1950 61 A Child's Memory Of Kirkconnel

A Memory of Kelloholm.

On 11th October 1950 I was born in the flat above Drife's butchers shop in Kirkconnel. My dad, Tommy, worked in the shop with Cameron Purvis and struggled to feed a family of three on the butcher's wage and eventually went down the Pit. He was brought up in Edinburgh and I suspect he would never have imagined that his career path would have centred on back breaking work in wet coal seams in Dumfriesshire and subsequently Nottinghamshire. We moved to the "new scheme" and had a flat at 5 Kirkland Drive. My memories highlight a pulley in the kitchen, on which my mam dried her washing on wet days, and how they would drip on the kitchen table as we ate our mince and tatties. How, on my first day at school, I was left in Miss Macadam's class, a little forlorn lad, lost without his mam, in an antiquated building, with a coal fired bulbous stove and no friendly faces in sight. Schooldays were dominated by the characters of teachers; Miss Moffatt, Bobby Bryce, the Minister, Mr Cameron, and of course Annie Duncan. I have little doubt that Mrs/Miss Duncan, was a lovely woman out of school but for me she was the best reason I could think of to encourage my dad to leave Kirkconnel and move to England. The woman terrified me, and the memory of her making me stand in class and expose my weakness at subtraction will be forged in my memory forever. However, I loved The Killie, The Pit Wood, The Cadger, Halloween, Bonfire Night, The River Nith, Rolling Eggs on the Mill Hill, The 'Tallies, Shanklin's shop, the smell of peat burning, and feeling deep snow underfoot in winter .
I remember Andrew Armstrong, Archibald Fowler, Jon Willison, Andrew Shaw, Ronnie Deacon, John Sharp, Jarvis Mc Fadjeon, Maureen Drisk, Elizabeth Fletcher, Mary White, John Flynn, Dykes Kerr, Billy Hammond, Jackie McTaggart, Willie Ferguson, Tom Hughes, Jimmy Milligan, The Cano sisters, Eleanor Clelland, and given time I have little doubt I could name more.
In February 1961 I left Kirkconnel to move to Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire and within 18 months over 70 families from the village had joined us on The Garibaldi Estate, at Forest Town, in Nottinghamshire. I have seldom gone back to the place of my birth, but I will never forget the wonderful first ten years of my life in an idyllic heaven. I will always be grateful that I was born a Scot and that my formative life was sculptured in Kirkconnel. Jim(James) Smith

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