Tayfield Recollections
By Jim Smith
My family has been connected with Tayfield Estate for a long time. And, apart from a couple of years in the Army as a National Serviceman, I have spent all my life on the estate. First as a schoolboy in the 1930s and then as a forester and eventually as estate overseer. I have seen a lot of changes, both socially and in the original labour-intensive way the estate was run.
It all started with my parents, who came here in 1927. They had been in the Leys Farm at Errol in the Carse of Gowrie. He came as a forester and they had also to look after the poultry and two or three milk cows, and my father also did general maintenance work on the estate. We lived in the home farm buildings, the house now occupied by the elder Mrs Berry. I recall it as a very happy time. I was born in the house on January 3rd 1929. My brother Eric was born two years later but he didn't follow estate work — he became a teacher in Edinburgh.
There were many other employees - on the farms, attending to the gardens, and looking after the Berry family in "the big house". I will touch on some of these characters as we go along.
You would expect it to be an upstairs — downstairs situation as you see on TV . But it was never like that because the Berrys are very considerate people to work for and this thread of a good working relationship had come down through the generations and everything ran smoothly.
When my folks came here, the estate overseer was John McLaren who lived in the other half of the house which Hazel and I now live in in retirement. (Seamylnes Cottage, opposite the north lodge gate on the high road). At that time, all the estate houses were occupied by employees, not rented out as they are today. When John McLaren retired, his place was taken by Jimmy Brown who lived in the Den Cottage, now derelict. After a few years, my father took over. Nobody retired young then.
In his time, the work was all to do with the estate itself. Latterly we did a lot of contract work. I started that in the 1960s when the Road Bridge was being built. The new road which was constructed from Sandford Hotel to the Bridge went partly through Tayfield ground and I came in contact with people there who needed fences and landscaping etc. We tendered for that, and the contract work blossomed from there.
In my boyhood, there were all sorts of activities in the yard beside our house. Perhaps because of its size and the noise that it made, the sawmill is foremost in my mind. It was driven by a massive steam engine. It and the rack bench had been used in cutting up the timbers for the first railway bridge. The estate bought it for £25. It had a massive flywheel, bigger than a man, and it took a bit of starting.
It was a hungry brute, my father used to say that it burned about half the wood it sawed. Eventually it was replaced by an oil-burner and then by a diesel, which was just about as big and had to be started by a blowlamp. It went in favour of a diesel engine which came up from Truro where it had been powering a lighthouse, and it is still there. The raw material — the trees — all came from the estate and was turned into things used on the estate — fence posts, roof sarking, flooring, that kind of thing. This oil engine came from Inverdovat farm where the then tenant, Meldrum Smith had installed electricity. During World War 2, some Tayfield timber went to local tradesmen
You have to remember that it is a moderate-size estate. There are farms, Inverdovat, Causewayhead, Northfield and Strawberry Bank. The estate itself went towards Tayport in the east, the boundary being half way over Washer Willies bridge. The south march is the road leading to the old Forgan Cemetery as far as the manse and more or less due north from there and on a line back as far as the steep wooded part behind the present Waterstone Crook Sports centre which is known as the Mutton Hole.
In the west it went to Netherlea, the boundary being the police station wall. These are still the boundaries of course and Easter Friarton land has since been taken in.
There was no shortage of wood, and it was good stuff. In 1953, for instance, there was big storm all over the UK and a lot of trees were blown down at Tayfield. Counting the rings then there were up to 250. So some which are still standing must be over 300 years old. There is beech, oak and a general mixture of hardwoods. The oldest will be in the Tayfield park- as you walk from the upper duck pond down towards the big house
Some may remember that in the 1970s John Kerr, who had the chemist shop in Cupar Road, had a collection of ducks in a pond in the dip below the walled garden. That was the original curling pond, used by Newport Curling Club. We look back and think that the seasons were always more extreme than they are now, but I can tell you that the curling pond was used often most winters. They used to have small notice boards in various parts of Newport saying "Ice at Tayfield"
There was another curling pond farther up which was Tarmac, still there, resurrected by the local Round Table in the 1960s. It was fine with a modest frost but the one below was a true outdoor one used when there was really hard frost.
