The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
THE STAMINA OF STUART FIELD
In the 1960s and 70s, Cuthbert Graham wrote This Is My Country, a weekly travel column in the Press and Journal. Here, we have reprinted his delightful musings from 1963 for you to enjoy
The “island” o’ Crichie’s a braw little toon, Though Stuartfield by rights is the name o’ the place, Wi four famous hills that stand guardian a’ roon’ Caad Scroghill an Jack,
West Crichie an’ Knock;
An’ it’s aye been the hame o’ a lang-livin’ race.
Ilka cot had a loom when the village begun, The Dyesters were eident; The Lint Mill spun roon’, I can picture them yet wi’ their pageant an’ fun As the Hammermen march
Two by two through an arch,
An’ the Temperance banners are gay in the sun.
But these days are by and the Kirk at the Dam, Deserted on Sabbath and silent a’ week, In sounding no more to the swell o’ the psalm, Yet the Pump in the Square
Is still happily there,
Where cronies can meet for a gossip or claik.
Nae langer the loons an’ the lasses fae skweel Are herdin’ the kine on the Commonty Grun’; Nae langer the Bell ca’s them hame to their meal At aucht o’ the knock,
Yet – there’s lang-livin’ folk
In Crichie the day that remember it weel!
Readers must be patient with me this week and forgive this unusually lengthy verse preamble. My only excuse is that it has been inspired by the very vivid and genuine memories of Crichie – pardon me, Stuartfield – folk.
There are 82 households in this village of between 500 and 600 inhabitants, whose indwellers are of pensionable age. Yet it is not by any means a dying village. Several of those who are of pensionable age are not sitting by the fireside conning over their memories, but are hard at work, sometimes a considerable distance from their homes.
There are many people in Stuartfield who can recall the active days of the famous Village Bell, which was pensioned off in 1911, fifty-two years ago. It stood in the Square, not far from the Village Pump, which is still there, and it was rung at nine o’clock in the morning, at one o’clock in the afternoon and at eight in the evening, when it acted as the village curfew.
In the memory of several Stuartfield folk, including Mrs Margaret Clark, 2 Crown Cottages, and Mr John Wallace of the Milladen Finishing Department, the schoolchildren of Crichie acted as spare-time, unofficial herds of the feuars’ cattle which grazed in the old village Commonty – a community inheritance that is now, alas, fallen on evil days, and is partly used as a rubbish dump, though it still enshrines an important part of the village’s history.
Right in the heart of Buchan, the village of Stuartfield lies only about a mile and a quarter south of its much more ancient sister Old Deer, and was founded 191 years ago by John Burnett, the laird of Crichie, who gave it the name Stuartfield in honour of his grandfather, Capt John Stuart, a famous soldier in Marlborough’s wars. But from the day of its foundation it has also been known familiarly on local tongues as Crichie – the name of the manorial estate in which it lies.
At one time, it bade fair to outstrip Old Deer both in size and industry. There is no doubt that for a long period, it was the more enterprising place of the two. Its feuars had each a bit of land of their own and the whole village from end to end was full of looms. It had a large meal mill – still a landmark on the southern outskirts – and a lint mill on the north.
The lint mill is still there and still there is the Dam, formerly a much wider, shallower stretch of water used for the cultivation of the flax, but the modern descendant of the mill has long been another building, now the finishing department of the Milladen Wool Mills and Stuartfield’s only surviving industry.
With changing times and the decline of rural population Stuartfield has suffered two heavy blows in recent years. Its striking Church, the sole survivor of the five kirks which at one time or another flourished in the village, now united with the charge of Old Deer, is meantime disused, because its roof requires repair which will cost £3,000, and fortnightly services are held in the Public Hall.
Its fine local school, built in 1879 and since well modernised, and at present a three-teacher school with a roll of sixty, is, according to a decision which the villagers hotly contested, to be demoted to a oneteacher school at some convenient date in the future and the older primary children sent to Old Deer.
This seems a pity when one considers that, in the past decade, six of its former pupils have become teachers and at present it has four FPs at universities – three at Aberdeen and one at Edinburgh.
Stuartfield has a thriving institutional life with Red Cross, WRI, Youth Club, Brownies and Life Boys. It has a fine five-acre playingfield, and a £1,700 bowling green was opened in May, 1962.
In the year 1696, after the fortress of Namur had fallen to King William the Third, and was being defended throughout the subsequent siege by British troops, there was serving in Brigadier Maitland’s Regiment, a certain Captain John Stuart, who lost his hand in close-in fighting.
He was a descendant of Robert Stuart of Kilroy, in Ross-shire, and after the battle, he had an artificial hand made to overcome his handicap. When he died, it was preserved as an honourable trophy of war by his descendants.
This was the man from whom the village of Stuartfield, founded almost a century after the Siege of Namur by his grandson, took its name. After the campaign in the Low Countries was over, Captain Stuart turned his eyes to Buchan, and about the year 1700, purchased the estate of Dens and Crichie from the Earl Marischal.
At Crichie, he built the old house that preceded the present mansion, and on his death, was succeeded by his daughter Theodosia, who brought the lands of Dens and Crichie to her husband John Burnett, a cadet of the family of Burnett of Leys. It was their son, John Burnett the second, who in 1772, gave off the first feu of the projected village, at the corner of the Square, and planned its future layout.
Stuartfield has been called an “island” and perhaps technically speaking it is, though on the map it looks more like a peninsula, almost but not quite surrounded by water in the form of fresh streams, mill-lades and dams.
The water was very important in those days, for water-power was the essential motivation of any industry. There had to be water to drive the big wheel of the flour and meal mill on the southern outskirts of the village, and water for the lint-mill at Quartalehouse to the north.
Water was also essential for the preparation of the flax – and industry at that time meant almost inevitably linen manufacture. It was there in abundance for the present dam, in a shallow, more boggy form, extended over a large area.
The village which John Burnett projected but did not live to see grow up – for he died in 1784 – was laid out in the form of a cross with a spacious Square at the intersection, from which wide straight streets ran north, south, east and west. To the south the village was given its own Commonty for common grazing, and every cottage was long enough to hold its loom.