A Lucky Evacuee - Edinburgh to Aberlour

On 2nd September 1939 the evacuation of the children in my school in Edinburgh took place. The idea was to save us from the expected German bombing. It was a curious situation as parents had to take everything on trust. We reported to the school early in the morning with one suitcase each. After checking names and issuing us with a bag of food each, the evacuees were loaded on to buses and taken to a station where we were packed on to a train. We did not know until we arrived at our destination late that afternoon where we were being evacuated to. My mother had entrusted me to the care of a neighbour Mrs. Reid. She was going with her two children Peter and Maureen while my mother, like most parents, stayed at home with their other children. My sisters were later evacuated with their school to the border country. After a long and tedious train journey we found ourselves in a village in the north-east of Scotland called Aberlour, Banffshire on the river Spey. Aberlour means at the mouth of the Lour - a stream which flows into the Spey at the end of the village. As a group, the Reids and I posed a problem since there were few who could take four evacuees together. Eventually Mr. and Mrs. Robinson took us to their home, Tower Villa. This was the largest individual house I had ever seen. From the village hall we went across the main road to a driveway which went steeply uphill through a small pine forest for about 150 metres to a two storey granite house in its own grounds. Two large lawns lay either side of the drive with a summer house in the corner of one. Built on to the right side of the house was a garage containing an Austin 12 and behind it a wood shed. Beyond the house was an enormous walled garden where throughout the war we grew more than enough food for all who lived there. There we met the elderly Mr. Blair (Mrs. Robinson's father) and Beatrice (Bunty) Forbes, the housemaid, also Blackie the cat who believed he owned the house.
The ground floor had a study, dining room, hall, writing room (ie. a small library with desk), drawing room, box room, store room, kitchen, back kitchen and larder. From the back kitchen a door opened on to an alley, paved with stone slabs, along the side of the house with, on the left, an outside toilet, a large coal shed and a further storage shed. All of these had granite walls and tiled roofs. The upper floor had three large main bedrooms, two maid's bedrooms and a large bathroom. I later found that Tower Villa had previously been bought as an orphanage. The orphanage outgrew the house and a vast new one was built at the other end of the village then Tower Villa became the residence of the headmaster of the orphanage school and thus ex-officio Mr Robinson's home.
Off the kitchen was 'Mr. Blair's Room' which was a sort of den where he kept his possessions - shelves full of books etc. a large comfortable chair, a desk and chair and the tools and product of his hobby of bee keeping. He had been a keen fisherman but had been persuaded to give that up before the war after a tough but successful day. Mrs Robinson told us how he had been invited to fish the Elchies waters ( private access to fishing the Spey from the Elchies Estate). He went off promising to return in the afternoon. By seven pm. he had still not returned so Mr Robinson set out to find him. About a mile up the river he was found dragging his gear behind him with a big salmon in the bag. He had had an exhausting battle with a 14lb. salmon and was too tired to carry it.
The dining room was converted into a bedroom for Peter and I, while Mrs Reid and her daughter occupied the bedroom above. The dining room was nearly the size of the whole flat in Stenhouse. The advantage of this arrangement was that we were directly opposite the kitchen where we evacuees lived during the day. The study was quite large enough to be a lounge and dining room for the Robinsons so the drawing room was virtually unused. As Mr Blair preferred one of the small bedrooms there was also a large spare bedroom.
The Sunday after we arrived we went to the service in the local parish church and during the service the minister announced from the pulpit that war had been declared. The village was well supplied with churches having the Presbyterian parish church by the village square, the Episcopalian church associated with the Orphanage where Mr. Robinson was the organist and a Methodist church towards the north end of the village. The following day we were enrolled in the village school nearby. In fact it was so near that the end of the playing field was just across the road from the back gate of Tower Villa. I entered the qualifying class - that is the class which, at the end of the year, took the qualifying examinations for entry into the secondary school which in this case consisted of other classrooms in the same building. Fortunately the schoolwork was similar to my previous experience though more homework and rigorous mental arithmetic were hard at first. Throughout my schooling I maintained the practice, not by choice, of being second top in the class. In secondary school the girl, Mary Smith, who always took first prize, had in my opinion the easier time since she had fewer exams to pass. As I took Mathematics and Science, I had Trigonometry, Algebra, Geometry, Physics and Chemistry. all with separate examinations at Higher level, while she took Art, for which she had a natural talent, and German. We had English, French, Arithmetic and History in common.
