All language subtitles for Scotland from the Sky Series 1 3of3 BBC 1080p_ENG_Subtitles01

Scotland is a breathtakingly
beautiful country.

And no more so from the air.

It boasts one of the most photogenic
landscapes in the world.

No wonder it's one of the most
photographed.

Ever since the invention of flight,

aerial photographers have taken to
the skies and taken thousands of

photographs. They are a record of
how our countryside, our cities,

even our way of life are constantly
shifting and changing.

These photographs are an
extraordinary window into our past.

They can take us back in time and
show us how our great cities have

dramatically changed with
the ebb and flow of history...

..while whole communities have
vanished in the name of progress.

They can reveal treasures
from the past...

..without even lifting a spade.

And they can uncover secrets
buried right beneath our feet.

Did you realise that where you are
standing was once a massive Roman

military camp? Never imagined that.

From Roman camps,

to lost ornamental gardens,

to a field where the very concept
of time emerged.

Without that photograph,
we wouldn't be here today, no.

This is the fascinating
and untold story

of those pioneering photographic

detectives and the extraordinary
mysteries they have uncovered.

This is the story of
Scotland From The Sky.

INDISTINCT FORECAST ON RADIO

The skies are clear
and the wind is light.

Perfect conditions for today's task.

I've come to Cumbernauld Airport
for a flight with a difference.

What are you
shooting with today, Bob?

Bob Adam is a photographer with
Scotland's National Collection of

Aerial Photography. And this little
Cessna is the team's workhorse.

Tight fit in here.

It's not the most comfortable
flight I've ever taken,

but it beats most people's
commute to work.

Spring, summer, autumn or winter,

the survey team from
the National Collection

take to Scotland's skies.

SHUTTER CLICKS
They are photographing change...

..fields...

..roads...

..cities...

..how we are constantly
transforming our landscape.

SHUTTER CLICKS

The National Collection has been
photographing us from the skies for

over 40 years and if you
know what to look for,

you'd be astonished just how far
back in time you can see.

The annual survey started in
the scorching summer of '76 -

an extraordinary year to begin.

Britain was baking in a long,
stifling heatwave

and suffering one of the most
severe droughts ever recorded.

But what was torture
for office workers

proved perfect for aerial
photographers.

Under the relentless sun,

the landscape became like a litmus
paper for the past.

As the dry spell took hold,
crops turned pale and parched.

But the crops that grew above
ancient earthworks remained healthy

and dark as the roots found
moisture deep underground.

Like ghostly outlines,

crop marks of prehistoric structures
began to emerge from fields

across the country.

On one particularly scorching day,

an aerial archaeologist was flying
above this field near Crathes Castle

just to the east of Banchory
in Aberdeenshire -

this is what he was looking for.

The crop mark of an ancient great
hall, built nearly 6,000 years ago.

But later, he noticed this.

A series of dark, regularly spaced
dots running in a straight line.

So what were these strange,
mysterious circles?

I've come to Crathes Castle
to take a look for myself.

You can barely spot them in the
photograph, but here on the ground,

I've no chance.

There is nothing to be seen at all.

Although photographers came back
year after year,

the crop marks were
never seen again.

But the archaeologists
had their glimpse -

they knew where to look and when
they came to excavate the site

they found something
that defied explanation.

It would completely overturn
our understanding of the past.

The chief archaeologist,
Shannon Fraser,

has joined me at the site to tell me
what she discovered.

They were a whole long line
of quite big pits,

really quite deep and quite broad,

running along the landscape in
a more or less straight line,

with kind of a kink at one end.

Different sizes, different shapes,
but all really quite, quite big.

And how old were they?
Well, they were very,

very much older than any of us
possibly expected.

It was a real sit-down-in-your-seat
moment when we got the radiocarbon

dates back, because there were
a range of them starting, really,

about 10,000 years ago and running
through the next thousand years or

so, which put that right in, really,

the beginning of the period when
people are coming back into Scotland

after the retreat of the ice.

So that was really surprising
and exciting.

And what do you think these pits
were for?

Well, looking at the dating evidence
and the archaeological evidence,

what we could see was happening was
that people over an incredibly long

period of time were coming
and digging these big pits.

