On the early morning of Sunday 7th May 2017, I set off to visit ‘Stank’
The Stank Mausoleum was built in 1925 at the point in this old Roy map where the four sections just happen to meet:
No place could perhaps appear less like it ‘sounds’!
I was looking for the ruined mausoleum to Lord Esher.
Lord Esher’s Scottish home was at the Roman camp in Stirling. Since his death it has been a hotel:
It was at this hotel that my grandfather Rab Scott met The Beatles and had a drink with them:
Today, Esher’s Mausoleum is marked this way:
Lord Esher was thought to be the grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte (his mother was thought to be Napoleon’s illegitimate daughter)
Lord Esher was:
Lord Esher:
Lord Esher was different:
Lord Esher was married with four children but it is considered that he was probably more attracted to his own sex
Lord Esher was respected for the clarity and beauty in his use of language:
Lord Esher’s ruined Mausoleum is on the route to Ben Ledi. Thousands of walkers and mountaineers pass it by each year without knowing.
It was with considerable difficulty that I found it.
Even Hale Bopp found it a struggle to find!
It may be that Lord Esher’s remains, despite his wishes, are not here at Stank?
If that is so, perhaps this is why this mausoleum is sadder than sad.
This was how the Mausoleum appeared at the time of Lord Esher’s death in 1930:
Lord Esher was clearly a great admirer, as I am, of Robert Louis Stevenson.
These inscriptions, of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, survive by the collapsed doorway to Esher’s Mausoleum:
I needed to visit Stank.
To play this short film please click here or on the image above.