Читать книгу The Isles of Scilly - Rosemary Parslow - Страница 49

There are a number of former quarries on St Mary’s. Most are overgrown or incorporated into fields, and many are unlikely to be noticed. One you cannot miss is on the side of Buzza Hill. Rising up from Porth Cressa beach, the hill is a popular vantage point to look out over the town and beach below. The quarry at the foot of the hill is mainly used as an informal picnic or rest area and has a mixture of scrub and rough vegetation as well as grassland in the base. Among the plants that have colonised the walls of the quarry are Hottontot fig and another South African succulent, lesser sea-fig Erepsia heteropetala. Another unusual alien grass, rough dog’s-tail grass Cynosurus echinatus, also grows all along the sides of the track up the hill, usually with greater quaking-grass Briza maxima and tall stands of yellow and occasionally white sea radish Raphanus raphanistrum maritimus. Further up the hill yet another unusual alien called wireplant Muehlenbeckia complexa scrambles over the walls, covering most of the vegetation and even the ground with dense wirelike growths so it becomes a kind of mad sculpture. Once at the top of the hill you reach Buzza Tower (a former windmill restored to commemorate a visit by King Edward VII), surrounded by scrub, tall grasses and herbs. The shrubs include broom (probably native here) as well as gorse and bramble.

At the top of Buzza Hill you will find you are on the edge of Hugh Town again and there are many houses, some of which are guesthouses. Inland at Carreg Dhu (pronounced, and sometimes written, as Crake Dew) is another former quarry. This has now been developed as a garden open to the public (see Chapter 13). There is also the former quarry on the Garrison, which has now vegetated over and is probably generally passed unobserved. Other small quarries exist all around the island, and may have just been used very locally to produce building stone or ram.