In most of them they were then
placing the ashes of fires,

very carefully in the bottom, and
then they were moving around them

and the soil starts to just come
back in and then nothing,

then they go away and vegetation
starts to grow and then they come

back and they do similar things
and this process is going on,

for, literally, 1,500 years.
So, thinking about that,

we came to the conclusion that
what's probably happening here is a

ceremonial site that people
are coming to, meeting,

reaffirming bonds of friendship,
that sort of thing, probably

tying the communities into the land
and belonging and well-being,

at those specific times of year -
that's what we think may be

happening. And you never would have
found it, if it had not been for

this photograph. If it had not been
for that photograph,

that was the only time that the site
ever showed up, yeah,

so without that photograph,
we wouldn't be here today, no.

But the story doesn't stop there.

The mystery of the Warren Field Pits
has caught the imagination of many

academics and a number of intriguing
theories have been proposed.

One team has come up with a
tantalising possibility.

That here, what is now an empty
field in Aberdeenshire,

the very concept of time
was invented.

News of the excavation reached
Professor Vince Gaffney,

who, at the time,
was working at Stonehenge.

When he discovered that the central
pit lined up with sunrise on the

Midwinter Solstice, he put together
a team to find out more.

We realised that it was pointing
towards the slope of the pass and,

10,000 years ago, this pass would
have had the sun rising through it

on the Midwinter Solstice,

so it suggested straightaway that
we were looking at a monument with

some sort of astronomic alignment
and this is very, very, very rare,

for hunter-gatherers to have

that sort of concern
with astronomic events.

While the central pit lined up
with the midwinter sun,

what did the other 11 do?

Vince had a theory.

The pits themselves may be
associated with a reflection of the

phases of the moon, going through
from waxing, gibbous,

full and into the waning cycle.

Vince believes these 12 pits might
symbolise the 12 lunar months.

While their varying sizes - from
small to large, and back to small -

represent the waxing and waning
of the moon.

They were inscribing their notion of
the passage of the moon in the land,

in order to have some form
of tracking time.

There is nothing comparable in
north-west Europe that we can see at

the moment, so in some senses,

a concept of time emerged here.

Vince's theory remains open
to fierce debate.

But what we do know is that,
for 10,000 years,

this area has always been
a magnet for people.

And for the last 700, it has been
home to the Burnett family.

Every summer, hundreds of Burnett
descendants from around the world

return to Scotland to celebrate
the sense of belonging that all

of them share.

Events like these clan gatherings,

with all their celebration
and sentimentality,

are still just about a simple
communion with place.

They are about understanding who you
are and where you're from and they

are about why,
perhaps without knowing,

you always feel compelled
to keep coming back.

The accidental discovery of the
mysterious pits at Crathes Castle

showed us just how much we can learn
about our ancient past from the air.

Thanks to that drought of 1976 and
a camera poking out of an aeroplane

window, we were briefly,
fleetingly, able to see further back

in time that we had ever seen
before.

So much more of ancient Scotland
was just waiting to be uncovered.

The precious photographs of the
Crathes Castle pits is stored here

in the vaults of Historic
Environment Scotland in Edinburgh.

It's where the National Collection
of Aerial Photography is held and

it's where I work, researching
and uncovering its secrets.

Millions of aerial images can be
found here and every one a potential

clue to our rich history.

It seems extraordinary, looking
back now, but until recently,

Scotland's past
was largely neglected.

In the late 19th century,

there were only 21 legally protected
ancient sites and monuments in

Scotland. It was a tiny list,
made up of a few stone circles,

some carved stones,

a handful of ruined towers and
a couple of prehistoric tombs.

There wasn't even a castle.

That tiny list has grown to nearly
10,000 protected sites today.

And that's thanks to the father of
aerial archaeology who kick-started

the quest to uncover Scotland's
lost history.

Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford was an
observer for the Royal Flying Corps

during the First World War.

As the battles raged
in the trenches below,

he saw through the bloody present
to the ancient past,

saw how the battlefields beneath had
once been shaped by prehistoric

farmers and Roman settlements.

In 1920, Crawford became

the Ordnance Survey's first-ever
archaeologist.

Here he is, dressed in the suit
and waistcoat, trousers rolled up,

sporting his old flying helmet
and furry mittens.

His only mode of transport,
his trusty bike.

It's a strong look.

Throughout the 1930s,
he pedalled around Scotland,

bags hanging from the handlebars,
maps wrapped around the crossbar

and I suspect he had
shorter legs than me!