There was a special "back gate " which curlers had to use, a little east of the present north lodge gate. The gate is still there and the way was lit by two big gas lamps. The gas came from the works which were in the High Street, where the sheltered housing is now, next to the Post Office.
Eventually, of course, the gas works moved to the Tayport road, just east of Northfield Farm because the Newport one burned down. It was before my time but I can recall the charred remnants. I hope it is not of significance, but the manager's name was Black. You could just see him emerging from the fire with a sooty face and his collar askew like a Laurel and Hardy film !
The upper curling pond would be lit originally by oil lamps, but eventually there was electricity. It was produced by a generator from a World War 1 U-boat. It was purchased and gifted by John T. Young who had the big garage business built on the site of the present Scotscraig Apartments. The brick but was the clubhouse and it is still there. A corrugated iron shed housed the generator and at the time it was sold it was still capable of working at full throttle and making an enormous din - at the time of the three-day working week in the early 1970s.
(Note -Dod Webster at the Gauldry knows about this and is the best link with the curling club.)
The ground in front of the big house was laid out as a tennis court. We were encouraged to play on it to keep the turf firm. This lawn was weed and moss-free, really good stuff which was brought down from Inverdovat. The ground was levelled and turfed by John McLaren and he made such a good job of it first time, absolutely level, that the family were able to play tennis on it the same evening. We were allowed to play tennis on it as well of course, there were never any restrictions.
During the war, the lawns were cut with scythes and I well remember doing it with old Ted Reid. After we'd cut them, they had to be swept with besoms. There was a real art in using a scythe and one of the secrets was to keep it really sharp, using two stones. This was done every two minutes or so. One stone was carborundum, and you gave it an edge like glass with fine white sandstone. The roadmen had a holster- like attachment for holding these stones. The edge had to be maintained at a certain angle — if you "rolled" the stone along the edge it would never sharpen.
I remember being in Slovenia on holiday and a crofter's wife came out of a country shop when she wasn't busy and cut the grass with a one-handed scythe and her "holster " was a piece of hollowed-out cow horn.
Of course, not all of the activities took place on the land. The river was teeming with salmon, and it was one of a ploughman's perks to take a few. It wasn't really a luxury food then as wild salmon still is now. There was no transport to get it away, and no regular access to ice. I have a picture of a handful of men on Newport beach holding up six or seven salmon about as big as themselves.
Old John Don the blacksmith would sit out in mid-river in a little boat, even in a storm, with a fishing line. Several times the Fifie had to steer round him. He had to pass the police station (by the ferry terminal then) on his way home so he put the fish down the legs of his breeks.
In the 1960s, when the piles were being driven for the Road Bridge, the vibrations could be felt in the ground at Tayport. At that time, the salmon seemed to disappear but in fact they were diving deep off Tayport and coming nearer the surface at Balmerino.
Among the other estate workers I came in contact with as a child was Davie Davidson the chauffeur, who had started as a groom. He lived in the house we are now sitting in. His daughter is still alive — she is a farmer's widow and we keep up with her. Davie's days as a groom came through when he was polishing a car. He breathed out with a swishing whistling sound which is what horsemen did to calm the horse during grooming. He did the same thing when polishing a car !
The last car the older generation of the Berrys had was the one I learned to drive in — an old Humber Sports with a folding hood. Nobody taught me, I got wee shotties around the estate and just picked it up. It had a bench seat and in front of this was a plate on the floor held by four wing nuts. By taking this off you could look down into the open gearbox and see everything working. Most instructive, but you daren't try to rev up with the plate off because the oil would have been all over the place. I remember going up from the big house to the south lodge in top gear with hardly any throttle.
