A pipe dream of turning a former opencast coal site in Kelty, Scotland, into an iconic landscaped art project headed up by Charles Jencks, has been scrapped.

The multi-million pound scheme, the ‘Fife Earth Project’, would have seen the former mining site transformed into a major tourist attraction explaining Scottish history and diaspora. Four different landscaped mounds across the 665 acre park would have been used to represent the continents that Scotland had influenced.

The attraction would also have featured six miles of walkways, a large open body of water acting as a Scotland shaped loch, and would have been a major tourism driver for the area.

Plans were announced in 2009 and work on the St Ninian’s site had already begun, however, due to complications arising from Scottish Coal’s (the original site owners) liquidation, the attraction will not be completed in the foreseeable future.

The new operator of the site, Hargreaves, has worked to finish the final coal extraction and will be attempting to restore the site to a green space. Despite this, Charles Jencks said in a statement: “The end to the Scottish World Project at Kelty is very sad and most regrettable.” He went on to say that if the project could be completed “the potentials are enormous.’

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