Duncan Harley

  Archaeologists from Highland Council are appealing for information following the disappearance of a local historical monument known as the Fodderletter Lum. A familiar landmark to travellers on the Granton-on-Spey to Tomintoul road, the historic structure is just one of a set of freestanding stone chimneys once used by council road crews as night shelters. Easily mistaken for the gable ends of old cottar houses, the structures date from the early Twentieth Century and are, according to Highland Council Chief Archaeologist Henry Carter, irreplaceable. “We only have five of these structures in the Highland Council area and the loss of even one represents a cultural tragedy for the region and indeed the whole of Scotland.” Henry and his team are hoping that the monument has not already been broken up and sold on to illegal dry stone dykers.   “During lockdown and with garden centres and builders’ yards mainly closed, we have seen a spate of such thefts” he stated. Seemingly a...

  Scotland’s history is littered with tales of headless heroes. Macbeth, Mary Queen of Scots and even the Marquis of Montrose were separated from their heads at various points. But of course, to be remembered as a headless hero, you don’t necessarily need to suffer the indignity of an actual decapitation. You just need a string of pearls, a wealthy duchess and a Polaroid camera. Remember them? Ethel Margaret Campbell Whigham (1912-1993) was a wealthy socialite who came from money and married into the aristocracy. Her dad, George Hay Whigham, was big in the global vinegar business and Ethel was privately educated in New York before venturing onto the international headlines. An early affair with a youthful David Niven led to a concealed pregnancy and rumours of dalliances with Cary Grant and J. Paul Getty soon followed. In 1933 age just twenty-one she married Charles Sweeny, a wealthy golfer, and was immortalised in song in the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes. The Sweeny marriage ...

  The final words uttered by Mary Queen of Scots on the day of her execution on 8 February 1587 went something along the lines of "I forgive you and all the world with all my heart for I hope this death will make an end to all my troubles." After which the executioner severed her head and held it up for all to see. Well, not quite. It took maybe three blows plus some pretty gory last-minute sawing with the blade of the axe before the royal head was finally held up for all to see. Then of course, the clumsy man dropped it and was left with her bloodied wig in his upraised hand. You might be forgiven for thinking that that might have been quite enough drama for one day, but there was even more to come. Mary had always had a thing about tiny dogs and it appears that terriers were her favourite breed although some accounts tell of spaniels. Whatever. Accounts differ widely, but some say that as the executioner lifted up the queen's dress to remove her garters as a souvenir – ...

  You’ve maybe never heard of Dudley Watkins (1907-1969). An Englishman, he studied at Nottingham School of Art for a bit before taking up a position at Boots the Chemist in around 1922. Glasgow School of Art soon beckoned and by 1925 he was working as an illustrator for Dundee publisher DC Thomson. DC Thomson were, and arguably still are, intent on portraying an early 20th century music hall image of Scotland which defies the test of time and maybe does Scotland an injustice. The Broons and Desperate Dan inhabit the genre and of course there is Oor Wullie who, eighty years on, still sits on his bucket and sports a shocking haircut. For his part, Dudley made a decent career as an illustrator although in the early days he supplemented his meagre salary by teaching at Dundee School of Art. Most of the DC Thomson illustrators worked anonymously and never even got a by-line. But Watkins eventually broke the mould and was permitted to add his signature to his work. Alongside Desperat...

  A facet of Scottish culture is the capacity to self-deprecate. In fact, Music Hall performers often depended on it. Chic Murray’s infamous “My father was from Aberdeen, and a more generous man you couldn't wish to meet. I have still a gold watch that belonged to him and it’s my most treasured possession. He sold it to me on his deathbed you know” is a prime example and there are plenty more still going the rounds. Now, Harry Gordon (1893-1957) is maybe the best-known performer to have trodden the Aberdeen stage. He was known as the Laird of Inversnecky, a fictional Scottish town he used in his comic routines, and to this day there is a beachfront café – The Inversnecky Café, named in his honour. His first public appearance was probably at age 12 at Gilcomston Parish Church where he performed panto as Princess Chrysanthemum. A brief career in insurance and three years serving in the First World War followed although his war service involved entertaining troops rather than shooti...