He worked and lived like this,
riding from site to site,

sometimes on the road for a month
or more at a time.

He brought the same urgency to his
job as he had to his wartime

observation work. He saw
it as equally important.

He once boasted he cycled 72 miles -
from Stonehaven to Blairgowrie -

in a single day.

But Crawford's bike and his short
legs had their limitations.

He wanted to explore more.

To see more.

And Crawford knew the only way
to do this was from the air.

In the summer of 1939,

he requested permission to conduct
an aerial survey.

His bosses refused and suggested
he take a taxi instead.

But Crawford was stubborn and paid
for the aeroplane himself.

The owner of this beautiful vintage
Tiger Moth is William McCaness.

And he has offered to fly part

of the route that Crawford flew
in 1939.

So, overalls will stop you from
snagging anything and then this is a

nice warm urban jacket,

which right now will make you
feel really hot and warm,

but once you're in the air, you
will be really grateful for it.

When does this jacket date from?

World War II.

It is a genuine article.

Now, the helmet
or the cloth helmet here,

you just sort of duck
your head forward...

That's it.

And it does restrict your view
a bit, so if you want to,

you can always then just put it back
on top of your head. Perfect.

Shall we go? Yes.

This isn't really
for nervous flyers.

There's not even a door.

At least there is a seat belt
and I get to sit in the front.

The starting method looks...
interesting.

But I've got every confidence
in William.

At least, I think I do.

And if you're thinking this looks
precarious, it feels it.

OK. Here we go.

There's no turning back now.

Well, we're up now,
and do you know what?

I'm actually starting
to enjoy myself.

In fact, this is amazing.

The original trip above the Scottish
lowlands cost Crawford £27.

That is around £1,000
in today's money.

But it was worth every penny.

Crawford became the Sherlock Holmes
of the skies.

It felt like the future.

Technology revealing how the living
shared the land with the dead.

How ghosts are, in a sense,
all around us, all of the time.

But of all the peoples that haunted
this landscape,

it was the Romans that fascinated
Crawford the most.

Crawford's route took him over the
faint remains of one of the great

frontiers of the world.

The Antonine Wall was built
in the mid-2nd century AD.

Named after the Emperor Antoninus
Pius,

it snaked between the Clyde
and Forth estuaries.

North of the wall, the territories
of the barbarous Caledonians began.

This section just west of Falkirk
is a fractured line of humps and

ditches, running
around housing estates,

through back gardens
and under power lines.

Back in the 1930s, historians
thought that Highland Scotland

had remained mostly unconquered,

that the Romans hardly set foot
beyond the central belt.

The only discoveries beyond it
had been a handful of impressive

outposts like Ardoch Fort,
near Braco,

built to secure
the lowland conquest.

But during the summer of 1939, as
Crawford flew north into Perthshire,

he discovered dramatic new evidence
of Roman sites, including roads,

forts and camps.

A discovery that would rewrite

our understanding of the Romans
in Scotland.

How many more camps and forts lay
hidden?

And how far north did the Romans
actually go?

These questions would have to wait.

One month later,
Britain declared war on Germany.

In 1946, Crawford retired.

Into the driving seat
stepped this man.

John Kenneth Sinclair St Joseph
spent his war as a spy in the sky,

interpreting aerial images
from military intelligence.

St Joseph proved to be a genius at
detecting enemy movements from

photographs - skills he would use
after the war to study great

military campaigns, not of
the present, but of the past.

He was obsessed by the unanswered
questions about Roman Scotland.

St Joseph doggedly set out on
the trail of the Imperial Army,

chasing the crop marks
of military camps

further and further northwards.

What he discovered astounded him.

His aerial photographs showed up
lines and geometric shapes in field

after field, like giant footprints
of a brutal ancient war machine

that scarred the landscape -
Roman marching camps.

St Joseph discovered a staggering
130 of them.

He had revealed the scale of the
Roman invasion and proved that the

Roman campaign went further north of
the Antonine Wall than anyone had

previously thought.

These were temporary marching camps
for an army of thousands of soldiers

on the move...

..running from Perthshire through
Angus to Aberdeenshire and Moray,

strung out in a line,

the camps appeared like a giant
signpost in the landscape.

St Joseph knew he was
onto something.

There was a fabled story of
a titanic Roman victory over

the Caledonian tribes.
The Battle of Mons Graupius.

