Coast and Country FREE CHRISTMAS EDITION!
SORROW AND SPLENDOUR Life in Scotland’s fish ports
THE BUCHAN RIVIERA
Puddings, pilots, and publishers throughout the ages
FIGHT FOR THE PHILIPPINES Aberdeen responds to Typhoon Haiyan
Editor’s Foreword What started out as a current affairs magazine has, owing to unforeseen events, since evolved into a kind of second-hand travel guide for the northeast of Scotland. Compiled over a short period of time, the series of features and historicals, some with a topical angle, aims to give the layperson a window into what life in the northeast is like. It’s written for no particular reason other than to pleasantly engage and we hope you enjoy it. CONTENTS Page 2 - 6: Fraserburgh Page 6 - 8: Philippines Fundraiser Page 9 - 10: Cruden Bay
BATTLE FOR THE BROCH: A FEATURE OF SCOTLAND’S BIGGEST WHITE FISH PORT By John Mailer
Fraserburgh is unusual among towns, in that it leaps out at you. There’s no surge of traffic or streetlights to announce its arrival, no road signs, no duelled carriageway. Out of nowhere, it just appears, a collection of church spires and roofs on the horizon, rising out of fields and trickling down toward the sea. The ghost town atmosphere, then, is familiar any visitor even before they’ve reached the town’s doorstep. “That’s one of the places little ironies,” says tourist guide Norman McKerracher. “It’s never chaotic or rowdy, just silent.” Even on a sunny day, the town lies empty. James Ramsay Park, with its playground and its martial arts centre, is the exception, hosting a “The
ghost
town atmosphere”
mother and her child, and their pet dog. After that, as the bus rolls into the town centre, life ceases. Norman points out the solid old granite mansion and town-houses on the Strichen Road. “They would have been
owned by the skippers Academy, can walk and merchants back in into a job worth the town’s heydey.” £35,000 a year on the boats moored in the The heydey is not far- harbour. “The town’s gone. The sea has problems all come always given back to money,” the Fraserburgh its living old man says. “Too and even today, the much too young. It fishery industry still goes to their heads accounts for 65% of and all bets are off the town’s after that.” employment. It hasn’t left Fraserburgh short All the spare money of money either; a wouldn’t have been a 16-to-18-year-old, problem if it weren’t for fresh out of the local what much of it was
going toward. “Heroin,” McKerracher spits. “The stuff’s poisoned the place since it first got here in the Nineties.” The drugs boom, “Too
much too young... all bets are off after that.”
apparently imported by local cannabis farmers and dealers from Liverpool and the North, culminated in the town earning the horrible distinction as Heroin Capital of Scotland in 2007. “There were around 140 deaths from heroin abuse, from the early 90s going into 1997,” McKerracher relates. The combination of a prosperous industrial hub and a persistent drug problem makes Fraserburgh an unusual, even unique case in criminology. The usual conditions arising from addiction, most obviously crime and theft needed to pay for the habit, are absent here. The fishermen’s generous wages mean nobody has to steal or mug for their troubles, they just work for it. Hence why you can walk around the town in complete safety, day in and out.
Reaching the end of the Strichen Road brings us to the turnoff with Victoria Road. To the east lies Bellslea Football Park and, beyond that, the South Church. This wonderful old building served as the final resting place for one of the heroes in the fight against the epidemic. “Sandy Wisley,” McKerracher says fondly. “He was the first person who was really prepared to tell it like it was about the heroin boom here.”
Wisley operated out of the Saltoun Surgery in Finlayson Street for almost 30 years. His work brought him faceto-face with the sudden drugs explosion and he became a contentious figure in the local community, with many lauding him as a hero while others dismissed him as a hysteriamonger and a crank. He was laid to rest in a packed-out funeral service in July 2009, after dying from cancer. “There aren’t enough like him,”
is the mournful riposte shops have gone of most people these under in recent years, days. though the recession has hardly helped There is, however, a matters. A recent sense in Fraserburgh casualty is the Saltoun that things are finally Hotel, once the cenbeginning to pick up tre piece of the town after the carnage of square, now the previous two abandoned by its decades. Broad Street, owners. one of the two high streets that runs “It’s not all doom and parallel to the docks, gloom these days,” was once notable for says Olivia Keir, one of little more than its the waitresses in the boarded up windows Snax cafe on Broad and closures. This has Street. “A lot of the changed somewhat, really old and runthough not in the most down places have encouraging ways. been overhauled and Payday loan firms and renovated. Marconi gambling dens prosper Road’s the best here, and more of the example of that.” town’s famous sweetie and haberdasher Marconi Road, named
after a local shipping engineer, generated notoriety as one of the worst streets in Scotland for its slumping property values and its ominous bleakness. Here, the gradual resurrection is most evident. Half the street, east to mid, consists of the barren granite houses with moss in the tiles and grass in the gutter. From midway to the west end, the houses are impossibly garish, multicoloured and modern. Talk of renaming the street Westshore Gardens has come to nothing, and Marconi Road (AKA “The Bronx”) stays put on maps and
in the town’s consciousness.