  Despite the Wolf of Badenoch association, Elgin is a grand town full of rich history. Both Oswald Mosely and London born writer Daniel Defoe visited, though at different times. Defoe thought highly of Elgin. In the journal of his 1724 tour of Great Britain, he writes: “In this rich country is the city, or town rather, of Elgin; I say city, because in antient time the monks claim'd it for a city; and the cathedral shews, by its ruins, that it was a place of great magnificence!” As for Mosley, he was heckled by a crowd of anti-fascists and run out of town. In more recent years The Beatles (billed as the Love Me Do Boys) began their 1963 Scottish tour in the town. They shared a bill with The Alex Sutherland Sextet at the Two Red Shoes Ballroom on 3 January during a blizzard. They were not well known and admission was six shillings in old money. Takings were disappointing – perhaps as low as £42, according to Elgin music historian David Dills. In fact, one local tale has a skint P...

  Radio journalist Lord Haw Haw – better known as William Joyce, was captured by the British Army in May 1945 and hanged for treason in January 1946 . Debate continues to this day as to his citizenship and his fast tracking to execution in an English jail remains legally questionable. But of course, Scotland had its very own Lord McHaw Haw in the form of Donald Alexander Grant from Alness in Easter Ross who over the course of two years, broadcast his own flavour of “Germany Calling” under the guise of Radio Caledonia. The station’s message was basically “What are the Scots doing fighting England’s war. The Germans are our friends” and, despite a claim that the broadcasts were from somewhere in Scotland, the station was actually based in Charlottenburg in far off Germany. Seemingly few in his native Caledonia listened to his tartan propaganda and by 1942 Radio Caledonia had been taken off the air by the German propaganda ministry. Following the fall of the Third Reich, Grant surr...

Fraserburgh is quite a place. There’s a busy harbour and alongside connections with Scottish Samurai Blake Glover and the London fashion scene in the form of Bill Gibb, the town is the birthplace of a chicken hypnotist. Steve Fairnie (1951-1993) is perhaps best remembered locally as the frontman of the post-punk band Writz. But of course, his main claim to fame was his partnership with singer songwriter Bev Sage. Together they took the 1980’s charts by storm with a remake of Frederick Hollander’s 1930’s hit ‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt’ – better known perhaps as ‘Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)’. Both Billie Holiday and the Beatles recorded cover versions of the song, but somehow the Sage/Fairnie Techno Twins version stands out. Of course, fame does not come ‘cheep’ and in what was most probably a PR stunt, he made the front pages when he mesmerised a chicken in a Cornwall cafe. It was summer 1983 and obviously a short news day. He and Bev had been out din...

  The Mearns town of Stonehaven rightly points to connections with BBC founding director John Reith (1889 -1971) and pneumatic tyre inventor Robert William Thomson (1822 – 1873), but as far as I know there is no wee blue plaque recalling the towns links with Canadian communism. Tom McEwan was born in the seaside town in 1891. Orphaned young he was taken in age nine by an aunt in Catterline until as a teenager he moved to Aberdeen to work on the railways. Marriage and children followed and in 1912 he emigrated to Manitoba where he worked for a while as blacksmith before joining the Socialist Party of Canada. By 1929 Tom had become the party’s industrial director and a few years later he was lobbying the Canadian government for employment insurance for unemployed workers – an outcome rejected by the prime minister of the day who vowed “Never will I or any government of which I am a part, put a premium on idleness or put our people on the dole!” Needless to say, Tom’s links with Mo...