It is one of the great mysteries
of history,

because no-one knew where
the battle had taken place.

Could this line of camps lead St
Joseph to the biggest prize of all -

the fabled battlefield itself?

One camp in particular
caught St Joseph's eye.

It was hard to miss.

The camp was one of the biggest
ever found in Britain.

It lies under the small,
quiet town of Kintore,

on the main road between
Aberdeen and Inverness.

St Joseph believed the camp might
hold the key to Mons Graupius and

was the base of the Roman legions
that fought the epic battle.

Sprawling housing estates now cover
the site, and standing on the

southern entrance gate
is Kintore School.

It's hard to believe that
where I'm standing was

once a Roman military camp.

When St Joseph photographed
this site in 1949,

his pictures showed the sheer
enormous scale of it.

It was a sort of
Caledonian Camp Bastian.

Temporary home to thousands of men
and the front line in a war against

marauding Picts.

Hi, Murray. Yeah, hi, how are you
doing? Good to see you.

Lovely. What a lovely day. Yeah.

Dr Murray Cook led the
archaeological dig of the camp

back in 2002.

So, Murray, you have brought a map
with you which shows how the

enormous scale of the Roman camp

overlapped onto the modern town
of Kintore.

Yeah. The camp, which is
a fairly standard one,

is 44 hectares in size.

We are standing just here.

There is an entrance here
just under the motorway.

There is an unexcavated
entrance here.

The whole camp is orientated north,
because that is the attack.

It's massive, it's 44 hectares.

We are on a football pitch,

imagine at least 60 of these and you
begin to come close to the scale.

60 times this area, completely taken
over by marching camps, by soldiers,

by equipment, by horses
and - don't forget -

a big area in the middle for slaves.

This is invasion.

This is making Kintore,
Scotland, part of the Empire,

ruled from Rome.

They are here to go as far, probably
as Elgin, as far as the Moray Firth,

to basically conquer, to secure,
to form treaties with the local

tribes and to make sure that they
bow the knee to Rome.

Although large, the layout of
the camp was fairly standardised.

On the perimeter, under Kintore
school, were dug the outer ditches.

On top of the earthen ramparts,
a palisade was constructed

by binding together wooden stakes
that were carried by each legionary.

There were three entrance gates and,
just by the side of what is now the

A96, a large watchtower.

The area within the camp was
subdivided into streets,

along which soldiers pitched
their tents and dug latrines.

And in the centre of the camp,
an area where slaves were held,

occupied today by the houses
on Henderson Drive.

When Murray Cook excavated Kintore,

the team made some
surprising discoveries.

When we dug here, we found more
bread ovens than had ever been found

in Roman Britain. These ovens,
they are all different sizes,

different techniques, they reflect
their traditions,

the ethnicity of this army
that's coming on foot,

step-by-step-by-step, day after
day, from the south, to conquest.

So all these traditions, all these
international voices, different

skin hues, different religions,
all descending on this location.

Different pizza toppings?

Yeah! Syrian, Iranian, Italian,
you name it, they were here.

No Hawaiian, though. No Hawaiian.

And could these ovens have been the
ones that fed the men who marched to

Mons Graupius?

Well, I would say, the people
that ate that bread fought at

Mons Graupius, but I think
Mons Graupius is that way.

Murray thinks St Joseph
got it wrong,

and that Mons Graupius
lies 100 miles south.

That is because a Roman source

described a Fort
near Dunning in Perthshire

called Victoria, in honour of
the decisive Roman victory.

We may never know the actual
location of Mons Graupius,

but it is extraordinary to think
that the vast camp that once stood

here was home to the Roman legions
who fought this legendary battle.

I'm curious to find out if the
local people of Kintore are aware

of their Roman roots.

Do you realise that the village
of Kintore sits on the site of a

2000-year-old Roman camp?

No. No.

I would never have known that.

Beneath your feet were a huge
collection of pizza ovens.

Wow!

Do you realise that where you have
just been riding your bike across

was once a massive Roman
military camp? No.

You can't blame them
for not knowing.

When the Romans retreated south
in the second half of the second

century, they took anything
of value with them,

leaving only their bread ovens.

The people of Kintore would have
to wait a long,

long time before pizza
was back on the menu.

About 1,800 years, to be exact.