Charity and the Church: Fundraising for the Philippines
Cruden Bay: The Story Behind the Buchan Riviera
With the Philippines still recovering from the effects of Typhoon Haiyan, the British public have given some £70 million to various appeals organised to help the millions of people left bereaved, homeless, or without (continued on page 7)
One of the country’s unsung destinations sits next to the sea, between Aberdeen and Peterhead. The golf course, the small harbour, the ruins of the old castle, and the long near-perfect stretch of golden sand (continued on page 8)
A Feature
A Feature
A visit to the town’s library, a wonderful feat of nineteenth-century architecture, turns up some little nuggets from the town’s past. The Christian Watt diaries (the memoirs of a mental patient who died in Cornhill in the 1920s aged 91) offer a fascinating glimpse into the fishing industry before the Great Wars, while a copy of Killing for Company - a biography of serial killer Dennis Nilsen, who grew up in Academy Road here occupies one of the dustier and more discreet shelves in the building’s corner. Fraserburgh, for all its faults and problems, rubs off on its visitor. The people are warm, its resilience is an example to all, and its history a grim lesson for many. A passing visit is recommended for a local visitor.
(Church and Charity continued) power and basic material needs. One of the many small organisations that have sprung up to help is the Mid Stocket Typhoon Fund, a band of volunteers who had taken out their own weekends to raise cash for the badly-hit Philippines. Coast and Country attached itself to Aileen Mowat (73) and Edith Duthie (76) as they pounded the pavements and hoovered up the city’s
spare change. “Secret weapon,” Edith says earnestly, pulling a Celebrations tin from the small cupboard at the back of the creche room in the breezy chilly old church. “This is going to bring home the bacon.” “Let’s get going, shall we.” Shrugging into her coat and slinging her scarf round her neck, she grabs her own money tin and makes for the door.
The Number 3 drops us on Union Street, and immediately the pair of them install themselves against the wall of HMV and the money drive begins. “Hurricane Relief”, “Help the Philippines”, and “Money for shoes and food” are among the slogans offered to passersby doing their Christmas shopping and getting on with their Saturday mornings. “Pub!” Aileen cries
after about half an hour, and we march along the street to the Grill, where they count the coppers over a soda water and lime. “That’s £32.55, most of it in small change,” she concludes. “Off to Union Square next.”
part with their money. Union Square turns over more revenue: £56.28, again mostly in coppers and silver.
Lunch, pizza inside, offers the afternoon’s first opportunity for a proper conversaton. Asked why they want Piling down Market to give up their spare Street and into the time to help people glass-and-concrete they’ve never met, shopping complex, the Edith offers: “We’re in same ritual occurs, as touch with churches the pair stand rooted up in Peterhead and outside Zizzi’s and Fraserburgh, and both implore shoppers to those towns have big
Filipino congregations, because of the fishing industry. So they’ve all taken an interest in the typhoon. We thought we ought to do the same.” “We’ll keep this up until Christmas,” Aileen pledges. “Our target, for the time being, is £5,000.” This, roughly, is the same number of people killed during the typhoon. “We’re off to the beach front later and then we’ll have a whip round the pubs in Mid Stocket,” she relates. Handing over a spare tin, she says, “A wee contribution from an outside source would be appreciated.” You can still see the pair of them, buzzing about the city, and haranguing people for money, in the city gardens and parks. All money collected goes to the Oxfam Shoebox Appeal, run out of their shop on King Street.