Earlier on, the chauffeur's job was full-time but as the family grew up he had less to do. So he helped out on the estate. There was also a gamekeeper who lived at the south lodge. There was a gardener who lived by the gas works and the slaughterhouse, in a place called Gas Lane. His son, Henry Burnett, still lives in Newport. The man before him was John Tasker. My father was the last gardener, having served his time at that trade at Ayton Hill, near Dunbog. At one point, he contemplated going to the Falklands as a shepherd, but settled down to work on the farms.
There was Ted Reid, a deaf fellow, who was there most of his life. He lived in Chapel House just a few yards from here — Mary Slessor used to preach there. I learned this when I was in the BB.
James Brown lived in the Den Cottages. You can see the remains of these to the north of the back den road, just at the bad bend. They are totally derelict now but were still roofed in the 1960s. They were a sun trap and had superb gardens. There was an old low pressure water pipe came along past Strawberry bank and a branch went into the Den Cottages. There was one tap, in the washing house, so it must have been a pretty basic place to live.
Above Strawberrybank, set in a lovely southern exposure, is a small row of cottages. This is called Tayfield Mains. It is a ruin at the moment (Christmas 2002) although a new road was driven into it during the autumn of 2002 and the site around it was excavated and levelled. Peter Berry was given it as a wedding present, and I understand that he will begin to restore it in the Spring of 2003 for his retirement.
At one time two sets of people lived there and I remember them well. Miss Whittet lived in the east end and a family called Carver in the west. There was no running water, and it had to be carried up in buckets from Strawberrybank. I remember making a posh new loo out of long-lasting cedar wood and taking up there on the back of a cart. It was fine day and I drove the horse from the loo seat. The loo itself survives and is in a corner of Tayfield home farm, unused of course!
Tayfield Mains always had a good garden, it has fine soil, a southern exposure and is on a slope for drainage.
Chesterhill House is on the back road to Tayport, otherwise Washer Willie's and at one time it was inhabited by Dr John Berry's uncle, Captain Robert Berry. He was a character, wore plus fours and a bonnet with ear flaps. He had a lathe and was a dab hand at the furniture making. He was married to Dorothy and there was no family.
He had been in charge of railways in the Punjab and the gates at Chesterhill had the design of the Punjab Railways on them. He and his wife lived in the house for a long time and I remember their fine Armstrong Siddeley car. The house had an old paraffin engine which charged the accumulators to provide electric light.
Just along the road was Scotscraig mansion house, now demolished, although the level site can still be seen just above the road. The site is a wonderful one, with a southern exposure and a view over Tentsmuir. The last tenant was Colonel Jock Henderson. Eventually the house fell into disrepair, became riddled with dry rot and was used as a grain store. This was a great pity, for, like St Fort which is a mile or two to the west, it could have been a sought after property today.
At that time, not long after the war nobody wanted big houses and sometimes the roofs were were removed to avoid paying rates and that was the end of the building.
Perhaps a piece about the burgh water supply would be in order. To the west of Wormit House, down by the beach was a nine hole golf course (never opened after WW2) and it was at this low level that the original Wormit water supply was located. But of course, when houses were built at Wormit, there wasn't enough head of water and a reservoir was built higher up. That too has been replaced and I believe that a house has been built within the area of the reservoir. A ten inch pipe brought water from Dundee and it went all the way to Tayport. It was renewed not long before the burgh's water came from the Fife supply.
Peter Hirst was the burgh water man and knows the whole story. The new reservoir is near Causewayhead, although at one point it was going to be put on the hill above the south end of the Road Bridge and a road into the site was partly put in at the time of the Bridge's construction.
Wormit was said to be the first village in Scotland with electric light. A firm called Wallace Brothers had an electrical business on the site of the present Scotscraig Apartments. They wired a lot of Newport in the 1920s. But eventually The Grampian Electric Co made their way down from Newburgh and the electrical side of the Wallace family disappeared. But there were two brothers who were cobblers and one had a shop on the site of the now Wormit Post Office and the other shop was at the corner of Newport High Street and Cupar Road, now the fish and chip shop and at one time, George Thomson the florist's.