  The news that UK flower growers are suffering from a lack of foreign pickers this year reminded me of Scotland’s contribution to the re-establishing of the Dutch bulb growing industry post WW2. Devastated by five years of war and a vicious fascist policy designed to starve the rebellious Dutch into submission, folk in Holland were literally forced to eat whatever they could get their hands on. And that included flower bulbs. Screen actress Audrey Hepburn often talked about this in interviews and recalled how desperate folk – including her teenage self, would try to make bread using both tulip and daffodil bulbs, often with disastrous results. The Dutch population literally ate the seed-stock and had to look abroad post-war to nurserymen in the UK to restart the ailing industry. Commercial bulb growing in Scotland probably goes back a couple of hundred years and there are records indicating that Angus was by the 1880’s the daffodil capital of Scotia. Some 100 hectares in and aro...

In early March 1961, the US nuclear submarine tender USS Proteus arrived at the newly built Polaris base at Dunoon in the Holy Loch. It stayed there for a few years and a succession of American tenders came and went until finally in 1992 the US Navy left for warmer waters. The holiday town was then plunged into a period of economic decline and, not to put too fine a point on it, mourned the departure of the US submarines despite the fact that their very presence put the whole of central Scotland at risk of nuclear annihilation. The local economy suffered bigtime as a result of the withdrawal and many local businesses went to the wall. Even the local sex trade suffered a big hit. But at least Dunoon was still on the map. The Cold War concept of Mutually Assured Destruction – MAD for short, had triumphed and aside from the economic downturn, no one had died – well almost. During exercises in November 1970 a fire erupted on the USS Canopus killing several crewmembers and four years late...

  There’s a family gravestone at Doune Churchyard at Macduff recording the passing of Campbell Cowie. He was a close pal of the artist and author Peter Anson and was only 18 when he died all those years ago in 1941. Anson had met the lad while living in a harbourside cottage in the fisher town and the troubled teenager soon moved in. In his writings, Anson records a shared interest in fisher customs such as avoiding meeting the local minister before setting out to sea and putting both shoes on before tying up either of your shoelaces. I think there was something about avoiding white rabbits as well, but I’ll maybe need to check up on that superstition. The cottage at that time was a sort of community centre for locals and also an early hub for what was to become the Apostleship of the Sea – in short, a religious house catering for the spiritual needs of seafarers. Alongside the open door for sailors, local loons used to drop in for a game of cards, a cup of tea, a chat and maybe a...

This week marks twenty-five years since an armed man walked into a Scottish school and murdered a classroom of five-year-olds along with their primary school teacher. A total of seventeen people died and several others were injured during the rampage. The story is well known so I won’t go into it here except to say that the Dunblane atrocity prompted a tightening of gun control legislation in Scotland. The law was changed to prohibit the ownership of guns without good cause. A generation of local children were of course lost but at least steps were taken to minimise the risk of it ever happening again. The healing process led to the establishment of a memorial garden on the site of the murders and three local churches feature stain-glass windows dedicated to the lost children. My personal favourite however is the remembrance stone within Dunblane Cathedral. It’s a simple looking piece of sculpture in the form of a standing stone and maybe two metres tall but it maybe has a message abou...

Aberdeen architect Dr William Kelly (1861-1944) worked on literally hundreds of projects during his long and eventful life and for five years following the Great War, served as Aberdeen Corporation’s very first Director of Housing.  Alongside a portfolio of projects including alterations to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Aberdeen Lunatic Asylum, he found time to design the Battle of Harlaw Monument at Inverurie and the Gordon Highlander Monument in Duthie Park. But despite the illustrious career, the man is nowadays best remembered for his cats. The Union Bridge over Aberdeen’s Denburn Valley was completed in 1805 and was, and maybe still is, the longest single-span granite-built bridge in the entire world. By the early 20th century, the bridge needed upgrading and was widened to incorporate pavements plus a balustrade, topped by a line of decorative caste-iron leopards. Kelly’s cats were born! In the 1960s, the bridge was again ‘improved’ and some of Dr Kelly’s cats ended up as exh...