw Museum we want to do the same. One way we can do that is by working with researchers at St Andrews to tackle the big problems our planet faces.
Our ocean is under threat, but there are things we can do to help. Though a serious subject, therefore, the exhibition isn’t all doom and gloom. There are reasons to be optimistic about the future. We’re very open about telling you, the visitor, how to make changes in your life that will improve the health of the ocean, and because what happens in the ocean is closely connected to what happens on land, it’ll improve the world for all of us.
The solutions are tailored to your circumstances. Not sure where to start with living more sustainably? We’ve got some solutions for you; it might be recycling an electrical item to reduce the need for deep sea mining, or finding out about seafood labelling to help protect fish stocks. And if you’re pretty confident about sustainability, we’ve got some ideas for you too; maybe travelling overland instead of taking that plane, or eating a plant-based diet for three months to tackle climate change. And if you’re somewhere in between? Don’t worry, you’ll find ideas that work for you as well.
Here we come to another reason why Dive In! is very much part of what the Wardlaw Museum is about. We see the exhibition as an experiment, and the Wardlaw Museum as our laboratory. Can we actually, really use an exhibition to encourage people to live more sustainably? We think so, but we’re going to be doing research to find out whether our visitors really do make changes that protect our ocean and the planet, and what we did that helped. For that reason, when you visit you may be asked a few questions or be invited to take part in an online survey a few weeks later.
Call to action poster from the Dive In exhibition, Wardlaw Museum, University of St Andrews
This will help us understand how we really can make a difference, and help other museums do the same. It’s all part of our goal to reimagine what a university museum can be and to innovate, like our parent University.
We’ll be diving deeper (pun intended) into these ideas on the blog over the next few weeks, with guest posts from some of those who’ve put the exhibition together. In the meantime, why not visit the exhibition, take part in one of our events or visit the Dive In! website to find out more.
Dive In! Protecting Our Ocean is a partnership with the Scottish Oceans Institute and the People Ocean Planet initiative from the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland. It has been generously funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch) and Museums Galleries Scotland.
The Museums team and I have been busy working on the Re-collecting Empire project for nearly a year now. This preparatory work is often under-visualised within the final, public-facing outputs of any project, and decisions can feel quite tentative without much outside input. So it was exciting to have the opportunity recently to share our ideas with two external groups.
We held our first advisory panel, made up of University staff and students, external museum professionals and academics; and we hosted a workshop with an invited group of St Andrews academics who hold research expertise in histories of slavery, empire and colonialism. Both were incredibly inspiring.
Our advisory panel challenged us on our use of language and our definitions of key terms such as decolonization. They emphasized to us the importance of working with communities of origin and diaspora communities in Scotland, and they advised us on the support that may be needed to manage any negative responses to the project. Interestingly, one panel member questioned which empire we were referencing to, and whether there were implicit assumptions present in the working title to the project. But the academic workshop helped to show us that any focus on a singular empire may be counterproductive, since imperial histories are always entangled and often interdependent. Traces of multiple empires are present in our University collections, and affective histories of empire and slavery connect these multiple pasts to the contemporary experiences of different members of our St Andrews community of staff and students. From Mexican coins to magic lantern slides via fish specimens, our academic workshop helped to broaden out our scope of enquiry and filled us all with a sense of excitement for the next stages of the project.
The Recollecting Empire project is an important part of our strategic objective to tackle institutional legacies and work for a more inclusive and equitable future. With a specific focus on Scotland, Re-Collecting Empire will explore present-day entanglements of cultures resulting from colonial encounters in the past, and how creative responses can add new dimensions to heritage objects through examining, re-telling their narratives with a diverse set of audiences.
Written by Dr Emma Bond, Reader in Modern Languages, University of St Andrews
Graduation has, and always will, be a special time when students celebrate all the hard work they have put in and finally complete their degree. It is a time to reflect, to recollect, and renew your plans and aspirations. St Andrews has many traditions for graduation, with soakings for when you finish you last exam, to being tapped on the head by John Knox’s ‘pants’ as you collect your degree.
These traditions, sadly, could not all take place this year, though that does not diminish the importance and recognition of what graduates have achieved in these strange times.
Since the founding of the University with the Papal Bull in 1413, St Andrews has seen many students graduate. Some going on to make ground-breaking discoveries, some famous faces, and all of them have left their mark on the world.