If the fire brigade is needed now, a fine appliance comes from Tayport. In my early days, the scaffies' lorry was the fire engine. It was kept in a stable behind the Newport Hotel. Miss Scrymgeour, who lived in Kirk Road remembered that when the Leng Home went on fire as a private house, the fire brigade came rushing along with a hand cart and a long ladder.
The stables behind the hotel were used by many people including the coal merchants, Muir, Son, and Patton and also a baker. The Council would rent horses from there for various duties including pulling the pavement snowplough.
The man who looked after the gas lamps throughout the burgh was Bob Findlay who had a bike and a wee ladder. I remember when there were gas lamps all the way up Cupar Road as far as the south lodge. Many of them were knocked down during the war and the poor driving of Polish soldiers got the blame of it.
As a boy, I remember six staff in the big house at Tayfield. Among them was always a Swiss maid. Each stayed two years and they alternated, a German-speaking one and then a French —speaking one. They waited at table. When at work they spoke no English, which helped the family to keep up their languages. One is still alive and we get a Christmas card from her.
The walled garden was a Scots acre, bigger than an English one at an acre and a quarter. Everything in it was immaculate. Grass paths, accurate to the compass points ran rectangularly. Either side of these were about eight feet of herbaceous borders interspersed with fruit trees. Outside that were the vegetables and there were more fruit trees round the walls. Opposite the duck pond is the whale arch, with the jawbone of a whale. It is still there.
There was a spring border and in the early part of the year it was a profusion of colour. In the style of the time, everything was extremely tidy.
The estate had an office, located opposite the Newport Hotel at the foot of the High Street. It is still there, a double windowed shop. This was probably before World War 1, and the factor was a man called Mackie who also had a builder's business. He lived in Victoria Street, two or three houses down from the doctor's surgery. He also operated the quarry at Laverocklaw, Causewayhead which was used eventually as a council refuse dump. The stone from this was used in many Newport houses.
The remains of WW2 pill-boxes are still there, put up by the Yorks and Lancs Regiment when invasion threatened. They were upended concrete cylinders, although I can't think what they were guarding. Perhaps outliers for RAF Leuchars which had some buildings at the top of nearby Roseberry Wood - these being connected with two radar masts placed there after the war. These buildings are still there too, used originally for wintering cattle. The remains of the tarred road up to these are still visible.
There was some superb clean-grown ash in the quarry and we took it out. By clean grown, I mean few knots, and straight. The conditions there must have been ideal for growth. Ash has many uses and one of them in days gone by was for swingle-trees — the wooden piece which went behind a pair of horse connecting the harness to the cart. It was unbreakable stuff really, used also for cart shafts, ploughs, and other implements.
After this quarry was filled with refuse in the late 1960s, we planted trees in it.
People sometimes ask me what are the best logs to buy. Elm is OK once it is dry but not when wet, you'd be as well trying to burn a neep. Poplar is also OK when dry. Lime sparks badly and I've had it hit the back wall of the room.
Beech, birch and oak are really good. Cherry and hawthorn give a lovely dark glow and I really enjoy these on a cold winter's night when the wind is soughing up the river and over the roof of my historic old house.
The last tenant at Causewayhead farm was Robbie Arthur, a dairyman. He moved from there down to Craighead in East Newport. I can remember the dairy being on that site before the present council houses were built. Folk used to go up there with their milk jugs. Tayfield sold the ground to the council after WW2 and Elizabeth Crescent etc were built.
As a boy I remember seeing the remains of a horsemill there — where horses went round and round and operating the gearing for threshing corn. It wasn't working then, but I got an idea of how it must have functioned. It was nice to see it for they were few and far between even then. There was a similar mill at the home farm at Tayfield before my mother's time. I don't remember it.
The upper part of The Den, towards the Kirk Road, was covered in laurel bushes as it is today. But then, the bushes were all clipped and swept clean and built into the steep sides were two paths, a high walk and a low one. The higher one started more or less at the big house and came out at the Den cottages. It was a great place for courting couples! There was bridge over a waterfall and a handrail. I remember it well, before the second war. But of course, after that, a lot changed and the estate could not really afford these indulgences.
