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Aigas House - Geograph
Aigas (Scottish Gaelic: ''Àigeis'', meaning "Place of the Gap") is a small hamlet in the Highland Council area of Scotland. It is 5 miles (8 km) southwest of Beauly and 15 miles (24 km) west of Inverness, on the north bank of the River Beauly. Crask of Aigas is nearby, to the northeast. In the past, Aigas was divided into two parts, ''Easter'' and ''Wester Aigas.'' In 1580, King James VI granted both of these areas of land to Alexander Forbes of Pitsligo, a nobleman of Clan MacFarlane and great-great-grandfather of Alexander Forbes, 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo. In 1610 however, ownership of the lands was again transferred by King James to Simon Fraser, 6th Lord Lovat. The lands since passed down the male line of Clan Fraser of Lovat. Archaeological evidence shows settlements around the area of Aigas dating back to the Bronze Age, with ancient dwellings made from local whinstone. Nowadays, Aigas is home to a popular, 9-hole golf course, established in 1993, and is se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Highland (council Area)
Highland ( gd, A' Ghàidhealtachd, ; sco, Hieland) is a council area in the Scottish Highlands and is the largest local government area in the United Kingdom. It was the 7th most populous council area in Scotland at the 2011 census. It shares borders with the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, Moray and Perth and Kinross. Their councils, and those of Angus and Stirling, also have areas of the Scottish Highlands within their administrative boundaries. The Highland area covers most of the mainland and inner-Hebridean parts of the historic counties of Inverness-shire and Ross and Cromarty, all of Caithness, Nairnshire and Sutherland and small parts of Argyll and Moray. Despite its name, the area does not cover the entire Scottish Highlands. Name Unlike the other council areas of Scotland, the name ''Highland'' is often not used as a proper noun. The council's website only sometimes refers to the area as being ''Highland'', and other times as being ''the Hig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whinstone
Whinstone is a term used in the quarrying industry to describe any hard dark-coloured rock. Examples include the igneous rocks, basalt and dolerite, as well as the sedimentary rock, chert. Etymology The Northern English/Scots term ''whin'' is first attested in the fourteenth century, and the compound ''whinstone'' from the sixteenth. , ''Oxford English Dictionary Online'', first edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Accessed 8 August 2021. The '''' concludes that the etymology of ''whin'' is obscure, though it has been claimed, fancifully, that the term 'whin' derives from the sound it makes when struck with a hammer. Description Massive outcrops of whinstone oc ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eurasian Beaver
The Eurasian beaver (''Castor fiber'') or European beaver is a beaver species that was once widespread in Eurasia, but was hunted to near-extinction for both its fur and castoreum. At the turn of the 20th century, only about 1,200 beavers survived in eight relict populations in Europe and Asia. It has been reintroduced to much of its former range, and now occurs from Spain, Central Europe, Great Britain and Scandinavia to a few regions in China and Mongolia. It is listed as least concern on the IUCN Red List, as it recovered well in most of Europe. It is extirpated in Portugal, Moldova, and Turkey. Taxonomy ''Castor fiber'' was the scientific name used by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, who described the beaver in his work ''Systema Naturae''. Between 1792 and 1997, several Eurasian beaver zoological specimens were described and proposed as subspecies, including: *''C. f. albus'' and ''C. f. solitarius'' by Robert Kerr in 1792 *''C. f. fulvus'' and ''C. f. variegatus'' by Johann Matth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scottish Wildcat
The Scottish wildcat is a European wildcat (''Felis silvestris silvestris'') population in Scotland. It was once widely distributed across Great Britain, but the population has declined drastically since the turn of the 20th century due to habitat loss and persecution. It is now limited to northern and eastern Scotland. Camera-trapping surveys carried out in the Scottish Highlands between 2010 and 2013 revealed that wildcats live foremost in mixed woodland, whereas feral and domestic cats (''Felis catus'') were photographed mostly in grasslands. It is listed as Critically Endangered in the United Kingdom and is threatened by hybridization with domestic cats. Since all individuals sampled in recent years showed high levels of hybridisation, this population is thought to undergo extinction. Taxonomy ''Felis grampia'' was the scientific name proposed by Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. in 1907 who first described the skin and the skull of a wildcat specimen from Scotland. He argued th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aigas Field Centre
Aigas Field Centre is a nature centre based at the home of Natural history, naturalist and author John Lister-Kaye, Sir John Lister-Kaye, Aigas House. The centre was opened in 1977 by Ecology, ecologist Frank Fraser Darling, Sir Frank Fraser Darling, and provides nature-based holidays for adults and environmental education services for school children. It is located at Aigas, next to the River Beauly, west of Beauly and west of Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands, Highlands of Scotland. 57.4389°N, 4.565°W. House of Aigas, once a Victorian sporting estate, was owned by the Gordon-Oswalds, who added the Victorian extensions to what was an 18th-century tacksmans house. The house was then owned by Inverness County Council as an old people's home, before Lister-Kaye persuaded them to sell it to him. Aigas began a beaver demonstration project in 2006. Two Eurasian beavers were released into a 200-acre enclosure, which includes a loch and surrounding woodland. The beavers have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Lister-Kaye
