Russell Mills is perhaps best known for his album covers, having designed record sleeves for Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel and Nine Inch Nails amongst others, but in 1987 Mills built this stone structure at Grizedale, pretty much on the same spot where Charlie Whinney's 'Sharing' is now, just north of the Millwood Trail.

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Sometimes called 'Homage To Schwitters', it was built in honour of Kurt Schwitters, the German artist who is buried in Ambleside, where he saw out his final years. It's quite tricky to do justice to Schwitters' works in a single paragraph but safe to say he was a multi-talented chap. As well as being at the front of the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, his poetry and paintings weren't bad either, although it is his collages for which he is best remembered.

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When it came to building a monument to him at Grizedale, Mills (aided by his friend Ian Walton) gathered local stone and wood to create a structure inspired by Schwitters' Merz Barn relief, formerly at Elterwater. Various nooks and crannies in the wall were filled with trinkets found in the area. They decided to call it 'Shintin', a Yorkshire term meaning 'the lady's not home' (if you're confused by that, try saying "she isn't in" in a Yorkshire accent). Russell Mills says of the sculpture:

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"Within the wall and in amongst the vertical tangle we built in or inserted niches holding various found objects – reliquaries to Schwitters and the collage principle. Materials used included stone, wood and found objects such as old boxes, rusted metal and a split red rubber ball. Schwitters’ Elterwater Merz barn relief served as our influence and inspiration: the finding and inclusion of the red rubber ball being a fortuitous and direct nod to his relief. A family of mice took up residence soon after we’d completed it.

I came up with the title for several reasons: I’m from Yorkshire; I liked the sound of the word; and, importantly, I was sure Schwitters would’ve approved of the joke and its ambiguity."

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Amelia Harvey tells the full story of the piece on her page, along with some excellent pictures, but basically, 'Shintin' did not last as long as it perhaps should have done. It was apparently damaged by people sitting on it while they watched cars fly past, at one of Grizedale's regular off-road rally events, although there may have been some politics at play too, since the sculpture was not a Grizedale Arts commission, but rather a Northern Arts one. As Harvey says, "Schwitters was never appreciated in his time, it seems maybe this sculpture wasn’t either."

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Kurt Schwitters moved to the Lake District in 1945 and died in 1948, the day after he was finally granted British citizenship. He therefore missed the Grizedale sculpture project by thirty years, but he would have no doubt approved. He once said:

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"I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and rubbish heaps should not serve well as materials for paintings; they suited the purpose just as well as factory-made paints It is possible to cry out using bits of old rubbish, and that's what I did, gluing and nailing them together."