Working Man's Diary

Added by Thornie at 11:56 on 02 August 2024

Over the centuries, the folk of this parish (well, ordinary people everywhere) have come across as gingerbread men or women. Baked as they are, even individually, from a flour sifted from church and statutory records — births, marriages and deaths, census snapshots, valuation rolls — ho...

Gauls of Murthly

Added by Thornie at 10:42 on 19 June 2024

On the road out to the old A9 from Byres of Murthly, just past the sawmill on the right, there used to be a small farm: Gauls of Murthly. It had fields on both sides of the road. Today, the most noticeable feature by the roadside is a large clump of bamboo. The area behind that was once better known...

I Told You

Added by Thornie on 19 June 2024

I was looking at a feature article, “The Edge of Empire”, in the Courier, More explicitly, at the large diagrammatic map topping the page. And my blood pressure was rocketing. I could hear a ghostly chuckle and then Uncle Con saying, “Dixi vobis”. I told you. And indeed, he h...

And Then There Were None

Added by Thornie on 22 June 2022

Perhaps I should have paid them more attention. They were, after all, the most exotic of Murthly’s residents. I’m speaking here of the two “Red Indians”, Native Americans brought back by Sir William Drummond Stewart in 1839 to look after the buffalo (American bison) he had ...

Murthly 1 and the Albatros

Added on 26 September 2021

On 24th July 1918, Lieut. Carl Frederick Falkenberg, flying Murthly No.1, an SE 5a fighter recently acquired by 84 Squadron, was leading “B” Flight on early evening patrol over Peronne in the Somme valley. They chanced upon some Albatrosen of the German Luftstreitkräfte . By 18.45 a...

The Asylum Mikado

Added by Thornie on 24 August 2021

“I have often seen ‘The Mikado’ played by amateurs, but I do not think I have ever more enjoyed a production than I did at Murthly Asylum last night.” An arresting first sentence: for the location alone. Well, to our eyes perhaps, but readers of the Perthshire Advertiser in F...