6 C O N T E X T 1 3 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 4 Obituary Jim Souness, conservationist and planner James Ronald Souness (1954–2013) was known to many in the IHBC, having been a member for many years. He was established in his early career in the 1970s in the world of historic buildings conservation and he continued that interest to the end. No one before him wrote official memos on Historic Scotland casefiles in Gaelic. No one among his colleagues was as physically hands-on in practical conservation, and in carrying out thatching repairs and re-roofings. No one else had a mysterious source of fresh-quarried slate. Souness was an Edinburgh man with many personae and priorities: family; work as a planner and then historic buildings inspector; conservation; the outdoors; scholarship; culture and nation – Scotland, and Gaeldom. To his Highland friends, he was never Jim, but Seumas. And Seumas would speak Gaelic to whomever, whenever he could. After university he worked as a planner and conservation specialist for Argyll and Bute Council. He discovered his true natural habitat there. He adopted the culture, language and perspectives of the Highlands, becoming in the process an expert thatcher, and an authority on Gaelic culture and on the history of the Highlands. He was indignant at how absentee landlordism impacted on society and on how Gaelic was subordinated. Gentle, always, in the way he dealt with friends and strangers, his politics were on immediate display: for Souness, Gaelic should be lionised, not subverted; Scotland should be ruled not by Westminster but by the people of Scotland. The family moved to Innerleithen when Souness was appointed to a post with Borders Council. In 1995, he was appointed historic buildings inspector with Historic Scotland, advising on works affecting historic buildings, on grant applications, and notably on the governmentfunded Thatched Houses Scheme. Among his interests was enjoying nature, be that climbing in Europe’s highest mountain ranges, canoeing in the Tay, or camping in his beloved Argyll, living off the land. He knew how to have fun, and he enjoyed life far more than most of the rest of us appear to do, always with an up-beat attitude towards the world and a direct questioning of orthodoxies. It is difficult not to smile when you hear his name. Aonghus MacKechnie, Historic Scotland From The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius The fundamental principles of architecture 1. Architecture depends on order, arrangement, eurythmy, symmetry, propriety and economy. 2. Order gives due measure to the members of a work considered separately, and symmetrical agreement to the proportions of the whole. It is an adjustment according to quantity. By this I mean the selection of modules from the members of the work itself and, starting from these individual parts of members, constructing the whole work to correspond. Arrangement includes the putting of things in their proper places and the elegance of effect which is due to adjustments appropriate to the character of the work. Its forms of expression are these: groundplan, elevation, and perspective. A groundplan is made by the proper successive use of compasses and rule, through which we get outlines for the plane surfaces of buildings. An elevation is a picture of the front of a building, set upright and properly drawn in the proportions of the contemplated work. Perspective is the method of sketching a front with the sides withdrawing into the background, the lines all meeting in the centre of a circle. All three come of reflexion and invention. Reflexion is careful and laborious thought, and watchful attention directed to the agreeable effect of one’s plan. Invention, on the other hand, is the solving of intricate problems and the discovery of new principles by means of brilliancy and versatility. These are the departments belonging under arrangement. 3. Eurythmy is beauty and fitness in the adjustments of the members. This is found when the members of a work are of a height suited to their breadth, of a breadth suited to their length and, in a word, when they all correspond symmetrically. 4. Symmetry is a proper agreement between the members of the work itself, and relation between the different parts and the whole general scheme, in accordance with a certain part selected as standard... 5. Propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription, from usage or from nature. From prescription, in the case of hypaethral edifices, open to the sky, in honour of Jupiter Lightning, the Heaven, the Sun, or the Moon: for these are gods whose semblances and manifestations we behold before our very eyes in the sky when it is cloudless and bright. The temples of Minerva, Mars, and Hercules, will be Doric, since the virile strength of these gods makes daintiness entirely inappropriate to their houses. In temples to Venus, Flora, Proserpine, Spring-Water, and the Nymphs, the Corinthian order will be found to have peculiar significance. Jim Souness in Argyll in the 1980s: no one among his colleagues was as physically hands-on in practical conservation.
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