Growing up at Peth-heid

From the age of 9 until 21, my family home was 66 Main Street, Pathhead, Midlothian, Scotland, except for about two happy years in the same village at 5 Crichton Terrace on the council estate while major renovations were carried out on the property at 66 Main Street. The Main Street was the A68, one of the three major roads to England; a road that linked at Melrose to the ancient Roman road, Dere Street and before that through Lauderdale and over the Soutra to the medieval Royal Way (Via Regis). 

Ford House built 1680

There was a story that Bonnie Prince Charlie had ridden through Pathhead before lodging for the night at Ford House - at the foot of the 'path' that led to Ford. the tiny hamlet associated with the ford over the river Tyne. 

Since 1831 the ford could be bypassed using the Lothian Bridge 

built by Thomas Telford, the prolific designer of roads and bridges who was dubbed The Colossus of Roads.

The rather prosaically named Pathhead village is surrounded by farms, estates, and hamlets with names that resonate with names that evoke the language, history (social and political) of Lowland Scots: 
Whippielaw, Dodridge, Salters Burn, Muttonhole, Haugh Head, Longhaugh, Crichton, Burnside, Tynebank, Turniedykes, Newlandrig, Chesterhill, Byersloan, Cranstoun Riddell, Fordel Dean, Cousland, The Temple, and further to the south, Fala and Soutra Hill. 

The big estates were owned by the nobility and gentry: The Earl of Stair (and his mother, Lady Elphinstone) at Oxenfoord Castle; Major Henry Callander at Preston Hall, his son Major Charles Callander at Preston Mains - the Callanders also owned Crichton estate to which the owners of property in Pathhead paid their feu duties;  and the son of the 'Bully Beef Baron' Thomas Borthwick, Lord Whitburgh at Whitburgh House. 

Many of the farmers were tenant farmers, well respected men - and in many ways the pillars of the community. During my late teenage years, the lairds started to remove these tenant farmers and replace them with managers. I recall the shock of learning that some of the finest of these were no longer to farm 'their' properties - and the sadness when one committed suicide.

In 1882-4, Frances Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland describes Pathhead like this:

Pathhead, a village in the northern extremity of Crichton parish, Edinburghshire, on the right side of the river Tyne, in the eastern vicinity of the old decayed village of Ford, 5 miles ESE of Dalkeith, 37/8 N of Tynehead station, and 11 SE of Edinburgh. Standing 500 feet above sea-level on the slpe and crown of an ascent from the Tyne, it takes its name from being at the head of this ascent or path; extends along both sides of the road from Edinburgh to Lauder; and has charmingly picturesque environs, including parts of the Oxenfoord and Vogrie estates, but chiefly consisting of feus from the Crichton property... 

Until sold in 1919, the Vogrie estate was owned by the Dewar family, their name retained in the nearby hamlet of Dewartown. 

While Pathhead was/is not a pretty village it is surrounded by some beautiful farmland and estates with grand houses and landscaped grounds. Nearby is the historic Crichton Castle, at the head of the River Tyne. The castle was built in the late 14th century as a tower house and expanded into a full castle in the 15th century. The building to the right of the castle in the photo was either a chapel, a slaughter house or stables.

Queen Mary of Scots stayed in the castle for a few nights after a cousin's wedding. The artist JMW Turner painted the castle, and the castle also features in Marmion by Sir Walter Scott.

Nearby is the pre-Reformation Crichton Collegiate Church. Originally built in the shape of a cross, the sanctuary (head of the cross) was destroyed by ardent Reformers - see a part remains to the left of the tower. Built in 1449, it has been in continuous use as a place of worship for over 550 years. We used to walk from Pathhead to this church at least once a month. It was a lovely walk, even in winter if the weather was dry. 

I recall the church was always cold. I was fascinated by the beadle, Tommy Farmer, who 'disappeared' behind a curtain screen into a cupboard-like room where he hand-pumped a lever to provide air for the organ before returning to his place in a near-by pew where he slumped and appeared to sleep - but never missed rising in time to prep the organ for the next hymn or psalm. The organist for many years was Miss Inglis, a spiritualist who conducted seances in her cottage at the head of the village (Pathhead) and attempted to teach my sister the piano.

My boyhood homes

I've had many 'homes' - houses I've lived in and considered 'home' (or in the case of the first first 'homes' they were places that I lived although I have no recollection of them whatsoever). I was born in a top flat overlooking the river Teviot in Hawick in the Scottish Borders before moving for some months to a cottage at Cavers, just outside Hawick. 

Then, aged about 18 months, my family moved to central Africa where my father had been posted as a pharmacist in the British Colonial Service. There my home became first a colonial service bungalow at Livingstone not far from the Victoria Falls and then another in N'dola in what was then Northern Rhodesia. My father then joined the mining company Rio Tinto, working in hospitals set up by  his new employer on the Copper Belt . We relocated to a mining company bungalow in 'A' Avenue, Luanshya, home on the Roan Antelope Mine.

After three years my parents separated and I moved with mother, brother, and sister back to Scotland to my mother's 'home' city of Dundee where lived first with her mother, my formidable grandmother in city-centre Panmure Street

Overgate, Dundee 1950s

before moving close-by into a small flat in Dundee's Overgate. I started school in Dundee at Harris Academy, but by year's end my parents were reconciled and we moved back to Africa and into a house that I remember well, again a large mine company bungalow, 134, 'E' Avenue.

It was a large sprawling brick and tile house with red polished concrete floors - anything wood was subject to attack from termites. The front of the house had a long verandah, enclosed with a fine-mesh wire intended to keep mosquitoes out; it was out indoor play area - especially during the Wet Season. Each house door was 'guarded' by rough coir matting laid out across the doorway to prevent, or so it was claimed, snakes from slithering into the house. It was not entirely successful as I recall on at least one occasion a snake coiled in a corner of my bedroom, until dispatched by my father.

My best memories of 134E are associated with our 'house-boy,' Daason, a tall, strong, handsome 'native' servant, who was something of a second father to me. He played football with my brother and me on the large front lawn; he amused us with silly antics, clowning , 'dancing' with cloths tied to his feet while he polished the floors. He taught me and spoke to me in Swahili. he gave me rides on the back of his bicycle. Daason and my mother seemed to get along very well; she spent time trying to teach Daason to read and write and to tell the time by looking at the clock and there would be much laughter. Looking back now, I am sure that there was some flirting going on; but at the time, it was to me just fun.

My other memories of that home were having braaivleis (Africaans for 'grilled meat') - usually cooked on our small brick-built 'braai' (barbecue) or when larger groups gathered for a party - over long shallow trenches dug in the back yard filled with burning logs and covered by sections of wire. These were always enjoyable evenings - staying up well beyond the usual bedtime, playing in the shadows with friends, enjoying the chatter and laughter of the party atmosphere.

When my family moved back to the UK, my father was not keen to 'settle' and he stalled for time which meant we travelled widely while he took on what seemed a never ending number of two-week 'locums' - and we lived in a succession of guest-houses. Finally, he took a more permanent position as pharmacist manager of a Co-operative chemist shop in the East Lothian village of Ormiston - and our new 'home' was the house attached to the chemist shop. We were there for about six months before he bought a property on the main street of a nearby village, Pathhead in Midlothian about 12 miles south of Edinburgh on the A68, one of the main routes to England, and opened his own chemist shop with us living in the flat above the shop.

At last - after almost two years, we had a place to call 'home' - and it remained my home for the next twelve years.