Only a handful of degrees could be achieved at first, which expanded over the years as different colleges became part of the University. Until 1889 when the Universities Scotland Act was passed, only men could graduate. The Act made it possible for women to also graduate, and Agnes Forbes Blackadder became the first woman to graduate on the same level as men in 1894.
Since then, many other women followed Agnes in graduating from St Andrews, including several members of our museum team.
Photo of Sophie, standing on the stage at Younger Hall, St Andrews, with others on stage, waiting to receive her degree
Ten years ago, I graduated from St Andrews with a MA. Hons in Mediaeval History. Fresh faced and unsure what I would like to do as a career, I went out into a world still recovering from a financial crisis. Jobs were not always easy to find, and I eventually stumbled into Retail Management, not exactly what you think an Historian might do. After that, I decided to take a few different career paths including working at a Castle, as well as trying my hand at the property sector.
Now, ten years on, the allure of St Andrews has brought me back and I now work as a University staff member as part of the Visitor Services Team for the Museums. I did leave Fife, for a bit, but my love of this wonderful corner of Scotland has brought me back and I thoroughly enjoy working with an amazing team at the museums and seeing the many wonderful objects in the museum’s collections. And most importantly, looking forward to welcoming visitors to the Wardlaw Museum when we open later this month!
At the Wardlaw Museum, we have some of the most important objects that take part in graduation, the University maces. These are taken by the mace bearers for graduation and normally graduates follow these down North Street to Younger Hall. The maces then stay present throughout the graduation ceremonies. You can find out more about them in Gallery 1 when you visit the Museum.
Did I think I would be here, working at the Wardlaw Museum, ten years ago when graduating? No, likely not. I did not know where my life would go, though that was part of the fun of the journey! Things were tough, and I was not sure which path I wished to take and what I could do after I graduated. One top tip I would say though is please visit the University Careers Centre either as a student, or for up to three years after graduating. I went later as a graduate, and they were very helpful when I was seeking a new direction to go.
Things do seem odd currently, you may not know what you wish to do, but do not let that effect you. Everything will improve in time, you may go down a few different paths and double back, though you will get there. Graduating is but the start of another journey, and you have time to decide where that will take you. Enjoy the ride, and you never know where it might lead you. Even back to the place where it all began.
Photo of Sophie, in her graduation gown and hood, standing on the steps going down into the nave of the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral.
Written by Sophie Belau-Conlon, Cultural and Community Engagement Officer/Visitor Services Supervisor
For many years the most enduring image of Scottish women’s football came from Gregory’s Girl (1980), a touchstone of 1980s Scottish cinema and popular culture, in which schoolgirl Dorothy (Dee Hepburn) overcomes sexism by proving her skills on the field and replaces Gregory as centre forward in the school team.
The inspiration behind Dalglish Jumper, former footballer Kenny Dalglish, was Scotland’s most successful player who also enjoyed a lengthy and triumphant career playing for Liverpool. In England, Dalglish was acknowledged as a leading talent who contributed to Liverpool’s national and international success in the 1970s and 1980s. In Scotland, the reverence for Dalglish was even greater as he attained the highest number of caps and quantity of goals playing for the national team.
Dalglish is a man of few words, something of a sporting cliché, and like Dorothy preferred his tremendous skill on the pitch to speak for itself. This left a certain space around the man, not simply the aura of stardom but a zone in which his admirers could project their own feelings and values.
It is a similar space in which Atelier E.B operate, whereby ‘the complex narratives that create each collection are expressed in different ways, leaving the wearer to imprint their own story onto the clothes.’[i] The fashion industry is often dismissed as luxurious yet meretricious, an accusation increasingly levelled at the art world. In working between both of these realms, Atelier E.B’s research-based artistic practice unpicks the hidden histories and signifiers of fashion, to create products and material exhibits that provide intellectual and visual stimulation. These are not mutually exclusive, providing entry points for different audiences, in opposition to art and fashion’s ‘gatekeeper’ exclusivity.
The apparently superficial is undercut by a rigorous and ethical approach to research, materials, fabrication and display. In their examination of sportwear, gender issues are analysed in ways fashion commerce markedly fails to address, and sporting history draws us into larger social histories.