The above area was called the Low Den and I remember the late William Berry saying that there used to be tree ferns growing there, eight feet tall. The railway line between Tayport and Wormit crossed over the Low Den, carried by iron columns similar to those on the first Tay rail bridge. One day a train was crossing and John McLaren noticed a crack opening in one of the columns. The viaduct was closed for nine months and the iron columns encased in brick and filled with concrete, the way they are today, but of course the viaduct was removed on the closure of the railway in the 1960s.
The viaduct also passed over the south drive and one day I was driving a horse and cart under it. Unknown to me, explosive detonators had been placed on the line above to warn engine drivers of work on the line.
A train set one off as I was directly underneath. It was an enormous bang. The horse took off and I just got it stopped before it reached the main road.
All the paths and drives of the estate were swept with birch besoms. We made well over 100 of these each year. The place was really nice, always spotless. Before my time, the lawns were cut by a large mower pulled by a Shetland pony called Nanny. She wore leather over-shoes to do the job and I am sure they are hanging on the stable wall still. The pony had other jobs too. She pulled a wee cart on shooting days.
While I was away in the army, some of the stables were incorporated into our house. Prior to that there was accomodation for three horses and there was also a loose box. The cart shed was at the side, and this was turned into my mother's house. This had been for the three working horses of course. The coach ones, a pair of blacks, were kept at a separate stable, where my office was, a few yards away from my house. This was before the arrival of the cars of course and the coachman was Geordie Spark who lived in the north lodge, by the present High Road.
He became the head chauffeur and he would never take a car out unless it was absolutely spotless. They would perhaps take a car out to meet a train at the east station and it would be washed and dried as soon as it returned even though it was after the last train, and past bed-time. Old Geordie had apparently met one train and the late William Berry had said "You know, George, you don't have to be so fussy, really" to which Geordie had replied "Well, if ye dirma like the wey ah'm daen it, ye can tak ma notice now." There was never any pressure to get a job done. Mr Berry used to say "It doesn't matter how long it takes, so long as it's done properly."
There was no anti freeze in these days and each winter night the cars' radiators were drained into a bucket and the rusty water poured back in again in the morning. When I was a wee lad Davie told me this was tea, and he had it for his breakfast.
It was great pleasure to work for the Berry family. They were extremely considerate. Dr John Berry's mother died when he was young and he was brought up by two aunts. Here was a man who travelled all over the world on environmental business and who was an expert on wildlife — who would have believed that he was head of counter intelligence for Scotland during the second war?
At his funeral, Professor Smout, in his eulogy, said the one man in Scotland who was not surprised by Rudolf Hess's arrival in Scotland was John Berry! He was the first man to interview Hess. Nobody outside the family knew anything about this side and perhaps the family did not know very much either. Later, on his environmental trips behind the Iron Curtain he kept his eyes open.
The family often entertained but these were always low-key affairs. The Berrys are a religious family. They had prayers every morning and all the staff of the big house had to meet in the dining room. There was a service each Sunday, the singing being accompanied by a harmonium in the corner of the room. I remember bishops coming to visit and strolling through the grounds with the family all in black, and wearing breeches.
Another wearer of breeches, but of a different sort was Meldrum Smith, the gentleman tenent farmer at Inverdovat. He was a big man, perhaps six feet three, and his breeches were complemented by stockings and polished brown boots.
He was the man who put electricity into Inverdovat. He connected into the supply at Linden Avenue and when he switched on his big motor to do a bit of threshing, the lights in Linden Avenue went down like rusty nails. Things came to a head when a doctor with a mobile X-ray machine tried to get a picture of a patient and got a blank piece of film! I think the system was upgraded from then on.
Windmill Park got its name rom the two windmills placed there to pump electricity to Inverdovat, Causewayhead and Chesterhill, although eventually a paraffm engine was installed to pump when there was no wind. That can't have had much use. Eventually, Windmill Park ceased being a public park not long after the dual carraigeway leading to the bridge was built. But many Sunday School picnics from Dundee came there via the East Station.
