The countess with the medicines
I was interested in the article on Slains in the February issue.
My maternal great-great-grandfather, Alexander Davidson, was a tenant of the Earl, farming South Hay Farm. (His father before him was on Hay Farm).
As well as farming, Alexander was the local carrier, collecting orders from round about, then off to Peterhead with horse and cart, not finishing until late.
When he became too infirm, his son George left his job as gas maker at Pitfour House to take over the farm. George was a widower, so his only daughter (my grandmother) was his housekeeper.
She told me that my great-great-grandfather was confined to a wooden chair and that the Countess of Errol personally came with medicines for him.
I believe she was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria. I wonder if Alan Hay knows which countess that was.
David Davidson,
davidson366@btinternet.com
Alan Hay writes: The Countess concerned would be Eliza Amelia Gore, daughter of Gen. Hon Sir Charles Gore, of the family of the Earls of Aran (in Ireland). She married William Harry, 19th Earl of Erroll and yes, she was Queen Victoria’s lady-in-waiting. She died in 1916 at Kew.
Missing lyrics? Just ask Robbie
Please help me. My dad, whose name is James Paul, is 93 years old and the last of his family.
Dad was born in Rathen, then moved to Knowhead, Strichen, a place I remember well from visiting when I was small.
My granny then moved into Strichen with my auntie Bella, where she died in 1971. I have a cousin in Mintlaw, one in Longside, and another in Banff.
Dad’s mother used to sing a song to him and hence it was passed down to me. I am trying to find the lyrics to no avail and just wondered if you could help. It starts like this:
When you’re born ye’ve got na hair at all
Just a wee roond headie like a ball
It’s nae lang, it’s true
Ye’ve a thack and a oo
Then ye grow up and it gets parted.
If I could find out the name of the song or the writer, then perhaps I could explore more and even try to find it on CD.
We still visit the North-East and really enjoy our holidays there.
June Perks,
Glendower Road, Perry Barr, Birmingham.
Editor: There was only one person to ask – Robbie Shepherd, and sure enough, he came up trumps: “The song was written and sung by Rab The Rhymer who was a popular radio performer singing at the piano in broadcasts from the BBC Aberdeen Studios. He recorded this song on Beltona in 1939.
“Rab The Rhymer was actually Dr Douglas F. Raitt, a marine biologist who worked in the Marine Laboratory in Torry. He had several scientific papers published and it may have been his employment in the civil service that made him shy of revealing his real identity. Tragically he died as a result of an accident involving his car in his garage.
“I will send off a tape of the song for you to pass on.”
The lowest place in Scotland
Readers will be aware of recent stories in the press that Rubislaw Quarry in Aberdeen has been in the news of late, having been placed on the property market at offers over £30,000.
According to Google, the floor of the quarry is 180 feet below sea level.
I expect that some coal or mineral mine shafts may have reached greater depths, but Rubislaw was always open to the elements.
Can any reader tell me if this was the lowest place in Scotland, or U.K. even, when in use?
John Fiddes,
Inverness. thetilt26@ukonline.co.uk
Mark Chalmers explains: Rubislaw Quarry’s sump definitely was not the lowest place in Britain: I think that honour goes to the pit bottom of the Boulby Potash Mine in Cleveland, the deepest mine of any sort in the UK.
I have not been there (yet) but I did visit Harworth Colliery at the end of last year – www.scottisharchitecture.com/blog/read/495 – and went 3,218 feet under the surface. It is the deepest of the remaining coal mines in the UK.
In terms of unenclosed places, as far as I am aware a couple of Welsh slate quarries have holes which are deeper than Rubislaw’s. One is called Dorothea Quarry: the water there is 492 ft deep, as opposed to approximately 394 ft at Rubislaw; Dorothea closed in 1970/1, virtually at the same time as Rubislaw.
See www.topforge.co.uk/Photographs/Indust
Retain and enhance Union Terrace Gardens
The preview of Frances Walker’s exhibition in Aberdeen Art Gallery was fair bursting at the seams with former students of Frances, prestigious artists and all who enjoy fine art and seek aesthetic delight.