Examined from a feminist viewpoint, archival research allows the artists to reveal hidden histories, especially the stories of marginalised women.[ii] The outfit is not merely a passing nod to the habits of young women for borrowing items of their boyfriend’s clothes. Lucy McKenzie has made clear that the design and reference to sports clothing in the work of Atelier E.B is concerned with its emancipatory qualities and with the rise of sports formerly derided or supressed by men such as women’s football, effectively banned in 1921, the Football Association stating ‘…the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.’ [iii] This repression was not lifted for 50 years, after which the sport struggled for acceptance and finance. McKenzie views the lack of support as a ‘silent norm’ whereby women’s pursuits are regularly curbed by the male establishment. [iv]
As artists and designers working and subverting within the worlds of fashion and fine art, Atelier E.B are intensely aware of the importance of display, as seen in exhibitions such as Faux Shop (V&A Dundee, 2020). They have turned their backs on the clichés of catwalks and collection shows to examine more neglected, quotidian areas of display. Far from confirming banalities or retro-ironic indulgences, their forensic research reveals new histories of window-dressing, mannequins and retail display, relishing the craft and skills that were involved and appealing for recognition for the unseen workers who attempted to create attainable dreams on the high street.
When Dalglish Jumper was included as part of the group show Rik Wouters and the Private Utopia, (Mode Museum, Antwerp, 2016), the overall installation was intended to resemble a teenage bedroom. The jumper was housed within a glass frame (as is the version in the Boswell Collection), bringing with it connotations of sports bars and domestic display, and was also signed by the artists to further emulate autographed sports memorabilia, the mark of authenticity that raises the mundane and average to a position of covetable value, appealing to the instincts of adult collectors just as Panini football stickers are attractive to children.
The artists chose to frame these works for practical reasons, to aid conservation and maintain some degree of control over how the work is presented, the nature of display being a core research interest of the partnership. In the context of fine art, the signature carries its own mark of authorial fidelity, unsigned works routinely being the subject of curatorial investigations and contested provenance. In this case, the lack of signature reflects what Lipscombe refers to as ‘tiny tweaks’ that Atelier E.B employ to tip the finely balanced references within their work one way or another. [v]
Likewise, Dalglish Jumper encapsulates a feminist challenge to the balance of power within a male dominated society. Sly humour mocks the man’s football strip by replacing shorts with frilly knickers, while what undermines masculinity flatters the female body in both form and sensuous material. Although the top is not designed to be worn on the pitch it maintains the utility of sportswear off the field, just as gymwear is as likely to be seen in the home or street as in a yoga class. Women’s reassigning of masculine clothing through stylistic appropriation is part of an evolving expansion of women into the male realm. Atelier E.B recognise this process of assimilation as an opportunity to lift the bonnet of fashion and examine the machinery beneath, to rejoice in process and detail, to pivot between sleek exteriors and intelligent interiors, the attractive and the hidden, and produce clothing and accessories that women want to wear. Through their process of interrogation of histories, techniques and gender politics, a set of propositions emerge in material form. It is the artists’ flexible, non-didactic approach that allows their audiences/customers to engage with the work at any level, whether a magazine reader, retail shopper, or a museum visitor, a feminist inclusivity that spans the perceived gap between art, fashion and sport – knitters, knickers and kickers. As the character of Susan (Clare Grogan), Gregory’s eventual date at the end of the film explains, ‘It’s just the way girls work. They help each other out.’
[v] Beca Lipscombe in conversation with the author, 16 October 2020
Author Details:
Andrew Demetrius is Visual Resources Curator at the School of Art History, where he is also researching a PhD project, The Public Art of Glenrothes and David Harding.
When visitors come to St Andrews a map of the town is very handy for finding your way around! In this blog – one of our museums volunteers, Kat McLaren has researched the Geddy Map – the earliest known map of the town and the inspiration for a new product range by artist Sarah Halliday in the Wardlaw Museum Shop!
S. Andre sive Andreapolis Scotiae Universitas Metropolitana.” (National Library of Scotland MS.20996)
St Andrews is a town steeped in history, and we can probably all take a guess that it is very, very old. Even while on a simple stroll through the streets you can walk past stone facades which are recognisable in early photographs from as long ago as the 1850’s.
The town of St Andrews and the many distinctive buildings which we can see lining the streets are relatively unchanged from how they looked around 500 years ago. Despite being a larger town now than it was in the past, the essence of town has remained so unchanged that the basic layout of the town can still be recognised in the map “S. Andre sive Andreapolis Scotiae Universitas Metropolitana.” drawn by John Geddy (or Geddes).
This map is held in the National Library of Scotland (MS.20996) and is particularly important as it is among several detailed early maps drawn of Scotland in the sixteenth century. The Geddy map is considered by scholars to be the earliest significantly detailed Scottish map representing a Scottish town, and is important as it shows what the town was like in the early 1580s.
