Green banks

Greenbank Garden is a National Trust for Scotland property on the very south edge of Glasgow, actually in East Renfrewshire council area. It's a couple of miles from my house and I pass there quite often on walks; a liminal territory, suburbs shading into farmland. The house and garden both date from the 18th century but it's the garden that's the real draw, lavishly stocked and creatively laid out. Also there's a café!

No doubt Greenbank's garden sees thousands of visitors each year. It would probably lose a fame contest, however, to Green Bank, West Virginia, USA. The Green Bank Observatory has operated since the late 1950s and has played host to several large instruments, including now the Robert C Byrd Telescope, the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world.

In the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), astronomers look for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilisations, perhaps incidental to the normal conduct of their business, perhaps sent out deliberately to say, "we're here!" to anybody who might be listening (for a sense of this work, see the film Contact, science fiction of course but realistic in its depiction of SETI research). Green Bank has been central to these efforts: in Project Ozma (1960), Project Phoenix (1995-1998) and currently in Breakthrough Listen. The chances of success are small but the implications would be enormous, comparable in importance to the Copernican revolution. SETI inevitably catches people's imaginations far beyond the professional community so Green Bank is a pretty famous place.

Meandering past I wondered if there is any connection between the two 'green bank's? Greenbank Garden has played no role in SETI or indeed any science other than horticulture. I'm sure Green Bank Observatory's grounds are well maintained but I doubt the shrubs and grass attract visitors.

Many Scottish place names have been reused in the former colonies. Could Green Bank be one of them? The name is mundane, likely to occur independently to many people for local, topographical reasons. There are several 'Greenbank's across central Scotland. In West Virginia we learn that the name was given in Civil War times, 'from a little green bank on J Pierce Woodell's land beside the stream.' Nonetheless we can look a little closer.

The phone snapshot at left is very poor but possibly gives some sense of how atmospheric Greenbank House is at the end of the day. It was built in 1763 by Robert Allason. Mr Allason started out as a baker in Port Glasgow but diversified to become rich from transatlantic trade. His half-brother William established a store in Falmouth, Virginia. Robert sourced goods for William's store which were exchanged for tobacco, a valuable commodity on this side of the Atlantic. The Allasons had farmed for generations at Flenders, just south of what is now Clarkston. We might imagine some degree of pride and satisfaction when Robert was able to buy Flenders Farm and other parcels of land and build Greenbank House. After the American Wars of Independence he went bankrupt, however, and he had been forced to sell Greenbank by 1784.

From an excellent Inverclyde local history blog we learn that William Allason travelled 'extensively' in Virginia before establishing the store in Falmouth. It does then seem possible that William passed through the very country that would come to be called by almost the same name as his brother's mansion in Scotland. Could he have bequeathed the name? That doesn't seem likely. The account referenced above places the naming of Green Bank a century later. So all we probably have is the most ethereal of resonances, feet that knew one Greenbank treading the earth of the other. Perhaps, in an obscure way, a barely perceptible trace of the sort that will eventually reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The Allasons traded also in the Caribbean and owned property there. I've seen Robert Allason described as a 'slave trader' and he definitely profited from plantations where slaves carried out the work. Yuck. But look also at the full address of Green Bank Observatory. It's in 'Pocahontas County, West Virginia'. Both green banks also bump us against the brutality of colonialism.

Ending on a milder note, here's my wife Margaret in the beautiful woodlands surrounding Greenbank, after a working day.