Also known as 'Departure Lounge', here is a sculpture with a story. Placed off the beaten track in the west of the forest, in the area known as Scale Green (roughly where 'Silurian Cant' can be found), this hut was supposed to stand for years, left to weather away at the mercy of the elements. Except it didn't quite work out that way. David Kemp had this to say after the piece was finished:

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"I had been at Grizedale for several weeks. The solitude, the rustling silence of the forest, the mysterious hugeness of it, had effected their subtle changes on me. I had abandoned the marked trails and wandered the secret spaces behind the trees. After a while, the possibility of elusive denizens, oblivious to the business of foresting, except as scavengers, became the patent allegory.

The Birdman lives deep in the forest. Combining ancient myths, relics from a distant technological past and the company of birds, he has re-invented flight. The hut is abandoned, the Birdman has flown. The remains of his earthly abode are decaying, but still reminiscent of his erstwhile magic. In the future's future, we are confronted with the remainders of post-technological shamanism. Birds now inhabit the hut. Nature gently takes over the old place of power. They blend together as the seasons go by and will, sometime, be one again.

This piece was made entirely from wind-blown timber and items found in forest dumps. It is located in a remote clearing, looking to the mountains. Hopefully it will disintegrate gently with time, and its dereliction contribute to its poignancy."

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Upon entering the hut, the visitor would be confronted with a collection of what can only be described as 'trinkets', like walking into an eccentric inventor's garden shed. For several winters, according to some walkers' reports, it was even home to an owl which would scare any intruders senseless as it flew off. The walls were lined with electrical parts, shells, feathers and countless other knick-knacks, while a ladder led out through the roof to a small platform higher up.

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The story of what became of the sculpture is best described on Kemp's own blog, but basically the savage storms of 1987 destroyed the line of trees which had previously shielded the hut from view of the road, although miraculously the Birdman's hut itself was undamaged, surrounded by devastation. Faced with a massive tidying-up job and not wanting people wandering across the area to get at the sculpture, the Forestry Commission decided to fence the area off and take the piece down.

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Nowadays, if you walk south from Carron Crag along the forest road, the land to your left is no longer fenced off and the woods have regrown. Somewhere amidst that tangle of trees is where the Birdman re-invented flight all those years ago.

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Also by this artist:

The Chariot 1980

The Heron 1981

Rook Crossing 1981

Deer Hunter 1982

Forest Fugue 1984

The Woodwinders 1984

The Ancient Forester 1988

The Ancient Forester II 1995