What we know about Geddy is that he was probably born in St Andrews and studied at St Leonard’s College from 1571 to 1574. He worked as amanuensis (someone who is a literary/artistic assistant who writes down what someone is saying, or copies manuscripts) to George Buchanan, the well-known Scottish historian and poet, and served James VI, probably in a diplomatic capacity.
If you take a close look at the Geddy map, you’ll see that some parts of the town considered important by the mapmaker are given rather fancy latin names such as ‘Collegium D Leonardi’ (St Leonard’s College) and ‘Collegium Di Mariani’ (St Mary’s College) . The three main streets, North Street, Market Street and South Street, may be seen converging upon the (still unruined) Cathedral. St Salvator’s Chapel and the Archbishop’s Castle are clearly visible. If we look closely though, there are major differences between then and now. Firstly, the castle is still there, and at this time it was in a state of disrepair but it was not as ruinous as we see it today. Secondly, that the town is surrounded by a wall, and that the town was comprised of fewer houses then than it has today. It is quite fun to look at how St Andrews has changed over time, perhaps you could give it a go and see what other differences you can spot?
So, how were maps like the Geddy Map drawn? Think of how you would figure out what a town looks like from the air without having access to Google Earth! At the time, maps like this one weren’t particularly accurate and were usually drawn by taking measurements between points of noteworthiness. Sometimes maps drawn during this period were inaccurate and they often tell us quite a lot about the society which made the maps than the place the map is illustrating. This is because maps are made within a social and political context, and therefore they often (intentionally or otherwise) highlighted points of interest in a way communicate a narrative about what is considered important/valued by the person who made the map or the society the map is made for – resulting in the map representing more than the geography it depicts.
In the Geddy map for example, the churches are given extra importance by being drawn disproportionately bigger than the generic houses we can see lining the streets, and there are lots more ships in the sea than there probably would’ve been. At the time the map was made, the church was encouraging map-making. Ships flying crossed flags can be seen, and there are perhaps more drawn than would have actually been in St Andrews bay at the time, for the sake of artistic license or perhaps to display the naval strength of the country. There’s even what looks to be a mysterious fin in the water, what do you think it is? It might be a mermaid’s tail, and it might have been added to make a nod to Scottish myths and legends. In this way the Geddy Map acts as a sort-of-accurate and sort-of-illustrative map.
Nowadays, computers are usually used to make our maps, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to draw one by hand yourself. How would you draw the town? And what would you include?
St Andrews Map design by Sarah Halliday, inspired by the Geddy Map
The Geddy Map is reflected in the modern times through Perth-based artist Sarah Halliday’s work. Using modern techniques, and a computer, she has drawn a map of St Andrews from the aerial perspective. Like the Geddy Map, her map has an illustrative quality, however Sarah’s is much more. Her illustration of the town is colourful and modern, and includes distinctive parts of the town which people may have fond memories of (such as Janetta’s!).
St Andrews Map product range by Sarah Halliday from the Wardlaw Museum Shop, image courtesy of University of St Andrews Museums
This blending of the old and the new can be seen in Sarah’s experience of mediums and techniques. Sarah is a trained fine artist in the age-old medium of oil who believes in bringing fine art to audiences on beautiful, yet useful, products. Frustrated by the inability to print her work without colour shifts, she started experimenting with Adobe Illustrator, which has allowed her to be able to print on textiles and other materials. Using the modern medium of Digital Art has enabled her to put her artwork on fabric and stationery much easier and she has been steadily expanding her range of products beyond her fine art. Sarah describes her work as, ‘Classic skills with a modern approach’.
Despite being made by different people, in different styles and techniques, both maps illustrate the same town around 500 years apart. Indeed, when taken together the maps illustrate the contrast between the old and the new, illustrate the passage of time in a visual way allowing us to spot the similarities and differences between the town then and now. Both maps are a little pieces of the history and evolution of St Andrews, and perfectly encapsulate the coming together of the old and the new which we see so much in the town today.
If you like the look of Sarah Halliday’s map, and would like to have your own bit of St Andrews in your home, check out our Wardlaw Museum Shop online. Our Wardlaw Museum Shop has a beautiful range of products inspired by our collections and scenic location. There you can find tea towels, mugs, postcards, and prints decorated with Sarah Halliday’s map of St Andrews, and lots more thoughtful and affordable gifts which can be purchased from our museum shop website.
This blog post concerns sexually explicit content which potentially includes historical non-consensual sexual activity and images. Please proceed with caution. Resources can be found in the Resources tab of this microsite for anyone who is affected by these issues.
