Pillar

This Blipfoto journal certainly stretches you to look around a bit more.

In the 15 years since I crossed the North Channel to study, and ultimately settle in Edinburgh, I must have passed Nicolson Square Garden hundreds of times (not all of them, in the earlier years, in a sober state). Despite having passed it so many times, I had never really noticed the 13-ft tall Brass Founders' Pillar that sits within in the Garden before today.

Around the four sides of the column are coat-of-arms from royal burghs across Scotland, while a further four for Scotland, Ireland, England and 'Empire' are uppermost. A Google search tells me the artisan who stands on top is the biblical figure (and subject of Masonic lore) Tubal Cain, reputed to have founded the skilled trade of brass and iron-making.

The Pillar was commissioned and erected by the Brass Founders of Edinburgh and Leith for the International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art, held in the Scottish capital's Meadows in 1886. It was gifted to the City at the start of the last century and erected in Nicolson Square Gardens - standing there until a severe gale brought it down in 1968. It was loaned to the Edinburgh Masonic Club six years later and in the summer of 1976, then renovated and re-erected by staff and students of the city's Telford College.