Worlds apart: The mounds represent neighbouring galaxies (Image: Charles Jencks)

The Crawick Multiverse

Dumfries and Galloway, UK

IN A disused open-cast coal mine deep within Scotland’s Lowther Hills, an architect and a duke have built a whole new universe. In fact, it’s even bigger than that: they’ve constructed a multiverse – out of grass, water and rock.

The 22-hectare site at Crawick, a few miles north of Dumfries, has been transformed from an eyesore into a vast work of land art. At first glance, it looks like a remarkably huge and pristine system of earthworks, dominated by two vast mounds and two stone circles, one seemingly collapsed, one still standing. But, consulting the map, you learn that the mounds are intended to represent the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. The fallen circle stands for our supercluster of galaxies; the other, the entire multiverse to which our universe (perhaps) belongs, and after which the site is named.


Look closer, and the cosmic intent reveals itself further. The paths that wind around each galactic mound are spiral arms, culminating in a “black hole” at their summits. Numerous other celestial signifiers are scattered elsewhere: radiating lines of rock indicate cometary impacts; a cluster of megaliths perched on a steep ridge forms a hand pointing to the north star; and a buried chamber conceals artefacts alluding to both the mythical and magnetic centres of the Earth.

The winding paths around each galactic mound are spiral arms, reaching a black hole at the summits

The spiralling ring of stones representing the multiverse contains more than 100 boulders. Each stands for a different universe, with different laws of physics. GRAVITY 2 STRONG says one, within an engraving reminiscent of the space-time diagrams beloved of physicists. This one is shaped like a biconvex lens, suggesting that the universe has collapsed on itself. WELL-BALANCED says another, whose engraving opens out from a narrow channel to a broad vase. In this universe, like our own, a brief, early period of rapid inflation has given way to sedate expansion.

How did this colossal homage to cosmology come to be? Local villagers had long been disgruntled by the ex-industrial eyesore in their midst. They lobbied the Duke of Buccleuch, whose family seat is nearby, to remediate the site. But they didn’t want it simply cleaned up: they wanted something that might replace employment lost when the coal mine closed in the 1960s.

The duke turned to architect Charles Jencks, whose nearby home, Portrack House, is also the site of his most celebrated work. The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, about half the size of the Crawick Multiverse, is replete with art, ornaments and horticultural features that refer, sometimes explicitly and sometimes subtly, to ideas from modern science. For example, the kitchen garden explores the structure and function of DNA through sculpture, while a steep and winding water cascade traces out the history of the universe – each level representing a different development, from the big bang to the emergence of life.

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is inspired by modern science (Image: Jane Barlow / TSPL/Camera Press)

Moulding a landscape to explore some of the most abstruse concepts in cosmology might seem odd, but it is not new. It’s hard to speak with much assurance about the intentions behind the UK’s profusion of prehistoric henges and stone circles – which the Crawick Multiverse so closely resembles – but the numerous astronomical alignments they incorporate suggest an attempt to connect with the cosmos.

We can be surer that other gardens were meant as microcosms – albeit with underlying models that we would today view as more mystical than scientific. Traditional Japanese gardens, for example, often include a representation of Mount Meru, the mountain at the centre of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The layouts and ornamentation of gardens in many other cultures, from Moorish Spain to Renaissance Italy, also explore ideas about the forms of heaven and earth.

That may not be such a popular theme nowadays, but it persists: amid the corporate showcases of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show was a small but striking garden, dominated by a lattice of thick, curving steel rods. Designed by the National Schools Observatory, it was intended to show how lines of light bend as they pass around massive but invisible clusters of dark matter.

The Crawick Multiverse is at the other end of the spectrum – a vast sculptural intervention into the Lower Nithsdale valley. In some ways, it fits better with the grand tradition of land art like James Turrell’s work at Roden crater, or Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Or to take a more cynical view, it is also in keeping with the British tradition of follies: huge projects commissioned by the landed gentry, often reflecting their personal visions of the world, sometimes intended to stimulate the local economy, but often lacking a clear purpose.

There is certainly an air of “build it and they will come” around the Crawick Multiverse. The hope is that it will attract tourists and serve as an amphitheatre for events – but there is still much work to be done to make it visitor-friendly. Another of Jencks’s works, also set in a former Scottish colliery, is gradually succumbing to entropy after its funding ran out, yellow gorse creeping over its spiralling mounds.

I wonder how engaging people will find the Multiverse’s rather austere and cryptic style. A gaggle of physicists and art historians convened for a symposium to mark its opening are admiring, but local opinion is more mixed. “Who’s going to come here? It’s a long way off the path to look at cosmic rocks,” says one. “I think it’s a grand gesture, something different,” says another.

“It’s cool,” says a child, pausing in his romp around the Milky Way; his mates nod. “I don’t get it,” says another, “even though I tried to read up on it.”

Jencks doesn’t seem worried. “Once you know a landscape is meaningful, you read it in a different way,” he says. “You get more out of it than I put in.”

He has a point. Having wound my way to the top of the Milky Way and stopped to admire the view, I noticed the minute figure of my wife atop neighbouring Andromeda. For a moment, I am powerfully aware of the gulf between us, with a sense of distance that is far more visceral than my cerebral understanding of what 2.5 million light years of space might mean.

I am struck with a sense of distance far more visceral than my understanding of 2.5 million light years

Time will tell how many others have such experiences. Perhaps the Multiverse really will prove a new way to explore the cosmos.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Bringing the heavens down to earth”