Language used in these blogs refers to cis, heteronormative gender identities owing to the historical context of the Beggar’s Benison Club. Today, we are aware of and acknowledge a wider spectrum of gender identities.
From 1732 to 1836, Anstruther in the East Neuk of Fife was home to the Beggar’s Benison Club. The secret all-male club was devoted to the idea of male sexual liberation. Members created symbolic sexual imagery and may have practised sexual rituals. Members also had interests in subversive politics and illegal smuggling.
For women, the Club existed at a time when they could neither vote nor work in a range of industries, and they did not even have legal guardianship over their own children. In terms of sex, they were not supposed to derive any pleasure from sex. Indeed, it was a common belief in 1700s Britain that a female’s main purpose should purely be to satisfy male sexual needs and bear children. Women had little control over their own bodies. This is especially exemplified by the activities in which members of the Beggar’s Benison participated.
The Club would fantasize about women through the reading of pornographic texts such as ‘Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’ and ‘A New Description of Merryland’ (see our ‘Trip to Merryland: Fantasising About Sex’ blog to learn more about this!) Some of the objects used in their meetings featured imagery of vulvas. However, the most disturbing of the Club’s activities was that young girls were paid to come to private club meetings and exhibit their naked bodies to members.
Vagina Heart Seal Matrix from The Beggar’s Benison Collection
It is important to note that while many sources refer to these models as women, they were in fact young girls. Their ages ranged from 15 to 19 years old, in contrast to the members whose ages ranged from 30 to 50 years old.1 Unfortunately, we have scarce other details about who these girls were. Certainly, it is clear from the Club records that their identities did not matter to the Club. At private meetings, they would be stripped naked with their face’s half covered and would be made to pose for the members.2
While there were no consequences for the men who participated in these meetings, even when the Club would become more an open secret than a secret, this was often not the case for the girls involved. Their half-covered faces did little to conceal their identity, and this could have repercussions outside of the Club meetings. Indeed, there is one recorded story where a bride on her wedding day was openly mocked and ridiculed for her previous hiring by the Club.3 Meanwhile, members were referred to as ‘gentlemen’ and there are no accounts of them facing any kind of consequences.
It also must be stressed that there was likely little consent involved in how the girls were exhibited as part of these meetings. Members of the Club were mostly upper middle-class men from the East Neuk of Fife with influence within the local community, whilst the girls exhibited held much lower social status. This difference in status between the members and the girls in tandem with gender expectations at the time, was unlikely to be conducive to an equitable power dynamic.
The Beggar’s Benison was not the first sex club in Scotland; there was another before it, although short lived. This club was the Knights of the Horn, established in Edinburgh in 1705. Very little detail survives about this Club. However, we do know that in contrast to the Beggar’s Benison, the Knights of the Horn reportedly held “mixed” meetings – in other words they allowed both men and women to participate.4 It is interesting to note that unlike the Beggar’s Benison, this Club was openly mocked and became the subject of hostile satire, in a way the Benison, to our knowledge, never was, even when the Club became an open secret within the local community. There is no clear evidence why the two were treated so differently. But given that the Knights of the Horn was founded in a similar time period to the Beggar’s Benison, it is more likely that this was due to the participation of women, thus evoking more vocal disapproval for the activities and conduct of the Club.
The Beggar’s Benison brings up issues that are still vitally important to discuss today. Women still do not have the same power or freedoms regarding sex, and they don’t always have control when it comes to their own bodies. Activist groups continue to educate people about the idea of consent and its importance. The male gaze is still a significant factor influencing depictions of a woman’s body in the media. But this is changing. Women and marginalised groups are beginning to take control. They are deciding how and when their bodies can be depicted. Female sexuality is starting to be recognised for being empowering, when consent is freely given. We hope our exhibition Sex as Subversion, Fantasy and Power: The Beggar’s Benison Club can further amplify these issues through its exploration and display of the Collection of this all-male sex club.
Written by Nicola Law, student in MLitt. Museum and Galleries Studies at the University of St Andrews
[1] Stevenson, Chapter Two
[2] Stevenson, Chapter Two
[3] Stevenson, Chapter Two
[4] Stevenson, Chapter Four
Baker-Benfield., G.J, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth Century Britain, 1992
Dabhoiwala, Faramerz, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution, 2012
Stevenson, David, The Beggar’s Benison Club: Sex Clubs of Enlightened Scotland and their Rituals, 2001