After we were settled in for a few months and the 'phoney' war was continuing, Mrs Reid and Maureen returned to Edinburgh. We boys had to help with some chores and in particular with the gardening. The long established garden was so large that it took Mr Robinson, Peter and I all autumn, winter and spring to dig the vegetable area over for planting. The garden was very productive as it had well drained top soil two spades deep into which was dug two to three tons of farmyard manure every year. Even the sticks marking the ends of the rows tried to grow. In addition there was an orchard with over a dozen apple trees and two plum trees, a strawberry patch about five metres square and roughly thirty square metres each of raspberries and gooseberries. The plum trees produced about a dozen plums a year because frost usually affected the blossom. There were both cooking and eating apples and one particular tree produced yellow/green apples with a sweet but sharp taste. Since I was the one who liked them I had the tree to myself. One year there were no late frosts and we had to prop up the branches of the plum trees to help them carry the load of fruit. In the first full year we dug between the trees in the orchard and planted Golden Wonder late cropping potatoes. The yield was more than enough to have kept all seven of us supplied until the next spring though by then we were only three. Indeed throughout the war rationing had little effect.
In north-east Scotland coal tends to be expensive so any available alternatives are welcome. While petrol was available we would go up towards Ben Rinnes where we could get peat. Later Mr Robinson managed to arrange some deliveries. This was used on the study fire where its attractive scent could be savoured. Coal was mainly reserved for a big range in the kitchen which, with boiling plates and two ovens, was where all cooking was done. To supplement the coal in the kitchen and peat in the study we got supplies of logs and "backs". Canadian lumberjacks were felling trees in woods above the village and elsewhere in the area. They roughly squared the timber by cutting off four slices of wood and bark. These cuttings were called "backs" and were a fairly plentiful and cheap fuel supply. One of my chores was chopping foot long logs into quarters to make them suitable for the study fire. Often there were lots of knots in the logs making splitting them difficult and then I would hit one right in the middle between all the knots and split not only that log but also the anvil log on which I was supporting it. One year my friend Harold and I, under the guidance of Mr Robinson, cut down about half a dozen trees in the grounds to thin out the woodland which covered the slopes down to the road.
Apart from the garden produce, the farms all round the village had 49 hens and as many cockerels as they could manage. The limit of 49 on the hen population was because the regulations allowed that many for domestic use while 50 hens made you an egg producer so you had to send the eggs to the packing station. I often went to Tombain farm where Bunty lived or Black Hills owned by my mathematics/science teacher for eggs. Tombain also supplied chickens and occasionally butter. When eggs were plentiful and cheap more were bought and stored in Isinglass in a big glazed crock for use throughout the year in baking. As Mr Blair got more sugar than was needed to keep his bees through the winter and we took sugar instead of our jam rations so we could make lots of jam (raspberry, strawberry, apple and gooseberry) with the fruit from the garden. In addition the spare bedroom floor was covered in a thick layer of newspaper on which apples were spaced out for winter storage. Dried apple rings and fruit in Kilner jars also kept us well supplied during the off seasons. In a cold dry garden shed onions or shallots hung in strings and an old sea chest stored carrots packed in clean dry sand.
Since the village was regularly isolated by winter snow, the two butchers each had a killing licence and you cannot kill two and one eighth animals so there was more meat available including things like tongue, kidneys and liver, which were not rationed but were unobtainable in towns. It was only towards the end of the war that flour rationing caused problems as Mrs. Robinson liked baking. The biggest shop in the village was McIntyre the general store. The counters formed a big U shape. On the right as you entered was the grocery counter, on the left the clothing counter and at the back the hardware counter with some of its stock, wheelbarrows, spades, rakes and forks, displayed in the centre of the floor. Many of the groceries were stored in bulk and weighed out into strong paper bags for each customer. Small quantities were put into cones which the assistant could create surprisingly quickly from a sheet of paper. I remember along part of the counter was a rack of big tin boxes of biscuits. The last tin contained broken biscuits which, unlike the wrapped, but often broken, biscuits of today, were sold separately at low cost. Good children were often given a few.
Major shopping was done in Elgin the nearest town or occasionally in Forres when visiting Mrs. Robinson's brother. In Elgin I had my first experience of eating in a restaurant. Menus were restricted not only by supply problems but also the Government regulation of the maximum price of 5 shillings (25 pence in decimal currency) for a meal. Rumour had it that some places got round this by having an expensive uncontrolled compulsary extra on their menu. On one trip Harold Hay and I started giggling in the restaurant and Mr Robinson wondered what was the cause until he noticed that Peter had red spots on his face which were increasing in number even as we watched. He had german measles. Later we both got it and it was not so funny.
