I have had to do with many human sanitary arrangements in my time, but I have never met quite such an enchanting one as the Hillswick public toilet. It started with the choice collection of 18C earthenware chamber pots I had to catalogue in a museum. At one point I collaborated with an artist to reconstruct a Roman public toilet from the excavated remains at Verulamium (see Hertfordshire Archaeology & History vol.17). Then there was the collection of plum and blackberry pips which had been tipped down a medieval cesspit in St Albans. I regularly walk past the stone outlet shaft of a medieval toilet in the Bishop’s Palace in Kirkwall. Before the reclamation of the foreshore it would have emptied onto the beach, cleaned up every high tide.

I have used an earth trench while working on an excavation in the French countryside, and taken my turn emptying the ghastly drum from a chemical toilet while working on another dig in the English countryside. The deal was that if the girls did their turn emptying the loo, they got a turn driving the dumper truck as well as the boys. During lockdown when there was a shortage of toilet paper, I investigated the ultra-modern Japanese toilet, which if correctly programmed (I understand foreigners often get it wrong) will automatically wash and dry your bottom for you. Or flood the cubicle.

But never have I met with such a charming bog-house as this community-run public toilet in Hillswick, Shetland, with its forecourt filled with lavatory pans used as planters. A flowery delight!