With his aerial photographs,

Kenneth St Joseph had revealed
hundreds of lost ancient structures

buried beneath the landscape.

But in the early 1950s,

these sites came very close to being
bulldozed from history.

After the experience
of wartime rationing,

the government became obsessed
with achieving self-sufficiency

and Scotland looked like the place
to do it.

Huge areas of the country were to go
under the plough.

Massive forests were to be planted.

And valleys flooded for
hydroelectric power.

The pace and scale of change
spurred one man into action.

Kenneth Steer had returned from the
war to his post as archaeologist for

Scotland's National Collection.

He was convinced that there
were thousands of monuments,

even tens of thousands
that were still unknown,

but how was this poorly funded team
of four men and one woman possibly

going to save them?

Steer knew he had to persuade the
government that these ancient

monuments were worth preserving and
he knew just where to start looking.

The plane takes off on a mission
that is part of a vast programme of

photomapping. This plane, the
aerial surveillance task is to

help record the changed face
of Britain.

Between 1944 and 1950,
the RAF had carried out an aerial

photographic survey
of all of Britain.

Called Operation Review, it saw
some 500 flights above Scotland,

taking nearly 300,000 pictures.

The photographs are now stored here,

at Scotland's National Collection
of Aerial Photography.

What is remarkable about these
images is that they are photographed

in 3D, to help map-makers identify
contours in the land.

But to see them in 3D, you need
a stereoscopic viewer.

This is a stereoscope.

It is a device that is used to turn
2D into 3D.

What you need are two images
of the same thing,

but taken from slightly different
angles.

I look through the stereoscope
viewer and I try to make the

features on the images overlap.

It's weird at first.

Then all of a sudden,
two becomes one.

Your brain is tricked into seeing
three dimensions.

By viewing the landscape
in 3D from above,

Steer's team spotted hundreds of
possible undiscovered ancient sites.

The sheer volume of finds sparked
Steer into announcing an emergency

survey, a rapid and systematic
attempt to map and measure

Scotland's threatened heritage.

Sites only seen in photographs would
now have to be investigated

in person. Driving an ex-army jeep,

the team headed out into
the Scottish countryside.

By the summer of 1950, the emergency
survey was well under way.

Sites were visited in small teams
and work that would normally take

days was undertaken in hours.

Think speed-dating
for ancient monuments.

But sometimes
they were already too late.

An ancient fort at Dalks Law
in Lammermuir Hills,

photographed in 1928, was gone.

Completely ploughed out by farming.

Elsewhere, archaeology was quite
literally in the firing line.

Chambered cairns made top targets
for artillery practice.

It was a race against time, but
in the remoter places, on lonely

hilltops, earmarked by the
government as marginal land,

sites had been spared the plough
or the bulldozer.

This is one of them.

A great Iron Age hill fort near
Duns, built 3,000 years ago.

I've come here with archaeologists
George Geddis and Adam Welfare to

recreate the survey, using the very
same equipment from the 1950s.

Well, the first part of that is
just a sheet of cartridge paper,

which is what they would
have used at the time.

Not very weatherproof.

Then the next crucial thing
we need is a little pin.

Everything we measure on the drawing

will be done in relation
to that pin.

So now in order to actually
make our drawing,

we use two items of equipment -

the first one is this thing
called an alidade.

This is from about 1950 and
the second thing is our tape.

That's it.

Tape measures,
pencils, rulers, rods

were all used to measure
the ancient structure.

It might not look much,

but sites like this are often
the only physical evidence of our

prehistoric past.

Old stones, humps and bumps
in the landscape

were the crumbling clues
to who we once were.

Kenneth Steer filled his notebooks
with handwritten

detailed descriptions of
what the team found.

And they produced meticulously
measured drawings like this one.

You can see the detail here.

The wonderful sense you get
of both accuracy and artistry.

These were fast-paced, functional
drawings - but to me, anyway,

they retain a unique sense
of skill and beauty.

They're a tiny bridge between
the present and the past -

a kind of conversation
with our ancestors.

But while the drawings were
incredibly detailed,

they are no substitute for viewing
this place from above.

It's only when you look down at the
scale of this earthwork and imagine

houses that once stood here,
the tendrils of wood smoke

drifting into the air and the high
timber walls and the earthen

ramparts that you realise...

..forts like these were
all about demonstrating power,

about holding dominion over
the surrounding countryside.

