An alternative guidebook to Edinburgh that aims to be as surprising and insightful for locals as it is for visitors will be launched on 1 June.
Researched and written by local Hannah Robinson, it’s the latest in the ‘Secret and Unusual Guide’ series by Jonglez Publishing, which already covers cities including Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Geneva, Lisbon, New York, Prague and Venice.
We’ve had a sneak preview, and below extract (with permission) part of a representative entry that’s likely to appeal to Broughton readers. Eoghan Bridge’s Horse, Rider, Eagle has featured in almost every Spurtle photo quiz since the year dot – here, you’ll finally get to learn a bit more about it.
HIGH HORSES
Horse, Rider, Eagle: corner of Henderson Place Lane and Silvermills, Edinburgh EH3 5BF
Horse and Rider: Rutland Court, Fountainbridge, Edinburgh EH3 8EY
Silvermills, the area below St Stephen Street in Stockbridge, apparently got its name because it was the medieval location of the experimental alchemical laboratories of James IV or V, both enthusiastic dabblers in mystic metallurgy. Half a millennium later, housing developers have transformed the location into luxury flats. Out of which was distilled a great bronze sculpture, since all large construction projects were required to fund public art under the ‘percent for art’ scheme.
So, slap bang in the middle of the upmarket housing scheme is a larger-than-life sculpture by Edinburgh-born Eoghan Bridge. A great horse strains as a naked rider grabs onto the claws of a flying eagle and attempt lift-off. It’s not on any through road though – the winding medieval street layout was retained – so very few people pass by. And despite the melodrama of the action so close to their kitchen windows, many residents hardly notice the piece. Several people I questioned didn’t even know it was there.
On the other side of town, in the Fountainbridge financial district (where they practise a different kind of algorithm-based alchemy), another of Eoghan’s horses performs a dramatic act on the pedestrian bridge leading over the Western Approach Road. The bronze beast squats on its hind legs and rears up as the rider pulls back its head, hard. The 1992 sculpture was the first equestrian statue to be erected in Edinburgh in seventy years, its predecessors being nearly all military.
Despite their heads being twisted in Guernica-style poses, Bridge’s horses seem to be working in collaboration with their riders. Both sculptures appear to be part of some kind of rodeo circus act, or an equine stunt scene from a Western where our hero manages to escape his pursuers by an extraordinary feat of skill and bravery. The artist’s studio shelves are crammed with maquettes of horses in the most ungainly poses, sometimes balancing comically on top of their riders. His most recent foray is into bulls: surely some financial institution should be in the market for that?
Secret Edinburgh, an Unusual Guide costs £12.99; ISBN 978-2-36195-148-1. More at: www.facebook.com/secretunusualedinburgh.
[Main photo: Oscar Van Heek]