There was pavilion with running water and a sink and changing rooms for football. When the park was laid out first of all, it was ploughed and harrowed and schoolkids were paid a penny for each bucket of stones they took off it.
Eventually, Victoria Park, beside the present surgery came into being. It had been part of Strawberrybank farm, which also had the field to the south of the north lodge and two fields at Kinbrae. The last crop on these two, now a playing field, were oats and after that the Provost rented it for a period to graze two horses.
Sandy Simpson, the tenant at Strawberrybank, was the last man to plough Victoria Park and he did it with horse. I was passing at the time and he let me have a go and so I can truthfully say that I am one of a decreasing band who have actually ploughed in the old way.
At one time, Inverdovat had six pairs of horse and an orrahorse. It was wonderful to be up there on a cold winter's day when the smell of the horses seemed reassuringly stronger. There were two further pairs of working horses at Causewayhead. An orrahorse did all the odd jobs, just as most farms had an orraman. The orrahorse would help with things like fencing or spread neeps for the sheep.
The farm cottages across the road from the Inverdovat yard at that time housed the grieve in the east one, and the gardener in the left. When I was a boy, the grieve was the grandfather of Ken Cunningham who had Forgan garage and smiddy for many years.
Although Causewayhead and Inverdovat were eventually amalgamated, the former had its own grieve, John Paul, who had a large family and two of them still live in Newport. In 1944, there was big harvest and soldiers with agricultural experience came home to help get it in. I remember three of the Paul laddies coming home prior to D-day. The stacks had to be built with a lot of space between them in case of incendiary bombs.
A bomb fell near on the other side of the road from Washer Willie's cottage. The conical crater can still be seen. Folklore had it that the tenant of Washer Willie's, auld Sandy Bruce, had been in the outside toilet with a lantern and because some of the roof was missing, the German plane had seen the light. The loo was demolished but Sandy got away with a shaking. All the tiles were blown off the cottage roof and windows in Chesterhill House were blown in. Quite an experience !
Incidentally, although Newport folk refer to Washer Willie's, Tayport people call it something completely different. They call it Jess Phillips'.
A well in the grounds of Chesterhill House fell in and although it was some distance from the actual blast, tremors probably came through the rock of which there is an abundance in that area. Later, I was given the job of clearing the debris from the well, which was quite a dangerous task with the possibility of further rock falls.
Tayfield had no bombs but in the early '50s, Tom Bruce, auld Sandy's son, was working in his cottage garden at Inverdovat when a jet from Leuchars became disorientated in fog and just cleared Roseberry Wood. A half a mile or so north, the pilot was heard on his radio saying he was trying to clear a row of cottages. He did, but was killed in the little triangular copse on the right between Inverdovat farmyard and the turn off up to Causewayhead.
My father was a Special Constable during the war, and spent most of his time making sure that the good people of Newport had their windows properly blacked out. Not long after I came back from my spell in the army as a National Serviceman, I had a visit from the local sergeant who asked if I fancied being a Special. I said I'd think about it, but within half an hour he was back with a car and whisked me to a local JP's house where I was "sworn in". I spent 27 happy years as a Special and we had a lot of laughs.
Even before the war, I had knowledge of military matters. Each year, reservists operated biplanes - they were called Singapores - from Woodhaven Pier and they camped in a field at Inverdovat lane. I think they were RAF, but they wore breeches. And of course, towards the end of the war, on the build-up to the Normandy invasion, troops were all over the place. We had Polish armoured troops in Tayfield and they parked their tanks under the trees. They showed me how to elevate and traverse the guns, it was great fun.
On the soldiers' upper arms were patches of tartan. They said they came from a part of Poland linked with Bonnie Prince Charlie. This may have been true for my time at Newport school taught me that Charlie had a branch of his family called the Sobeiska-Stuarts. When I came home from school one day, the troops were being inspected by General Sikorski.
