Millstones and Milestones

There is a bend in the road at Clola, Aberdeenshire. It is an ‘A’ road which suggests that it is busy but really this is a road that has gotten above itself. It is not a road to nowhere but one wouldn’t be surprised if it was. However 2 and a half miles to the north is the larger community of Mintlaw. If one is to pull off at this Clola kink in the road, one will see a large old farm building and an old farm house. The building now houses furniture and bric-a-brac, it is a quaint store. 100 years ago it used to be the mill but this is hard to believe because there is no longer a mill race. No nervy rushing water to turn the wheels, which drove the stones which ground the meal. There is little evidence of its former glory.

To this day, Clola is a hamlet in rich Aberdeenshire farmland. It is also a place from which to commute, with the town of Peterhead lying almost due east of it on the North Sea coast. Somewhat further to the south-east is the City of Aberdeen, once famous as a fishing port, now as a hub for the North Sea oil industry. Aberdeenshire is a varied county, fecund farmland in the north, giving way to the Cairngorms National Park in the south-west. Royal Deeside, where the Royals spend their summers and monarchists lurk in the shadows, hugs the River Dee. It is a county rich in geographical variety, abundant in history, a county of distinct character; deep rooted traditions snuggling up to innovative, modern industries. Aberdeenshire continues to plough the furrow it always has but in deeper and more diverse ways.

The two brothers had been for an overnight hike in the Cairngorms. No warm hat, no gloves a cold wind had hastened them off the top of Ben Macdhui, the area’s highest peak. They had beaten a hasty retreat down to the shores of Loch Etchachan and out to a lower level where the wind’s gasps were fewer, the heather was thicker and Scots pines dotted their ways through sparse woodland. They camped a night by a tinkling burn, then turned south and west through the Lairig Ghru path and back to the Inverness shire side of the plateau. After another night in the tent they had decided to treat themselves to a Bed and Breakfast . So they wound their way by car up along the northern road to the village of Tomintoul and down the Aberdeenshire side.

Clola was a deliberate act. They pulled up early on a Sunday morning and, more by chance than good management, found the antique store open. They walked in unannounced to find the shop deserted but for the proprietor. One of the brothers explained immediately that they were not there to buy anything but were really interested in knowing something about the history of the place. The proprietor was happy to show them around. He explained that it was indeed the old mill, told them when it had ceased to function as such, took them outside and showed them where the mill race still ran albeit now underground and under the road. At some point he looked the brothers up and down with a wise eye and said,

“You two will be Davidsons.”

My brother, George and I agreed that we were. Jim Davidson had married Eleanor Chesser sometime after the First World War. At two year intervals thereafter had arrived Margaret, Wattie, Billy and George. Then on a fateful night in 1929, the byre had a leaky roof and the miller climbed up to fix it. In the cold and wet he contracted pneumonia with the fatal finality that that meant before the discovery of antibiotics. Eleanor was left a widow with children aged two, four, six and eight. She moved to Aberdeen, where she remained defiantly single for 60 years until her own death in 1989.

“I’ll tell you something else,” Our guide volunteered, “If you drive to Mintlaw and find your way to this address you will find your grandfather’s millstones as ornaments at the gates of a private residence.”

He scribbled directions on a piece of paper.

This we did. We photographed. We ran our hands over the heavy stones, feeling with our fingers the ruts and ridges, rune-like revelations of a different era. The wear and tear of years of work; stones stubborn in their silence; a voiceless pageant of Davidson history. We took our leave and visited our grandfather’s grave at the little hamlet of Stuartfield before heading off to spend a night in the town of Fraserburgh. On the following day I dropped George at Aberdeen airport from whence he was flying south.

We were early so we stopped in at the airport pub for a beer. I went to the washroom. When I arrived back George could hardly contain his excitement. There are many famous sons and daughters from Aberdeen, Annie Lennox and Denis Law to name but two. I knew of them before so there was an old hatted-ness about that particular knowledge. But George had found something different and was ecstatic about his discovery. He was an effusive eruption of extensive excitement with no possibility of immediate requital. (I hope he forgives this!?) Why? Above him in the bar was a tribute to another famous son of the area. Thomas Blake Glover (1838-1911) was born in Fraserburgh and became something famous in Japan. To this day there is a Glover House in Nagasaki which boasts 2 million visitors per year. George had visited Japan on occasions through business and was now determined to make a pilgrimage to a Glover spot when next he was there. (He could, I suppose, simply have raised a glass of Kirin beer, which Glover had been instrumental in welcoming to the world!)

I really don’t know why I decided on the title to this blog other than I am currently reading, “Scotland: The Global History” by Murray Pittock. So I came across Glover in the reading and was transported back to that moment in the airport bar. I can’t remember whether George has managed to dot the i of his Glover fascination. (Should have asked him when I was recently on the phone with him). But Fraserburgh to Nagasaki would not simply have been a geographical leap back in the 19^th Century, particularly as Japan had for so long jealously guarded it’s isolation and only recently opened up. I have never been to Japan but my interest too was piqued. I have always loved history, indeed studied it at college. I never, however, regarded myself as a good historian, not having enough of an analytical mind to put two and two together when two and two were not neatly lined up in front of me. But I do respect and honour the past as something from which we can learn. Indeed, Dear Reader, one of the frustrations as a 70 year old is reading and hearing about something which is presented as new and knowing that it is not. So touching a millstone which is so profoundly connected to my very existence was a milestone for me, not an epiphany perhaps, but at least a point of contact with my past.

It has not escaped my notice that the beginning of a new year is a milestone for us all. I hope that 2023 proves to be a marvellous milestone and not the mendacious millstone around the neck that 2022 has been for so many of the peoples of the world. 

Happy New Year to all of you.