I have become interested also in concrete poetry in relation to architecture & avant-gardening … from the poem as an object on the page to the poem as an object properly realised in sandblasted glass, stone or indeed concrete…” Ian Hamilton Finlay, 1965/66 

The one-hour documentary film “The Boat in the Writing Room: retracing the origins of Stonypath, Little Sparta” explores an almost forgotten but transformative phase in Ian Hamilton Finlay’s early career. Previously confined to the Edinburgh New Town, the year that Finlay and his family spent at Gledfield Farmhouse in Easter Ross, 1965-66, at last gave him space to bring his work into three-dimensional form. He began collaborative production, central to his later practice, and moved definitively into classicism. At Gledfield too, with his partner Sue Finlay (now Swan), he first began to create a garden, forgotten precursor of the celebrated Stonypath, Little Sparta.   

Featuring contemporary photographs of life and work at Gledfield farmhouse, many previously unseen, the film provides an irreplaceable sense of its appearance at that time. In 1966 Finlay removed his wall-poems and other installations after a dispute with the landlords. The traces that remained, the discovery of which helped prompt this project, have now been erased by redevelopment. Along with glimpses of other early landscapes, in particular Perthshire and Orkney, Stonypath is shown as it looked in 1966, and the garden at Little Sparta as it is now. It includes interviews with Sue Swan and Stephen Bann (who first wrote in detail about the period), as well as with two key collaborators of that time, Michael Hamish Glen and Peter Lyle. 

Written and presented by Alistair Peebles and directed by Michael Lloyd, “The Boat in the Writing Room” is an independent co-production by flytingfilms and Brae Editions. It was completed in October 2025 and will be shown for the first time complete at Little Sparta on the afternoon of Sunday 19th July 2026. 

A trailer and review by Brandon Logan of the Stromness premiere is available at www.alistairpeebles.com/seekers-of-the-lost-ark-arc/ 

Sue Swan: “The film is excellent—it is good to have uncovered those early days and put them into perspective—the perspective of the future in fact.” 

Tom Meyer: “I like the film immensely. The ‘resolution’ interesting, as Sue comments, how sunny was the primordial garden, lost now except for your archaeology, and Stephen Bann’s.” 

Professor Stephen Bann: “I found the technical quality was excellent, and the coverage really satisfying, with a wonderful range of contributions that really expanded the scope of the narrative in many ways.”