After about 18 months the Reids decided Peter should return to Edinburgh since the Germans were not bombing that far north (they did later). Shortly before that my mother had died of tuberculosis so I stayed on. Mr Blair fell ill and died in early 1941 basically of old age. During his final illness the closeness of the village community was revealed in the number of people who would ask about his health every time I went down the main street. Bunty went back to the farm to help her parents as both her brothers had joined the army. So now we were three.
I made a number friends at school but, since many lived on farms outside the village, my main friend was Harold Hay, the headmaster's son, who lived just across the back road from Tower Villa in the big house at the end of the school playground. He was older but had similar interests so we walked his dog Max together along the river or in the woods and over the moors that surrounded the village. He had an air rifle with which we shot at targets and at birds which were eating our garden produce. The carbide granules as used in acetylene lamps on old cars were used to get rid of moles in the garden. We would take the top off a molehill and put some carbide in the mole run, wash it down with water and seal the hole.
We had many projects being both inclined to engineering. We tried out overshot and undershot waterwheels with a little dam we created in the brook in Hendry's field behind his house. We tried to get his big brother's old motorcycle going though it was in a sorry state being very second hand even before he left it to go to war. Harold got an old three valve radio with flat plate capacitors (called condensers in those days) which were adjusted by pushing and pulling on rods. It needed three batteries, one high voltage (90V), one bias (9V) and a lead acid battery for the heaters. With some minor repairs, a long aerial and much trial and error with tuning we could get all the BBC stations.
The 51st Division was billeted for a while in Aberlour House and Dowans House two manor houses near the village. We used to try out the obstacle courses they set up around the woods and over the Lour burn. It was good fun watching them try to cross the single rope across the pool just below the waterfall as there were always some who didn't make it.
Secondary schooling I enjoyed most of the time as in Scotland all teachers must be professionally qualified and we seemed to have a particularly good lot. Our headmaster was also the senior English and History teacher and his book had become a standard teaching text for Scottish history. As father of Harold, I met him at home where he told interesting tales of service in the army in India and life as a young school teacher in Orkney. Our language teacher, Miss Kindness also known as Kinky, was well liked. She was qualified in both French and German. Maths and Science was taught by Mr Robertson MSc. The second English teacher was the only one disliked. She was called "The Horse" in part because of her looks and attitude but also because she seemed as strong as a horse in the way she could heave large blackboards on to their easels. In my two final years I was the only one taking Maths and Science at Higher level so I had individual tuition for some of the time. In the year I took my Higher examinations Harold was at Aberdeen University so there were fewer distractions.
During the summer holidays each year, I went for a fortnight to Forres where Mrs Robinson's brother, the Town Clerk, had a house with a large garden just out of the town. They too had an evacuee, David, so I had someone to play with and there were bicycles there which we could use to go round the countryside. We paid particular attention to a temporary wartime airfield which just over a mile further from the town than the house. There we saw Whitley bombers which were used to bomb German installations in Norway. One we saw had come back with no fabric from just behind the wings right up to the tail plane. The tail plane had holes in it and there was also about a metre missing off the length of the left wing.
David would come back with me and stay a fortnight in Aberlour. We too had our aircraft excitement one year as a Wellington bomber returning from Norway crashed into Ben Rinnes south-west of Aberlour. All the crew had bailed out in the five miles before the crash. As they landed in a straight line we deduced that the plane must have only just cleared Ben Aigen at the other end of the bend in the river. I was told later that they had no idea where they were as most of their instruments were not working and they were flying in cloud. The decision to bale out was made in the hope that they had travelled far enough to be over land. Another time a Lysander made an emergency landing in a field above the village and they had to remove a section of dry stane dyke to give it space for take off. This was the type of plane used to land people in occupied Norway. Cordite recovered from the Wellington's machine gun bullets was popular. In its thread form it could be laid out in patterns to burn initials on the wooden benches in the school's air raid shelters.
My father visited me when he could during holiday periods but he did not have much time. Though he was too old for military service he was a part time fireman as well as virtually running the organ building company on his own. They were not of course building organs but doing maintenance and repair. I think he was the only qualified organ tuner in Scotland for most of the war. He did two tours round the country each year to tune organs even getting flown to Orkney a couple of times. He told me that on one trip they had to land on the temporary landing field on the top of the island as the main airport was being used by Coastal Command. The wind was so strong that the De Havilland Dominie in which he was flying was in sight of the island for nearly half an hour flying into the wind to land. When they landed the engines were kept at full throttle until sandbags were put on the wings to spoil the lift and keep the plane on the ground as the wind speed was greater than takeoff speed.
