Impressions

In 1999, I made my first trip to Birse to see the land of my ancestors.  I had scoured the Parish Registers for information pertaining to my various families of Glass, Coutts, McCondach and Emslie.  I had searched each of the census to see who was living where and with whom.  I knew the names of the crofts and in most cases I knew who lived in them – but nothing prepared me for what I saw on that first trip …..

“And it was as if I lived those weeks in the past.  I drove around the countryside most of the time with no other company than my own thoughts, imagining what life would have been like, sitting silently and looking out over the panoramas, breathtaking to say the least.  In my mind the seasons changed.  I saw the new growth and blossoms of Spring and the crops ripening in the Summer months.  Then came Autumn and the heather turned purple, the crops were harvested and leaves on the trees changed to golds, reds and browns and carpeted the ground.  Finally the cold winds of Winter and the snow fell and covered the hills.  Tourists would have seen spectacular views but I saw how hard life would have been for my families who lived on the tiny crofts.

"Finzean was along this road; this is where my mother was born.  I remember stopping to take a photo of the sign and behind it was a newly renovated steading which turned out to be Whitestone.  Visions of the croft mixed with names and places on a reel of film and a census began to take on a life of its own.  I could not believe how close these places were, most were just down the road from each other as I recognised the name of croft after croft.  The countryside was so beautiful, in the distance were hills, not too high, and there were plantations of pine forests on some of them.  The fields were mostly green on that first visit, but as time progressed they turned into a golden shade and were then harvested, the bales left in idle rows awaiting storage ……

“I drove down the Forest road. My Glass family had always been “in the Forest” meaning the Forest of Birse; it was like driving back in time to another world.  My great grandmother was born at Auchabrack and I found this croft almost at the end of the road.  The drive was beautiful.  There were crofts on each side of the road, set back a little and up against a backdrop of hills that promised to be covered in heather in the near future.  The road grew more and more narrow and soon I was driving between a canopy of trees, some pine, some birch, which grew almost to the edge of the road, just leaving enough space for a border of bracken ferns.  One particular day it was raining lightly and crystals of water hung heavy on the lighter branches. 

I remember thinking that my grandfather had cut the wood in this forest and as if someone was adding reality to thought, the Finzean Sawmill appeared at the side of the road.   It was just a small group of buildings some older than others, and a sluice running along the back. It was one of the few water driven mills left in the Birse area, just this one, the Bucket Mill further up the road and the Mill of Clintor further down.  There was a stack of freshly cut wood sitting out the front.

Further up the road the trees disappeared and the view was just breathtaking.  I have heard it said that hills are rolling, but up until now, I had not put meaning to such words.  These ones did roll, rising and falling away, one behind the other, off into the distance, and they were covered, just covered with a low shrub, first a brownish shade but which lightened into a purple mantle in the coming weeks.  There were little burns here and there, either running down the sides of the hills or across the bottom of them; they were fringed with ferns that waved gently in the breeze. 

Auchabrack was situated on the side of one of these hills.  I left the car at the top by the road and walked down an even smaller one, over a tiny stone bridge and up through a gate at the other side.  The Glass family had been sheep farmers and even today there are still flocks of sheep grazing peacefully on the slopes of the hills.  It is amazing to see how green the grass is, it almost looks like a lawn, and it stops so suddenly up against the stone dyke and then there is heather on the other side. 

Auchabrack was deserted, the windows were boarded up and parts were in ruins.  The ruins looked as though they may have originally been two more houses attached to the main building, after all three families are recorded as living here in the 1891 census.  A step through that door was a step into another world, a world filled with ghosts of past generations, each whispering not quite loud enough to hear, whispering stories of their lives in a time gone past.  The kitchen was small; a table stood in the middle of the room still surrounded by chairs.  There was a sink to one side and a fireplace at the back where the sway still stood firm awaiting the return of the black kettle and the crackle of the open fire.  Another room at the opposite side of the hall, and between a staircase ascending to the upstairs bedrooms, a staircase now weak with time and certainly not safe to walk on. 

As I walked around, I touched the walls and the doors …. I walked through doorways, the same doorways they walked through and I looked out on the same hills that they would have seen - I was living their past in my present.

From Auchabrack you look over the way and can just see the top of the Forest Church.  It is nestled amongst a grove of trees just before the tar road gives away to the dirt one that leads to the Castle.  The track down to the church has small gullies cut there by water coming down from the road above.  The church is small, only a dozen or so pews painted blue, the floor is bare and there is just a small table in the centre acting as an altar, a pulpit to one side and an organ covered with a flowered cloth on the other.  The small pulpit had a hymnbook sitting open; the pages tattered and curled with use.  Above the altar was a round stained glass window that changed colours from light to dark as the clouds outside passed slowly across the sun. I wrote in the visitors’ book situated at the back of the church.  In fact, I almost recorded my life history.  Somehow it seemed appropriate.  I felt I needed to leave part of myself there." 

and home embraced this restless soul
and now held close there, whispered in softest voice
of lives in crofts and hills and glens

October 1999  ©