These hill forts were, in a sense,

sowing the seeds of
their own destruction.

They were the ones that first
stamped the land with ownership,

overseeing the parcelling up
of people, fields, livestock...

They began the creation
of the modern world,

a world where everywhere
is owned by someone.

Far from the past being an empty
and mysterious place,

the emergency survey began to reveal
a landscape bustling with people,

living, working and defending
their way of life.

Without the work of
Steer and his team,

the post-war drive for
self-sufficiency would have erased

the lives and homes of our ancient
ancestors from history.

60 years on,

the National Collection of Aerial
Photography uses a plane,

rather than an ex-army jeep.

The tools and transport
have changed,

but the job remains the same.

I am heading out to sea
with the aerial survey team.

They are on the lookout for the
indelible marks left on Scotland's

coasts by our ancestors.

Since the National Collection
started flying, thousands

of new coastal archaeological
sites have been discovered.

The reason there are so many is
because in the Scotland of old,

it wasn't roads that linked
communities,

it was the wide-open
superhighway of the sea.

Overshadowed by the brooding
and dramatic Cuillin Mountains,

the Southern tip of the Isle of Skye
is incredibly beautiful.

It's one of my favourite spots.

This is the Rubha an Dunain
peninsula, with its tiny loch.

To most visitors,
it looks remote and lonely.

Home only to sea birds and seals.

But from above, it's revealed a
landscape with an intriguing past.

Tumbledown walls...

..ancient dwellings...

..and up on the outcrop, a hillfort.

All clues to a time
when the peninsula

was a vibrant hub of human activity.

So who were the people who lived
here and what brought them to this

remote place?

Around 20 years ago,

Rubha an Dunain's mysterious past
began to be uncovered when an

extraordinary piece of
evidence came to light.

OK, I know it doesn't look much,
but to people who build boats,

this is a crossbeam.

And it connects the hull
to the floor timbers.

What makes this one so special is
that it once belonged to a nearly

1,000-year-old forward
seagoing boat.

It was discovered in shallow waters

in a little loch at the
Rubha an Dunain Peninsula.

What got archaeologists excited

were the intriguing questions
this bit of wood posed.

Who built it, and why was a seagoing
boat abandoned

in a landlocked shallow loch?

The best way to find out was
to take a trip there myself.

My guide is maritime archaeologist
Dr Colin Martin.

Following the discovery
of the wooden crossbeam,

he brought a team of experts to
carry out a survey of the peninsula.

So, Colin, roughly where was the
fragment of the boat discovered?

Well, it was found right over on
the other side of the loch there,

by a local man.

The timber was actually
sticking out and he raised it.

How old was it? Well, some
time later it was radiocarbon

tested and it came
to around 1100 AD,

smack in the middle
of the Norse period.

So nearly a thousand years old.
Nearly a thousand years old, yes.

Let's go see more. Let's do that.

For centuries,

tales from local folklore told how
the peninsula was once home to the

Vikings. These tales had been
dismissed by historians,

but when the team arrived,

they were excited to find some
intriguing man-made features.

The most obvious feature
is this structure,

which links the approach to the dun
and the fort on the headland and the

loch that we see out here.

This obviously was our first
focus of interest.

You later found that the view from
above was instrumental to your

interpretation of this site.
Absolutely it was.

We used a drone to get much more
detailed information and accurate

surveys of the very complex rubble

of stones that are lying
all over the place,

which from ground level appear
really beyond interpretation.

While times and technology
have changed,

the job of surveying is the same.

The drone took hundreds of pictures
and then a computer worked out the

measurements, right down to the size
of individual stones.

The pictures were processed
to create a top-down,

vertical image of the entire site.

What was revealed exceeded
everyone's expectations.

An engineering marvel that had been
lost for centuries.

A Viking dockyard.

Colin, how did it feel to work
on a site like this?

It was very exciting,

because as we gradually pieced
together the information -

actually the hard evidence
of what was there -

we began to see how this whole place
functioned and we began to get a

feel for the people
who were part of it.

From above, the layout
of the dockyard became clear.

The natural stream that ran from
the loch to the sea was widened and

stone walls built to form a canal.

At the harbour entrance,

two noosts - or dry docks - were
built where boats were pulled up

and repaired.

Servicing the dry docks
were some small buildings,

probably storehouses,
or living quarters.