Sir John Philip Lister Lister-Kaye, 8th Baronet, (born 8 May 1946) is an English naturalist, conservationist, author who is owner and director of the Aigas Field Centre, among other business interests. He is married with four children and has lived in the Highlands of Scotland since 1969. Early life Lister-Kaye was born on 8 May 1946 at Wakefield in Yorkshire and is the son of Sir John Lister-Kaye, 7th Baronet and the former Audrey Helen Carter. His older sister, Mary Eugenia Helen Lister-Kaye, is the wife of Nigel Carrel. He was born into an ancient established family who for many generations had been Yorkshire landowners, distinguished political figures and successful industrialists with interests in both quarrying and mining.''Song of the Rolling Earth'' p. 18. Reportedly, John's early fascination with natural history was something his family hoped he would eventually grow out of. In 1959, at the age of 13, his parents sent him to Allhallows School, near Lyme Regis in D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retirement Home
A retirement home – sometimes called an old people's home or old age home, although ''old people's home'' can also refer to a nursing home – is a multi-residence housing facility intended for the elderly. Typically, each person or couple in the home has an apartment-style room or suite of rooms. Additional facilities are provided within the building. This can include facilities for meals, gatherings, recreation activities, and some form of health or hospital care. A place in a retirement home can be paid for on a rental basis, like an apartment, or can be bought in perpetuity on the same basis as a condominium. A retirement home differs from a nursing home primarily in the level of medical care given. Retirement communities, unlike retirement homes, offer separate and autonomous homes for residents. Retirement homes offer meal-making and some personal care services, according to ARCO. Assisted living facilities, memory care facilities and nursing homes can all be referr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Red Cedar
''Thuja plicata'' is an evergreen coniferous tree in the cypress family Cupressaceae, native to western North America. Its common name is western redcedar (western red cedar in the UK), and it is also called Pacific redcedar, giant arborvitae, western arborvitae, just cedar, giant cedar, or shinglewood. It is not a true cedar of the genus ''Cedrus''. Description ''Thuja plicata'' is a large to very large tree, ranging up to tall and in trunk diameter. Trees growing in the open may have a crown that reaches the ground, whereas trees densely spaced together will exhibit a crown only at the top, where light can reach the leaves. The trunk swells at the base and has shallow roots. The bark is thin, gray-brown and fissured into vertical bands. As the tree ages, the top is damaged by wind and replaced by inferior branches. The species is long-lived; some trees can live well over a thousand years, with the oldest verified aged 1,460. The foliage forms flat sprays with scale-like ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nootka Cypress
''Callitropsis nootkatensis'', formerly known as ''Cupressus nootkatensis'' ( syn. ''Xanthocyparis nootkatensis'') is a species of trees in the cypress family native to the coastal regions of northwestern North America. This species goes by many common names including: Nootka cypress, yellow cypress, Alaska cypress, Nootka cedar, yellow cedar, Alaska cedar, and Alaska yellow cedar. The specific epithet "nootkatensis" is derived from its discovery by Europeans on the lands of a First Nation of Canada, those lands of the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, who were formerly referred to as the Nootka. Description ''Callitropsis nootkatensis'' is an evergreen tree growing up to tall, exceptionally , with diameters up to . The bark is thin, smooth and purplish when young, turning flaky and gray. The branches are commonly pendulous, with foliage in flat sprays and dark green scale-leaves measuring long. The cones, maturing biannually, have 4 (occasionally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giant Sequia
''Sequoiadendron giganteum'' (giant sequoia; also known as giant redwood, Sierra redwood, Sierran redwood, California big tree, Wellingtonia or simply big treea nickname also used by John Muir) is the sole living species in the genus ''Sequoiadendron'', and one of three species of coniferous trees known as redwoods, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae, together with ''Sequoia sempervirens'' (coast redwood) and ''Metasequoia glyptostroboides'' (dawn redwood). Giant sequoia specimens are the most massive trees on Earth. The common use of the name ''sequoia'' usually refers to ''Sequoiadendron giganteum'', which occurs naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. The giant sequoia is listed as an endangered species by the IUCN, with fewer than 80,000 trees remaining. Since its last assessment as an endangered species in 2011, it was estimated that another 13–19% of the population (or 9,761–13,63 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scottish Baronial Architecture
Scottish baronial or Scots baronial is an architectural style of 19th century Gothic Revival which revived the forms and ornaments of historical architecture of Scotland in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Reminiscent of Scottish castles, buildings in the Scots baronial style are characterised by elaborate rooflines embellished with conical roofs, tourelles, and battlements with Machicolations, often with an asymmetric plan. Popular during the fashion for Romanticism and the Picturesque, Scots baronial architecture was equivalent to the Jacobethan Revival of 19th-century England, and likewise revived the Late Gothic appearance of the fortified domestic architecture of the elites in the Late Middle Ages and the architecture of the Jacobean era. Among architects of the Scots baronial style in the Victorian era were William Burn and David Bryce. Romanticism in Scotland coincided with a Scottish national identity during the 19th century, and some of the most embl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victorian Era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the '' Belle Époque'' era of Continental Europe. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists and the evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period, and an increasing turn towards romanticism and even mysticism in religion, social values, and arts. This era saw a staggering amount of technological innovations that proved key to Britain's power and prosperity. Doctors started moving away from tradition and mysticism towards a science-based approach; medicine advanced thanks to the adoption ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
