We must admit to being great fans of Fred Coles, we came across his work only after our first visits to the recumbent circles of NE Scotland, and reading his accounts caused us to relive the wonder we felt as we were discovering these magnificent monuments.
We have been able to discover very little about Fred, we know his full name was Frederick R. Coles and that he held the post of assistant keeper at the National Museum of the Antiquaries of Scotland. We do not know how long he held the post, but we have found publications by him spanning 1900-07.
Much of Fred's published work seems to have been supported by a "Gunning Fellowship" of which we can similarly find little information. Fred seems to have visited the majority of stone circles in Scotland, drawing excellent plans and making detailed observations, most of which are published in the Proccedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Anecdotal accounts have Fred taking his family along on his travels, with his sons helping with measurements etc.
A feature of Fred's work that impressed us as we were researching information for this
website was his accuracy. A measure of Fred's attention to detail may be seen in his engravings. With the majority of antiquarian engravings, we find that most of the small detail is largely invention, with only the gross outlines being anywhere near accurate, but we were astounded when we compared Fred's illustrations to our own
photos and found that they shared many small details.
As an example, look at the detail in Fred's engraving of the Backhill circle
below, although the perspective is slightly different, the small detail on the
stones themselves compares very well to our photo of the circle below taken
almost a hundred years later in 1999. Note how Fred has deliberately chosen an
uncomfortably low viewpoint to draw from, so that the horizon profile is
included in the view.
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Whenever we visit or revisit the Scottish circles now, we are always aware that we are following in Fred's footsteps, indeed, he must have stood in the very spot we did when took the photo above. Nowadays on our visits north of the border we can often be seen at sites clutching one of his ground plans as we plan our photography. There is no doubt in our minds that Fred's was a labour of love, you cannot buy this kind of interest in a subject. Having said that, we must admit to being a little jealous of Fred - imagine being paid to do this!
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