In the midst of this visual celebration, I chanced upon a vigorous discussion about the proposals for Union Terrace Gardens. Both sides of the well-known debate were being forwarded and defended, by two dear friends of many years, and the measure of validity in both arguments deserved contemplation. So, I resumed my tour of the exhibition.
When I spotted Sir Ian Wood, I was tempted to ask him to convene a forum, there and then.
It was not going to happen at the preview, but opening up debate with the likes of those in attendance would have been an event not to be missed! A ‘stair-heid row’ of immense aesthetic proportions, I imagine.
Why should both proposals be mutually exclusive and why is the ‘public consultation’ so presented? I envisaged walking from Union Bridge into a modest civic square accommodating the Peacock Arts Centre, with the iconic steps and granite balustrades beyond, keeping their open view to the Library, St Marks and Theatre.
There might even be a delicate tracery of bridges and walkways drawing people to and from Belmont Street, or to a lower level. Can we keep the soul of what is there and gain a modest ‘piazza’? Surely there is a design which will get this right.
Perhaps it is time we all cooled down and searched for a way to retain most of what we treasure, yet enhance the area for future generations.
Fred Bull, Logie Coldstone.
Having read the article in Leopard (Feb. 2010) by Tom Smith, chairman of Aberdeen City & Shire Economic Future, on Sir Ian Wood’s proposal for the regeneration of Union Terace Gardens, I think it is only fair that the alternative scheme, proposed by Peacock Visual Arts, should get a fair hearing.
“Over 1,300 local businesses are adamant that the city centre needs to be significantlyimproved,” we are told. I take this to be an admission that tearing out the city’s heart and replacing it with the Bon Accord and St Nicholas shopping centres hasn’t improved things. It certainly killed off Union Street.
“The vision is to raise Union Terrace Gardens and cover over the Denburn dual carriageway and adjacent railway line.” A “street-level civic space” is mentioned, which I take to be the level of Union Terrace. Further on Mr Smith makes it clear that, “our plans are not about replacing gardens with a concrete square, but about using the natural sloping topography of the location to create a civic space with gardens which everyone can enjoy.” Which is exactly what Peacocks are proposing to do.
I am still trying to work this one out – how to raise the gardens to street level and use the natural sloping topography at the same time. “Our ambition is to have the same, if not more, green space than at present,” we are informed. This also puzzles me. Raising the gardens to street level will mean goodbye to every mature tree in the area, since they are all well below street level. Perhaps Messrs Smith, Michie and Wood have discovered how to grow trees in concrete.
“The City Square Project is about more than Union Terrace Gardens and the Denburn Valley. It is about safeguarding and creating jobs for our children and grandchildren.”
This also puzzled me until I noticed a detail which was slipped in as an afterthought. The vision would also “create a further two acres of all-weather, covered space”. Is there a hidden agenda here? I take it that the two acres of covered space refers to the space underneath the city square, and surprise, surprise, no mention is made of how this space is going to be utilised, but I have no doubt Sir Ian has a few ideas. Perhaps this explains how roofing over Union Terrace Gardens would give us, in Sir Ian’s words, “an opportunity to establish our position now and in the future as a global energy hub”.
After Aberdeen, of course, they could go on to bigger and better things. Just imagine what they could do to Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens.
Sandy Cheyne, Skateraw Road, Newtonhill.
Let's complete the Harlaw monument
The suggestions on how the 600th anniversary of the battle of Harlaw might be celebrated are to be commended. May I add another suggestion?
On 24th July 1911, the 500th anniversary of the battle, Aberdeen City Council inaugurated the Harlaw Monument which cost £350 to erect. It was designed by Dr William Kelly, the Aberdeen architect. The monument commemorates Provost Robert Davidson of Aberdeen and all who lost their lives in the battle. Pictured on the right is Dr William Kelly’s drawing of the monument with the Mither Tap in the background.