Halfway along the canal,
a sluice gate - used to control

the water levels between
the loch and the sea.

Then at the end of the canal,

there were two quays
and a large turf-covered building.

For centuries, the Vikings who built
the dockyard dominated this region,

controlled the local seaways,
lords of all they surveyed.

It's the sort of place that brings
the past really to life, isn't it?

Absolutely. And could you imagine
what it must have been like for them

to live and work here?

I think it would have been
a hard life.

A life that demanded a lot of skill
in various ways and also

the knowledge that if you didn't
apply your skill properly,

you were probably going to be dead.

It was much more extreme and the
prices for failure were much greater

and I think that probably had an
effect on the character of the

people. Would you have liked
to have worked here?

No. I'm too soft and modern!

The Viking dockyard has long
since been abandoned,

and nature has reclaimed it.

Rather than take the motor
launch we arrived in,

Colin and I are taking a more
authentic form of transport home.

A wooden rowing boat,

similar to the one recovered from
the loch 1,000 years ago.

I suspect the Viking workers who
once laboured here would approve.

Every year since 1976,

Scotland's National Collection of
Aerial Photography has been flying

all over the country in search
of our history.

And as the years passed,
much more has been discovered than

the activities of Roman legions
or Viking raiders.

Entirely new aspects of Scotland's
history began to appear in the most

unexpected of places.

Places such as Castle Kennedy
in Dumfries & Galloway.

A romantic crumbling ruin today, but
once home to Sir John Dalrymple,

the second Earl of Stair, a military
man with a passion for gardening.

In 1984,
a National Collection archaeologist

was flying above the picturesque
ruin of the former Earl's home.

And in the flat empty lawns
in front of the old castle,

she photographed a series of
puzzling patterns and lines,

like an old plan etched
into the modern landscape.

Pathways, steps and a mysterious
circular feature set at one end.

The archaeologist was Marilyn Brown
and the discovery would come to

dominate her work for
the next 30 years.

It was remarkably dry in 1984 in
Galloway and I had been carrying out

aerial survey, looking for the
remains of Neolithic, Bronze Age,

Roman, Iron Age and later
settlement in this area.

But coming across Castle Kennedy
I saw, to my surprise...

..lines, terraces, possibly
the remains of staircases.

So, in effect, this was
a ghost garden

emerging out of the landscape.
Yes, it was.

What Marilyn Brown had photographed
were the fading skeletal bones of a

beautiful ornamental garden,

typical of the Stewart period.

There is very little evidence
of what it used to look like.

But there are living clues,
if you know what to look for.

It's a herb, called
a greater celandine.

And what was so special about it was
that its seed is over 300 years old.

It was buried deep and dug up by
Castle Kennedy's head gardener.

It is related -
if plants can be related -

to the old plants that grew
here over three centuries ago.

A living ghost.

Another clue was left by General
William Roy, who made maps of

Scotland in the aftermath of the
second Jacobite rebellion.

His drawing of Castle Kennedy was so
detailed that it revealed the layout

of pathways, borders,

plants and the clear outline of a
fish pond at the end of the garden.

The ghostly crop marks photographed
by Marilyn had revealed a moment in

time when gardens were planned
along formal lines.

Regimented, in strict
geometric shapes.

Gardens like this were very
fashionable in the 17th century.

They give us an insight into
the mind-set of the past.

Nature wasn't there to be enjoyed,
but controlled and ordered.

The garden was Dalrymple's
pride and joy,

but then he did something rather
unexpected.

He destroyed it.

The reason for this rash decision is
to be found in the crumbling ruins

of Castle Kennedy.

In 1716,

Sir John returned from Paris where
he had been working as Britain's

ambassador to the court of Louis XV.

He found a smouldering shell.

One of his maids had set
the building alight,

trying to dry bedding too close
to an open hearth, and the fire

had gutted the place.

But Dalrymple didn't see a
disaster - rather an opportunity.

In the age of Georgian Britain,
tastes were changing.

Nature was now a thing to be
celebrated, and formal gardens

were becoming old-fashioned.

Instead, landowners began
to create gardens

that romanticised wilderness.

So Dalrymple created
a magnificent new garden,

with the ruined castle
as its centrepiece.

Right, here we are.
So, where are we now?

We are in the central part
of the building,

where all the main living areas
would have been.