Sitting on the cliffs above the North Sea, Cruden Bay looks like the postcard village setting for an Agatha Christie novel. The beach, a great golden horseshoe, sweeps past one of the oldest golf courses in the world. Sandstone cottages line the street leading to the harbour, where pleasure yachts and fishing boats sit moored for the weekend. Along the coast lie the ruins of Slains Castle. At the other end of the village, on top of the Church Hill, sits St. James Episcopal Abbey. “It is quite a place, just to look at,” says local historian Paul McClannan. “More than the other towns and villages in this part of Scotland, it is quite tourist-friendly.” This is easy enough to confirm; a quick stroll along the beach introduces us to a German couple walking their dog, and a Norwegian student on his gap yeap. The Norwegian connection is appropriate. Next year, in July 2014, one month away from the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, another history-making event unfolded here on the same beach, lost to history now but celebrated at the time. “There he is.” Paul points out the picture of a dark-haired tanned stranger on the wall of the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel. “The kind of person you wouldn’t find anymore, someone who just risks everything for the hell of it.” The black-and-white stranger is Tryggve Gran, the Norwegian explorer and pilot who cut his teeth in Captain Scot’s Arctic expedition in 1912 before training himself as a pilot over the following two years. On 30 July 1914, he made history by becoming the first person to fly solo across the North Sea from
Cruden Bay to Norway. Picking through the tatty old ringbinder devoted to Gran’s life makes for unbelievable reading. Following on from this feat of flying, he would violate Norwegian law by enlisting in the Canadian air force during the Second World War and fighting Imperial Germany during the First World War, only to turn Nazi collaborator in the Second conflict. He is little remembered now in the town that made his name. The same can’t be said for another part of local folklore, which has since passed into the modern lexicon and culture. Catching the 63 bus from the Kilmarnock Arms, we’re dropped off at a muddy car park outside the town and end up trudging along a muddy track that takes us to the edge of the cliffs. To the north lies Cruden Bay’s beach, and Tryggve Gran’s runway. To the north lies the ruins of Slains Castle. Technically a manor house rather than a castle, the old building is now falling to pieces, but still occasionally enters the news: a local student ended up in hospital after falling over one of the ledges and into the water. A memorial stone erected for another young boy has since been removed, probably as part of the Aberdeenshire Council’s drive to get planning permission for luxury flats in the castle’s place; these have since been temporarily shelved, courtesy of the recession. Unusually, there aren’t any photographs in existence of Slains Castle before it fell into ruin shortly after the First World War. Nonetheless, we do have the memories and diaries of some of the guests who enjoyed the privilege of a brief stay.
Cruden Past, Pr Pilots, and
One of them was Bram Stoker, the Irish novelist who found fame and made his fortune as the author of the diaries of Count Dracula, a vampire in Transylvania. “Stoker loved the town itself” (you can still view his written opinion of the Kilarmnock Arms in an old guest log) “but thought there was something really sinister about this castle. Nobody has ever proved that he did take inspiration for Dracula from Cruden Bay, but he did love it enough that he eventually retired to Whinnyfold, just a mile up the cliffs from here.” Other guests at Slains Castle included H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister who took Britain into the First World Wa that Tryggve Gran would be swept into as a celebrated RAF pilot. Winston Churchill apparently convalesced here following his adventures in the Boer War and in the House of Commons, as a guest and friend of the owner of the Castle itself. The house’s gradual demise
n Bay: resent, Publishers
started after its purchase by a shipping company in 1923. “The Earl was fed up with the house, which he thought was a a white elephant,” Paul explains, “and he just wanted to get rid of the bloody thing. So he flogs it to this merchant, who takes the roof away in 1925, some kind of tax avoidance scheme. It’s never recovered from that.” Turning away from the old house, he offers, “Want to come and see the Murdoch’s church?” The Wee Free Church sits across Aulton Road from the Kilmarnock Arms and along the Main Street leading to the harbour. “Pat Murdoch called this home before he went to Australia,” Paul says. “We don’t know much about him, other than that he came here, set up the church, and married a local girl before upping sticks.” Rupert Murdoch’s family can trace its roots back to this town. His grandfather, a
preacher and minister for the Free Church of Scotland, set up one of a dozen local parishes before taking his savings and his wife to Adelaide, on the other side of the world. His grandson has since established himself as one of the leading media executives of the 20th century. While Cruden Bay makes for a beautiful postcard, you’re only sratching the surface with a brief stay in this jewel of the coastline’s crown. The little mythologies and histories that have since been lost to the public’s memory and consciousness make it one of the richest and most intriguing villages in the Buchan area. A visit is well recommended to anybody with an interest in local, international, and esoteric history. If you wish to stay in Cruden Bay, the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel is the most highly recommended for comfort and good food.