Netherlea Hospital, as it now is, was given over to Polish troops during the war. In the grounds of Tayfield they built a guardhouse out of straw bales to keep themselves warm — I always thought this was highly dangerous. The Poles had the reputation of being ladies' men and often females from the village would saunter by the guardhouse and the sentry would abandon his post temporarily and they would both go off into the wood, to study the plant life I always thought.
As laddies, we would roam over the countryside and from the high ground near Chesterhill, you could look down on the North Sea and out near the Bell Rock you could see the big convoys ploughing north, perhaps on their way to Russia.
One day we were amazed to see a German Heinkel seaplane coming low up the river. It was painted black and the enemy insignia was plainly visible. It landed at Woodhaven and within half an hour, the German markings were painted out. Apparently two Norwegian pilots had "acquired" it and had flown it over as booty. You could not get down to Woodhaven Pier at that time for it was a Norwegian Catalina flying boat base and a lot of secret things happened from there. There was sentry box at the top of each track.
The late William Berry told me something interesting about the Tay. He said that Harland and Wolff, who eventually set up in Belfast, had looked at the Tay and reckoned it was ideal for building and launching big ships. Scotscraig estate owned part of the foreshore between Newport and Tayport and when the estate was put on the market, the shipbuilders were interested in buying it. Dundee Town Council, seeing the threat to the Caledon yard, bought it to forestall them.
So Harland and Wolff set up in Ireland where the Titanic was built. After the threat, Dundee sold off most of the land although they still own pockets to this day.
The school is now away up the Cupar Road but in my time it was at the foot of Kilnburn, next to the Blyth Hall. It was demolished in the early 1970s and nothing remains but I remember seeing Gordon Small busy with a welding torch cutting down a good skelp of the old Victorian railings which he re-erected at his house, Cadzow in Kirk Road. So at least a bit of it lives on.
When I attended there, it was a primary and a higher grade school for up to three years. During the war, we only went in the mornings except in your ""qualie" — your last and qualifying year. Our teacher was Miss Jenny Duncan who was eccentric in the extreme. The headmaster was John Strath who we called Doo Dah. When the air raid siren went and we had to take to the shelters, Doo Dah would stand in the doorway waving a big sheet of cardboard to keep the air circulating. The second master was Hugh Muir who became "headie" eventually.
The air raid shelters were at the top of the playground just over the wall from Scott Street. The bike sheds were demolished to make room for them. The roofs were of very thick concrete.
The winters in the 1940s were hard and we seemed to get a lot of snow. The laddies all wore short trousers then and I can remember my knees being cut by breaking through the hard crust as I made my way from my house in Tayfield down through the parks and through the gate at the foot of Kilnbum. Attached to my belt by a piece of string was a huge key to open this gate.
I've always been interested in wildlife and there's a fair amount on the estate. Lots of roe deer of course and they come down as far as the main road by my present house. It was on that road that I found the body of an otter, presumably hit by a vehicle on its way to or from the river. It was russet-coloured, and unmarked by the accident. Someone once saw an otter in the Tayfield pond and maybe that accounts for the lack of fish.
At the monthly meetings of Scotscraig Ex-Round Tablers' Club, which he much enjoyed, Jim used to tell me all sorts of things about Newport and I said "Jim, sometime we must put all this down on paper. It is part of Newport's social history."
And so the foregoing was written following a series of pleasant conversations which began in the summer of 2002, most Thursday mornings. We had a good rapport and a common interest in the burgh, nature and history and so our chats were mutually enjoyable. I am so happy that he was able to relax with me and that we managed to get virtually everything down that we wanted to. The words are all Jim's. I was his word-caddy, pulling the words from the bag.
He became unwell in the late autumn of 2002. I am relieved to record that he had no pain, required no medication and slept away in his own bed at Seamylnes Cottage overnight January 10/11, 2003. He knew he was going but had a remarkable acceptance and peace. I thought he was very brave.
The church was packed and the lashing rain from the west cleared for ten minutes, and so we didn't get soaked at Vicarsford. A gentleman to the last. — Gordon Small, February 2003.
[Jim's Recollections were originally published in the Tay Valley Family Historian, the Journal of the Tay Valley Family History Society.]
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