There were a few entertainments in the village. The cinema was open one night a week and was used on other occasions for jumble sales, the Bridge Club of which Mr Robinson was a member and the like. Nearby an area of flat ground above the village had the bowling club and tennis courts as well as a curling rink. Mr Hay, Harold's father took Harold and I to try bowling a couple of times but we opted for tennis which we enjoyed playing (badly). The main sport however was sledging. This was not a matter of an uncontrolled slide down a few yards of a park such as appears on TV when there is a little snow in southern England. We had two types of sledge made locally. One was a simple platform, supported by two iron shod wooden runners, on which the user lay prone and steered by the toes of his boots (steel toe caps preferred ). The other was a longer platform with a plank sticking out in front. Pivotting on a bolt at the front of the plank was a skate with hand holds. While one person lay on the sledge and controlled the steering skate another gave an initial push and then knelt on the back of the sledge between the legs of the steersman and helped cornering by leaning as required.
I never had a sledge of my own because Harold had three. Apart from the two types described he had one which looked like the Santa Claus sledge of old pictures but smaller. It had two wooden sides which curled up at the front and back. These were braced apart with wooden slats and a galvanised steel sheet wrapped over the bottom. Though it was almost unsteerable it was the essential start for each sledging season as we would pile on as many people as we could then with the curved sheet acting like a steam roller we slid down the hill and thus compacted the snow so that the other sleds would run faster. We had several sledge runs ranging from Henry's field for learners to the two mile run for experts only. One year we even had the main road for several days as nothing else could use it. That year after a good snow fall and time to compact the runs we had a short thaw followed by hard frost. The runs became like glass and Henry's field was so fast that we could not stop in the 100 metres of flat ground at the bottom of the run. Our dangerous solution was to pull up the bottom wire of the fence. Then an expert could pass under the wire, hooking a toe on the fence post and turn on to the path by the Lour burn to continue for another 50 metres. Michael Wolfe, the son of the Rector of the Orphanage, had the fastest sledge, a commercial one with flexible steel runners. One time he did not catch the fence post so he rolled off his sledge which went straight ahead and right across the Lour like a water ski. He had to go half a mile down to the bridge and back again to collect the sledge from the distillery premises on the other side. Since that snow fall had drifted and filled the railway cutting above the village to a depth of about 20 ft. we had no rail service for over a week and no road access out of the village for several days.
The village street was normally cleared of snow by a large wooden wedge dragged along by two Clydesdale horses. This service was provided by Mr. Forbes of Tombain (Bunty's father). The year of the big snowfall came when the 51st division was staying locally and they decided they would clear the roads for their vehicle movements. A bulldozer started the operation but soon got stuck as the snow was compacted into a big roll almost as hard as ice. Soldiers with pickaxes had to break it up so that it could be pushed to the side of the road. The old fashioned wedge had been more effective because it was used in the very early morning when the snow was cold, dry and powdery so that it flowed readily along the wedge to the side of the road.
As the war was coming to an end I was not old enough to be allowed to join the celebration of Victory in Europe (VE) Day at Dalhuine Distillery where they opened a cask of 12 year old malt whisky. It must have been quite an occasion as they used most of the 44 gallons it held. I did go to the fancy dress party which was held in the Cinema hall and I was "volunteered" by Mr. Robinson to sing a solo "Where ere you walk" and join a trio of children from the Orphanage to sing "O for the wings of a dove" at a concert in the Methodist church. There was also a bonfire in the Orphanage playing field. This was one of the few occasions when the village and orphanage children got together. They all gathered timber and branches from a hill above the village where Canadian lumberjacks had chopped down a wood but left all the debris. The structure was so enormous that, though it was well constructed with a wedge shaped open space through the base, lighting it would be a problem. It was solved when the head of the Home Guard gave two returned prisoners of war a petrol grenade each to roll into the centre. This was so successful that soon after it lit no one could go within 50 feet. It burned all evening and the ashes were still red hot the following day.
Mr Robinson retired that year and we moved to a smaller house in the village. As there was not room for all the contents of Tower Villa there was an auction sale to dispose of the surplus. I tried to get Mr. Robinson to keep the sword which had hung in the entrance hall. It had only been taken down for cleaning and when I wore it in a school play. Even then I recognised its superb workmanship. It had been made in India by old fashioned craft methods. It had been hammered out of wrought iron on a wooden anvil and folded over many times so that it absorbed some carbon and became a strong steel. It was still sharp enough to sharpen pencils. At the auction it sold as part of a job lot of ornaments at £2 and I had only managed to save 5 shillings (25p). I finished my schooling at the end of June and after staying another month or so to get the exam results I returned to Edinburgh.

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