When the last man left the lost village of Pitmiddle
Alison Campsie discovers how Clearance style conditions finally condemned a Perthshire hillside village, 80 years ago
James Gillies was the last resident to leave the village of Pitmiddle. In January 1938, he closed the door to his cottage for the last time and walked away through the deep snow.
It was the final act in the slow decay of the village that once sat high on a hill near Kinnaird in Perthshire and enjoyed glorious views out over the River Tay.
For generations, the Gillies family called Pitmiddle home, with James remaining in his home while his neighbours disappeared round about him.
In the end, it was time to go. The winter storms cancelled the sale of his farm but there was to be no more hanging on. James upped and left behind the life he had always known.
Pitmiddle once thrived with a community of weavers, a blacksmith, two joiners, a tailor, a butcher and a public house with Sandy the village shoemaker also schooling the village children.
By the end of the 1800s, a far sadder scene of empty cottages, leaking thatched roofs and diminishing farm land was on offer.
Two reporters from The Dundee Courier were dispatched to investigate living conditions at Pitmeddle in December 1896 - more than four decades before Mr Gillies’ departure - after reports reached the office of clearance-style conditions up on the hill.
The reporter wrote: “Rumours of evictions and clearances in the Carse of Gowrie reached us, and stirred our lethargic sympathies into an eager desire to know the truth and the foundation for these reports.”
The reporters left Dundee for Pitmiddle and approach the “quite picturesque” village on a cart track dogged by holes that held two feet of clay-coloured water.
The reporter added: “Picking our way along this muddy lane, at last we reached the outskirts of the village, and paused to reconnoitre.
“Not a soul was to be seen, and silence and desolation reigned around. Many of the cottages were dilapidated and tenantless.”
The reporters ended up in the home of a Mrs Gray, a widow of 14 years, who shared her “sad story”.
The reporter said: “She had not been actually warned to remove, but the laird had taken her bit land from her at Martinmas, and how could she live- without the land?
“She could sit in the cottage for another year, but for the cottage and garden she was asked to pay a rent not much less than what she had paid for the croft of which she was now deprived.”
She kept a cow and made her money by raising calves and keeping a pig and poultry. Her croft consisted of two acres of green corn, potatoes and turnips to help feed her beasts and pay her rent.
Of the prospect of leaving her animals Mrs Gray said: “That’s like to break my very heart, it’s juist like pairtin’ wi’ my bairns.”
Of her home, she added: “They winna repair it for me. The thatch is worn on the roof, an’ look hoo the water comes in on me in my bed; ay, and at the fireside, too. I would need to put up an umbrella when I’m sitting at my am fireside on a rainy nicht.”
The demise of Pitmiddle, where a well provided water, was attributed to changes in agricultural work which had forced people to leave their homes to look for new opportunities.
Industrial-scale weaving in Dundee also depleted income in the village, where every home had a loom with a communal building also holding seven or eight shared pieces of machinery.
Some Pitmiddle residents went to the “great cities of the United Kingdom, to America and even more distant countries,” the account added.
In 1691 Pitmiddle, around 250 people lived in the village and the hamlet of Craigdallie at the bottom of the hill, according to Abernyte Heritage Group. By 1841, just 99 people living in 26 households were counted. By 1896, just seven families remained.
The traces of their homes can still be seen, with the gooseberry and red currant bushes once planted by residents still bringing life into this now abandoned place.