This hallowed place was visited by boat by Hutton, Hall and Playfair in June 1788 when the ‘…mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time’. On my own pilgrimage in October 2020 I saw horizontal Old Red Sandstone (yes, it is red), deposited by rivers in Devonian times, underlain by vertical ‘greywacke’ (yes, it is grey), deposited in Ordovician oceans and enjoying deformation as continents collided. The contact between the two opens the mind to the length of time needed for these processes to play out, which now we can measure in tens of millions of years.
“Hutton's … laboured, rambling style of writing … did nothing to help promote his ideas” (Phil Stone), so his concepts were promoted by his friends such as Playfair, successors such as Lyell, and modern geologists for whom “The location continues to inspire and instills a sense of duty in us, as scholars of the Earth’s formation, to communicate and share the principles of deep time” (Stuart Archer). For example, Rob Butler’s excellent YouTube video describes a virtual field trip, the realities of access via a very steep slippy grassy slope, and the way in which 'geologists build an understanding of the Earth through deductive reasoning’.
Siccar Point Panorama, Steve Garrett (2020)
Yet there is more to be said. Over the past ten years this location has begun to inspire poets and musicians, particularly those based in and around this part of Scotland, as they explore geology in creativity.
Poet Tarn MacArthur says this is ’ …where giddy minds are left to plumb their deeper misconceptions of deep time.’ Jack Cooper senses that ‘the cliffs are at my back and eternity stretches ahead above beneath’. Edinburgh geo-poet Patrick Corbett ‘tries to grasp the contradictions between the two types of rock … to capture the upheaval and erosion over an unknown period of time”; his poem is cleverly portrayed on a stratigraphic sketch with the ‘older’ words eroded at the contact between the two layers.
Siccar Point, by Patrick Corbett (2019), published in The Edinburgh Geologist
Karine Polwart and Dave Milligan's (both from nearby East Lothian) song ‘Siccar Point’ chronicles the journey of Hall, Playfair and Hutton who saw how “sharp grey ribs rise up … a lost seabed lifted to the stars” and reflects that “the Earth is never still, it’s never still”. Karine and Dave recently dedicated a moving live performance of the song to geologists (happily naming my partner Kitty).
Ambient music combines field recordings of Siccar Point to amplify the sense of place. The musician and scientist Scottish Nature Boy grew up nearby and experienced ‘The Siccar Point Unconformity Revelation’. In creating his track ‘Deep Time’, East Lothian ambient composer Michael Begg said he had ‘ … let go of linear narrative and embrace the cycles of deep time … observing coastal erosion … and placing a microphone into the 'Abyss of Time’.
Glenda Rome’s film ‘Expressing the Earth’, due to be released in 2025, will feature Siccar Point in a central role articulating the broad field of Geopoetics, also featuring Michael Begg’s music.
So this place, long revered by Earth scientists as a place of individual or collective pilgrimage, increasingly inspires creative expression of our shared experience of staring into the abyss of time.
Book Review by Philip Stone (2022): ‘Hutton, The Founder of Modern Geology’
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsl/sjg/article/58/1/sjg2022-008/613447/Book-Review
‘Hutton’s Great Unconformity’, by Stuart Archer, John Underhill and Kenneth Peters (2017)
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/aapg/aapgbull/article-abstract/101/4/571/242218/Hutton-s-Great-Unconformity-at-Siccar-Point
‘Siccar Point - Crucible of Geology’, by Rob Butler (2024)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx-nYKHvVno
‘Hutton’s Unconformity’, by Tarn MacArthur (2017)
https://stanzapoetry.org/poetry_map/poetry-map-of-scotland-poem-no-335/
‘Siccar Point’, by Patrick Corbett (2019) published in The Edinburgh Geologist
https://edinburghgeolsoc.org/eg_pdfs/edinburgh-geologist-66.pdf
http://www.geopoetrick.co.uk/
‘The Testimony of the Rocks’ by Jack Cooper (2020)
https://www.scottishgeologytrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/HughMillerWritingComp2020_MiddletonMillerPrize_The-Testimony-of-the-Ro.pdf
'Siccar Point’, by Karine Polwart and Dave Milligan (2021)
https://karinepolwart.bandcamp.com/track/siccar-point
https://karinepolwart.substack.com/p/touching-time
‘The Siccar Point unconformity revelation’, by scottishnatureboy (2016)
https://soundcloud.com/cottishatureboy/the-siccar-point-unconformity?in=cottishatureboy/sets/omdat-de-natuur-ons-lief-is
‘Deep Time’, by Michael Begg (2025)
https://omnempathy.bandcamp.com/track/deep-time
'Expressing the Earth’ by Glenda Rome (2025)
https://filmfreeway.com/ExpressingTheEarth