PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES 12

GAYFIELD SQUARE  

From East London Street, a setted prelude sweeps south through the ghost of the Estate. I meander up past whitewashed creation. Opposite, beyond finialled railings and letterbox fanlights, attic windows extrude like pop-up flashes.

Thrawn at the apex by black cat glare: a sunny sinecure interrupted. A creature of the New Town steppes, viridescent eyes containing complex knowledge of adjacent nature.

A lone police van detaches from the Sixties station and circumnavigates the square, a bloodless beast scanning its territory. Semper vigilio. In its animal wake, I cross over, through a municipal threshold, and into green.

Adjourning to a weathered bench backdropped by B-list villas, I look towards the ashlar casts of east-side tenements. Under the sombre sky, a grande dame floats through early afternoon with all the austere refinement of la veuve herself. A rare treat.

In the sycamore breeze, I notice myself observed through demi-nacreous glass: a brief intermission in someone's programmed busyness. The clouds yield to sunshine, allowing begrimed sandstone to take fleeting solace in the shady boughs.

No memorials here denote late locals' favourite spots. The garden has little truck with human past: its demesne is timeless nature. Anthropoids are welcome, but not privileged.

Counselled by the noontide sun, the square extends a dendritic hand towards Haddington Place. The gesture injects a degree of urban effervescence, but doesn't overwhelm. There is détente here: nature at ease with the city.

In an unseasonably cool breeze, I recall the garden's chill winter overcoat, and being gripped by the molten glare of sashes deranged by a viscous sun. How I miss the urgent, ephemeral refulgence of winter's quickening.

Enough of this reverie!

I adjourn to a western tributary and find modest, time-worn tenements fronting modern buy-to-lets. These new builds belong anywhere and serve as monuments to nothing.

In contrast, the semi-occluded splendour of a delicate northern recess mirrors and pays homage to the garden's slow-time. Behind here, balconies diligently attend to drying textiles: a slice of Quartieri Spagnoli.

Perhaps my feline collocutor, now nowhere to be seen, instinctively grasps what I too have come to know: that Gayfield Square possesses a dual identity.

It is incurably Georgian and indisputably Other.

This otherness, its 'character', is only superficially a function of archidiversity. The profound distinction here is spatial. Openness conveys a welcome that, for the New Town at least, is unusual.

The incomer – any incomer – is encouraged to respond to, connect with, the garden and with nature's trove therein. This, in turn, encourages a benign curiosity about, perhaps a conversation with, the surrounding built environment.

Contrast this with the hostile intentions of other New Town gardens: designed to repel, to encourage you to move on. There is nature there, but perhaps not for you.

Gayfield Square is an expression of a different modus vivendi, a product of a different philosophy of the city. It has grown up with the urbe rather than struggled against it.

It should be treasured.

Much more than urban space, it is urbane.—David Hill