The monument is decorated with eight blank panels which were intended to carry the coats of arms of the principal protagonists along with an additional four armorial devices. As three of the arms were to represent Macdonald, Maclean and Macintosh, there was an objection to paying for the arms of the ‘enemy’, and as a result no heraldry was added to the monument. It has been left ‘unfinished’ for almost 100 years!
The arms to be originally included were: City of Aberdeen, Leslie, Mar, Forbes, Irvine, Keith, Leith, Ogilvy, Scrymgeour, Macdonald, Maclean, and Macintosh. An appeal fund could be set up to add the missing heraldry and complete the monument as part of the 600th Anniversary.
Charles J. Burnett,
Ross Herald of Arms, Portsoy, Banffshire
What happened to the painting?
I read of Leopard’s involvement in the Battle of Harlaw project. Whatever happened to the painting of the battle which hung above the gantry in the wee bar (later called ‘Jean’s Bar’ after the head barmaid) in the Caledonian Hotel, Aberdeen?
Norman Adams,
Aberdeen
Strains of the train in times of cold and stress
You might think that the railways would make things easy for themselves and their passengers in the BigFreeze.
The Huntly ticket office was closed and I bought the wrong kind of return ticket from the machine by mistake. My train returning from the south was late and there was not a lot of time to change to the Huntly train.
I have missed plenty of trains before and just got the next one; but this time I was on the way to do a job that I thought was important.
There was a queue in the ticket office in Aberdeen, and I came back to the turnstile and asked to pay on the train, as I have done a dozen times in the last few years.
The mannie told me to go back to the office, I repeated my proposal to pay on the train, he repeated his stance.
I said without raising my voice that the train is just leaving and I have the money to pay, and stepped over the turnstile, (it is just waist-height) with as much dignity as I could while carrying luggage, and walked briskly towards the train.
Seems like an easy commercial decision: I had already paid and the railway still had my money and I was offering to pay a second time and the train was going where I wanted to go, with an empty seat.
But the mannie left his post and the queue of folk who were clamouring for his help, to pech past me and tell the guard to not let me on the train. He then fetched the railway cops who put me in an arm-lock (not sore, just enough to let me know who’s boss) and quizzed me in a wee room about my criminal record, my address, my job and my tattoos.
They then gave me a lecture, saying I should know better at my age, and issuing me an order to pay a £40 fine for Breach of the Peace.
I suppose it is good for my Woody Guthrie credentials, having had a brush with the railroad cops, but what other good did it do?
Jake Williams,
Bogancloch, Rhynie
Let’s commemorate Harlaw in style
I read with interest your item on the Battle of Harlaw in your November edition. You asked for suggestions to help maximise the 600th anniversary of the battle. As someone who lives close to Harlaw and with an interest in the battle itself may I make the following suggestions.
Re-erecting a memorial to Provost Davidson at or near the place where he fell. Although on farm land, the location of the original cairn is known, having been recorded by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS).
Re-erecting the memorials to Irvine of Drum and Red Hector of the Battles. The locations are also known and recorded by the RCAHMS.
Re-erecting Leslie’s Cross to commemorate, it is said, the deaths of six sons of Sir Alexander Leslie of Balquhain.
What is reputedly the Liggars’ Stane – supposedly erected to mark the burial place of the female followers of the Lord of the Isles who perished at ‘Reid Harlaw’ – has been removed from its original position and now stands sad, almost forgotten, between two gate posts near to the battlefield. Ideally the Liggars’ Stane should be treated with the respect it deserves, moved if possible and properly signposted with a suitable plaque explaining its significance.
With luck the celebrations will ensure that the battle is not forgotten and may even benefit tourism in the Garioch
Albert Thomson,
Nanaimo, St Margaret’s Wells, Lethenty, Inverurie AB51 OJN
Local lads who have lost their local language
Norman Harper worries about the future of the Doric and I share his anxiety.