Lady Emily Stair has researched the
history of Dalrymple's garden and

she and her husband are
the current custodians.

He was a very creative individual.

He had an extraordinary career
as a soldier, as a politician,

but had a fallow period,
and in those years

he devoted himself
to improving this place.

He was very much inspired by
Versailles and the other gardens

he'd seen in France and he devoted

his time and energy to creating
the landscape as it is.

He made use of the troops
that were stationed nearby and they

created the extraordinary
earthworks,

created the walled gardens
and all that they could produce.

In the days of picks,
shovels, horses and carts,

the new garden
was a massive undertaking.

Two whole regiments were enlisted
for the backbreaking task.

The work took around 15 years
and involved the movement of huge

amounts of earth to create
these banks and terraces.

Terraces that were designed
specifically to view the new gardens

from above.

From up here, visitors could admire
the new perfectly circular

fish pond, substantially bigger
than the last one.

Behind the ruins of the castle,
they could stroll through a walled

garden, planted with exotic flowers,
herbs and fruit trees.

Either side of the gardens,

they could gaze across
two huge bodies of water,

the White Loch and the Black Loch.

The two joined together
by a new canal.

The Castle Kennedy makeover
was a triumph, but in the process,

the old formal gardens had been
consigned to history.

And it's only on hot summer days
that its bones can occasionally be

glimpsed, like the ghost
of gardens past.

Since aerial archaeologists first
took to the skies, while

the planes and lenses have improved,
the simple technique of pointing

the camera out of an open window
hasn't changed.

But now, they are armed with a new
device. Above the Isle of Arran,

state-of-the-art technology is
probing the landscape in much

greater detail than ever before.

By criss-crossing an area of land
and firing laser beams down at the

Earth, echoes are captured to
produce a picture of the ground

that's accurate
almost to the millimetre.

Trees, bushes, even forests are no
barrier to receiving measurements.

Branches and undergrowth
are stripped away

to reveal the naked earth.

Airborne laser scanning has
revolutionised the job of aerial

archaeologists like Dave Cowley
of the National Collection.

So, Dave, can you tell me what it is
we are seeing here?

What we are seeing, Jamie, is a
digital terrain model of the whole

of Arran. It's captured the surface
topography, the goat fell,

the craggy north end,
the much lower-lying south end,

as a digital surface.
What does this show us that perhaps

we have never been able
to see before?

Well, where do I start?

If we have a look at some of the
existing aerial photography,

immediately we are seeing a couple
of prehistoric roundhouses.

There's a couple of
those fairly clearly,

but when we switch off the
photographs and start to move

towards the airborne laser
scanning-based visualisations,

we can see the two hut circles
we have looked at earlier,

the two roundhouses.
What we are seeing immediately is

that there are lots
and lots of other

examples. Straightaway, I can see
ten or 20 new sites, potentially.

Oh, absolutely.

These little small agricultural
clearance cairns,

bits of field boundaries and so on.

This must be tremendously exciting
to you as an archaeologist.

Yeah, this is absolutely
the business.

This really is the stuff of dreams
and it is an absolute game-changer

in terms of being able to cover
something like the whole land mass

of Scotland within my lifetime.

Stand on Arran, even in its remotest
parts, and the chances are that you

cannot move for tripping over some
trace of human activity.

When lasers strip
the landscape bare,

you can see just how much
our interventions have,

from the earliest times,

marked, changed
and scarred our world.

At the end of the 19th century,
we thought there were only 21

important ancient sites across
the whole of Scotland,

but thanks to the work of pioneering
aerial archaeologists,

that list has grown into
hundreds of thousands.

And we care more about protecting
them than ever before.

And we keep on building them.

Here is an aerial photograph
of Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat,

taken in 1951.

The Palace of Holyrood stands
to this day,

but the gasworks, two breweries and
much of the housing have all gone.

Standing in their place,

modern apartments and a
new Scottish Parliament.

A statement built in steel,
glass and stone.

It demonstrates our ability
to rewrite our landscape.

Over the past century, the pace
of change has been incredible.

We can see our homes,
our cityscapes,

our landscapes, change around us.

We keep rewriting our landscapes, we
can't stop it, it's in our nature.

Aerial photography allows us to
follow the clues back into the past,

to see who we once were,
and also asks the question,

what other secrets are out there
waiting to be discovered?