I recently bought a macro lens which doubles as a 100mm prime lens, together with the ability to focus extremely close, and I thought the public art installation of the Cursing Stone and Reiver Carpet in Carlisle might make a decent test subject. Having said that Sony recently announced a new fisheye zoom lens which could also prove quite tempting.

Related article: Do I need to get a fisheye lens

According to the artist’s website both the Cursing Stone and the Reiver Carpet were part of Carlisle’s millennium project and it dates to 2003. The new underground extension was built to connect Tullie House Museum with Carlisle Castle and the brief was to create a ‘cultural link’ between the two sites.

The Boarder Reiver families became the focus of the work by artist Gordon Young, who was born in Carlisle and from an ancient Reiver family, and the Cursing Stone features the Archbishop of Glasgow’s infamous curse of 1525. It was apparently aimed at the Reiver families known for terrorising the region and the curse was read out by priests in every parish in an attempt to curb their illegal activities.

The text was inscribed into a large 14 ton granite boulder and the ‘Mother of all Curses’ sits at the end of an 80 metre path which bears the names of all the Reiver families.

Apparently, even before its installation, the stone caused controversy by being cited as a possible ‘shrine for devil worship’ and it was even blamed for the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001. It was commissioned by the then Carlisle City Council.

I have photographed it on a number occasions and I quite like both the stone and the carpet but it was unfortunate that it was a bit waterlogged which was presumably from yesterday’s torrential rainfall.

The artist is responsible for a number of other public artworks including the comedy carpet in Blackpool and the Road to the Isles in Auchterarder in Perthshire.