Last summer my friend and I were busily cleaning an inscribed well in Glen Tanar when down the track came nine teenage backpackers who stopped beside us for lunch. Interested in our work, they were taking part in their Duke of Edinburgh Award and had come over the hills from Ballater and were going out over the Firmouth to Tarfside.
From their accents I took them to be English, which they quickly denied. Obviously an Edinburgh public school – Fettes or Loretto? Their response dumbfounded me: Alford Academy. Not only not a trace of the Doric, but not even discernable as North-Easters.
Delightful, intelligent youngsters, they left us their names in case we wanted help in future looking after the relics in the glen.
Backtrack a few months: weel-kent fairmer fae Alford, Lewie Reid, cam by the hoose after a day’s sheetin, for a warming cuppa. Sitting round the kitchen table, my Australian son-in-law had the conversation flowing freely over his head for over an hour until Lewie hied aff hame.
“Didn’t understand a word of that,” says Bob. “I thought you said Gaelic was only spoken in the Western Isles, and what is more, you never told me you could speak it so well.”
Two totally different generations, but those Alford teenagers are a credit to the district and just maybe we prefer them as they are, but would it not be grand if they could also preserve the enjoyment of being able to relax and converse in their own so-distinctive local dialect from time to time?
Pierre Fouin,
Milltimber, Aberdeen
When I was office boy at Broadford Works
I was extremely interested in Mark Chalmers article on Broadford Works . I joined the company as an office boy when I was15. It was 1941 and there was a noticeable scarcity of young male clerks. There were two main offices in the headquarters called the Cloth Office (where orders were processed) and the Counting House which housed the cashier and staff dealing with bills – and that was where I started.
The system of paying weekly wages to the workers would now be regarded as medieval. The managers of the factory (weaving processes) and the mill (spinning processes) gave each operative a pay slip and informed the cashier of the coinage required.
One of the clerks in the Counting House was given a tray, similar to the ones cinema usherettes used to sell ice cream. The tray was divided into sections for the various denominations (in those days florins, halfcrowns, etc.) with a large spike at the corner on which to file the pay slips.
One day, when I was 16, I was the only male person available to pay the factory. I will never forget the weight of the money on my shoulders and the incredible noise in the Weaving Shed. I walked down the aisle with just enough room between the shuttle arms (one wrong step would have shattered my thigh); each operative handed her slip to me and I counted out and handed over the amount due. I finished that afternoon deafened and more than a bit exhausted .
I was called on again, this time to pay the mill workers. This was even a bigger job, as there were several different departments. The girls would hand me their slips over their machines and I had to lean over to give them their money – not very easy with a big tray round one’s neck! For some reason we did not start paying out until the afternoon, which limited the time I had to finish the job before 5 pm.
At quarter to five I had just the Reeling Section on the top floor to pay. No automatic lifts in those days! In my haste, I manoeuvred the lift slightly short of the floor, with the result that I tripped as I stepped out – scattering the money over the floor and tearing my hand on the spike. With the help of the girls I quickly recovered the money and with blood running down my right hand I finished the job just as the hooter went.
I became a junior clerk in the Cloth Office and worked there until I was called up 13 days after my 18th birthday. When I was demobbed I returned to Richards, but in my latter days in the RAF I had been stationed at Hamburg Airport and the airport business had entered my bloodstream.
So when the chance of a job arose at the lowest grade at Dyce Aerodrome (as it was in those days) I grabbed it, starting me off on a career which led to higher management posts. But that’s another story.
David Davidson,
davidson366@btinternet.com
The wrang Jock Tamson
I recently came across the article entitled ‘We’re aa Jock Tamson’s bairns’ from Leopard of September 2001, written by Wilma Thompson.
However, it seems that Wilma’s great-great-great-grandfather was not the originator of the phrase (directly or by reference by his daughter!) as the phrase was reportedly in use by the minister John Thomson at Duddingston Kirk, just outside Edinburgh, in reference to his flock as early as 1805.
Chris Tunnah
ctunnah@aol.com