The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Beautiful mansion house
Dundee reader James Pirie has submitted several pieces which were written by his mother when she worked as a nanny. He says: “My mother came from Sussex, travelled with her job, then married a soldier from Dundee. She met him in India and came to live in Dundee in 1947.
“This is another snippet of her story that I wrote down:
“It was 1934 and I was only in my new job as a nanny for two weeks when I was told that we would be going to Scotland. We set off one evening to travel on the night train from King’s Cross and had a sleeper carriage to ourselves and arrived at Cupar the following morning where we were met by the chauffeur who took us to Over Rankeilour.
“I had been used to seeing large houses in Crowborough, but this was totally different. It was a large and beautiful mansion house set in its own estate which stretched over a large part of east Fifeshire.
“There was a warm welcome for us when we arrived and the whole house seemed so homely despite its great size.
“I found all of the servants particularly friendly and after I had been there three days, Hannah, the head housemaid, approached me and asked cheerfully: ‘Would you like to join the servants in the servants hall for elevenses, Nanny?’
“It was nice to sit and listen to all of them talking in friendly conversation and making me so welcome. However, I did have one problem. I could not understand one word that they were saying! Being from the south of England, I had never heard the fairly broad Fife accent and it must have shown by
the look on my face. Soon all sentences were accompanied by a slow general explanation and after two or three more visits I began to understand more and more of their conversation.”