One of the benefits for me of a post-initial Covid lockdown ‘staycation’ was the opportunity it offered to use my Wigtownshire caravan as a base from which to conduct a long-planned, research journey along some pathways trodden in the long, hot summer of 1967.
My class-mates were scattered throughout the country gathering information and data for a parish-based regional survey that was a compulsory part of our degree at the University of Glasgow. I chose the Parish of Stoneykirk to the south of Stranraer – in part because of the family connection with Bonnie Gallowa’ of my girl-friend (wife-to be).
I was treated with the utmost civility and helpfulness by all those Gallovidians whom I encountered.
One farm visit in particular remains bright in my memory, Garthland Mains. I did not realise then that I was witnessing the final turn of the page in the chapter of farm-based cheesemaking in south-west Scotland.
I learned later that a number of my wife’s relatives had been Creamery Managers and that her branch of the McLean family had particular connections with Sandhead.
Further, for a number of years I have been researching the family history of my late-wife’s McLeans. The earliest known pro-genitor, Jacob McLean was born in Ulster. For three generations, Jacob’s descendants toiled in the farms, fields and byres of the Rhins of Galloway as labourers, domestic sevants, ploughmen , dairymaids and grieves (farm overseers).
I had also become aware of that none of the old creamery buildings, if they survived, were used for their original purposes, and that some were in a parlous state.
The first task to be undertaken, when the Covid travel restrictions were relaxed, was to locate and photograph standing creameries, their current condition and use, or their successors . Some are easy to find, such as Sandhead. Others more difficult, such as Dalbeattie. (Early on, I decided to include Kirkcudbright).
And that’s where serendipity kicked in!
While trying to find the former Dalbeattie Creamery, I chanced upon a ‘local’, John Burns, John, a former English teacher not only was able to direct me the creamery, he also asked if I knew of the book ‘The Land of the Leal’(1939) by James Barke. To my chagrin I had confess to having heard neither of the book not its author. He suggested that for me it should be a ‘must read’
He was correct on so many levels. ‘Land of the Leal; has been described as being ‘comparable in scope and design to Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s ‘A Scots Quair’. I agree. The work of James Barke deserves equal recognition! It is widely available as available as a Canongate Classic.
For family historians it usually difficult discern anything of the realities of previous generations’ day-to-day lives.
The first two sections of Barke’s book paint a vivid picture of workday life and labour in the fields and byres of the Rhins of Galloway – in what was essentially a semi-peasant existence. Later sections chart the demise of the traditional way of rural life. ‘Economic necessity drove men away from the fields and byres towards the industrial centres that produced the machines. The railway linked them to these centre’. By the same token farm cheese making gave way to factory cheesemaking and the railway transported the products to the urban markets.
Barke’s ‘Land of the Leal’ has provided a golden thread to bind together several related sections of this Miscellany website.