Perthshire author samples high life
The first episode of a three-part television series showing Scotland from the air is broadcast tomorrow and viewers will see Perthshire as never before.
And the man in the helicopter cockpit is familiar with Perthshire in particular, being from Auchterarder.
Presenter James Crawford, who takes to the skies for BBC One to explore Scotland’s cities, coasts and countryside from the air in ‘Scotland From the Sky’ spent his school years in Auchterarder.
To make the programme, 40-year-old Jamie, who works for Historic Environment Scotland, tapped into the archive from Scotland’s National Collection of Aerial Photography and using stunning graphics, brings places that exist now only as photographs, back to life.
In the first part of ‘Scotland from the Skies’, aired at on BBC One Scotland at 9pm tomorrow (Wednesday 16), Jamie goes in a chopper over his home turf – dramatically sweeping over Perthshire’s countryside, telling history from the features visible on the land below. It promises to be an exhilarating mix of aviation adventure and historical detective work.
About halfway into tomorrow’s hour-long programme, Jamie flew over Auchterarder, then Perth and on to Blairgowrie, looking at photographs taken in the 1930s from biplanes and matching them with the view today. It was a recreation of a pioneering flight, where because Perth had a working aerodrome, the observation flights were possible.
OGS Crawford - no relation to Jamie – is considered the father of aerial archaeology. In the 30s he flew over Roman remains of forts near Braco, where he saw traces of Roman marching camps left by armies heading north.
Gazing at his hometown, historian Jamie said: “From here, the familiar becomes something completely different.”
Speaking to the PA, he said: “It was probably one of the most incredible experiences of my life, seeing this enhanced perspective of such familiar country.”
He was able to see how Auchterarder had changed and grown outwards.
“Now the Lang Toon has a middle aged spread,” quipped Jamie from his bird’s eye view. When the first sky pictures were taken every north-south journey went through Auchterarder, there was no A9.
Moving north, he commented how Perth once had 2,000 people working at the Pullar and Sons dyeworks. “All that, and the railway branchline that transported the army of workers in, has gone today,” he observed swooping over the Fair City. “Like everywhere else, there’s a retail park where the branch line was.”
And Blairgowrie’s lost its dozens of mills and the railway link to send away its fruit harvest. The relentless march of progress is strikingly demonstrated by the commercially captured shots, known as Aerofilms, taken from planes with cameras in 1933.
“The men who took the shots were viewed as the astronauts of their day,” commented Jamie.
His aerial journey took him on to Blair Castle, where he landed in the grounds and met an expert who’d spent years studying the Aerofilms photographs.
For footage shown in the last of the three Wednesday night broadcasts (May 30) Jamie and the film crew flew in a 1949 Tigermoth over Strathearn: “We did it at sunset, it was absolutely amazing.”
The TV programmes are a spin off of a book he wrote published by Historic Environment Scotland.
Jamie spent the past decade deep in Scotland’s National Collection of Aerial Photography – an archive of millions of images held by HES – and has written a number of photographic books on its history, origins and application.
His books include Above Scotland, Above Scotland -Cities, Scotland’s Landscapes, and Aerofilms: A History of Britain from Above.
Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of the World’s Greatest Lost Buildings was published to critical acclaim in November 2015.
His most recent book, Who Built Scotland: A History of the Nation in 25 Buildings, was released in September 2017 and was coauthored with Alexander McCall Smith, Alistair Moffat, James Robertson and Kathleen Jamie.
Scotland from the Sky is his first television documentary series as writer and presenter.
Scotland from the Sky used a helicopter to see the country as it is from above Jamie Crawford takes on his first BBC presenting role