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On 3 September 1939, I was nine years old and I went to school that day. This does not sound as if it was anything out of the ordinary but it was a Sunday and my mother, all my sisters and my brother came too, even Margaret who was only two years old.
We all had labels tied to our lapels and carried our gas masks in little square cardboard boxes slung over our shoulders by pieces of string.
When we arrived at school all the other children had their mothers with them and we walked in a long line from the school to Mount Florida Station in Glasgow. At the station there was a long line of steps from the road down to the platform and at this point the mothers were separated form the children and had to watch them boarding the train from up above on the road. We were not separated from our Mum as she was coming with us. This was because Margaret was under school age and if she was to be evacuated then Mum could come too. The headmaster took off his bowler hat, put it on the end of his walking stick and twirled it in the air as the train pulled out.
It seemed to me we were on that train for a very long time and at one point when the train stopped we heard that war had been declared. I remember my mother crying and, when you are only nine and your Mum is in tears, you know that something very serious has happened.
Eventually the train stopped and we all got off. There was a row of distinctive houses and buses and cars of all sorts lined up to take us to our next point in the journey. We were all in one car and Mother asked the driver where we were going and he said ‘Hoddom Castle’. We all got terribly excited thinking we were going to live in a castle. At the castle, which looked as if it had come out of a story book, we were all ushered into a long room with fitted plush seats round the walls. It had long high windows at one end and looked out over a field to the river.
After a while, someone came and asked if there was a big family among us and my Mother immediately said, ‘I have five children’. They asked her if she would like a cottage on her own rather than being billeted in someone’s house and, of course, she said ‘Yes’.
They took Mum away to the office and we were each issued with a paper carrier bag full of food. This was supposed to keep us going until we got our ration books registered with the vans which came every week with supplies. As we had six of these bags, it lasted us for a veer long time.
When Mum came back she collected us together and we went out to the front of the castle where there was a limousine with a chauffeur to take us to the cottage which was about 1.5 miles away. The cottage had two rooms and a kitchen and was at the foot of the drive to Waterside House where Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle lived. Never in our wildest dreams did we think that we would be billeted on the gentry. There were two girl evacuees in the cottage across the road and some more girls we knew at Trailtrow. At first we went to school at Hoddom Castle but after a few months everybody except us had gone home and we went to school in Dalton.
Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle were very kind, thoughtful people and after we had been there for a while Lady Doyle came to the door one day and said she thought we were overcrowded and would the two older girls like to sleep up at the big house. My older sister Moyra and I thought this was a great idea and we were given a bedroom in the staff quarters. By this time nearly everybody had been called up and Lady Doyle was left without any help. The wife of one of the farmers came in and cooked dinner every night and Lady Doyle asked Moyra and me if we would do the washing-up, for which we were paid a shilling each. How Lady Doyle managed that big house all by herself I don’t know but it couldn’t have been easy as she must have been about 62 years old. Sir Arthur was much older than she was and I reckon he must have been well into his seventies.
Being town kids we didn’t know a lot about the country but Margaret fell in love with a huge black bull named Big Jock and would not go to bed at night until we had put her in her pram and taken her to say goodnight to him.
We were ferreting with the farm hands and they often gave us a rabbit. We got to know the farmer, Mr Rodgerson, who let us follow him around and see all the beasts on the farm. (He must have been a very good-natured man!) There was a large sow named Sadie and, as this was also my mother’s name, he called the litter of piglets after us. Lady Doyle started a ‘Brownie Pack’ with me and Moyra and she’d take us out through the woods and tell us about the trees and the flowers. After a while my brother Jack joined these expeditions and we used to kid him about being the only boy in the ‘Brownies’.
Mother got friendly with an old lady who lived in a tiny house on the Hoddom Castle drive. Her name was Mrs McColl and when we visited her we were fascinated by spun glass birds of paradise under glass globes which stood on her sideboard. She died while we were there and Mother went to her funeral. She told us afterwards that the house was so small that they could not get the coffin from the bedroom and out of the front door so they had to take it out by the bedroom window.
All the cottages around us used oil lamps and had dry toilets at the bottom of the garden but we were lucky as our cottage had electricity and a flush toilet at the bottom of the garden. Mother brought her electric iron from home and a small electric fire which could be laid on its back and you could make a cup of tea before the fire was lit. All the cooking was done on the fire but there was an oven alongside the fire and Mother used to bake when we had enough coal.
The first winter was very severe with lots of snow and we could not get to school for more than a week. One night at about 10 o’clock I said to Mum that I had heard a car and she said I must be hearing things as nothing could get through on these roads. We then heard voices outside and, when we went out, there was a huge van which had come from Ecclefechan and was supplying every house that was on his route. He had left Ecclefechan, which was only four miles away, at 6 o’clock and had to dig himself out of snow drifts all along the way. My Mother said he should get the Victoria Cross for what he did that night.
Another night, sometime later, we were sitting in the cottage when we heard a far away humming sound which got louder and louder and we went out onto the road to see what was happening. There was a bright moon and the sky was filled with German bombers heading for Glasgow.
We heard on the wireless the next day that Glasgow had been bombed and, shortly after this, a new batch of evacuees arrived from Yoker, which was a very tough part of Glasgow, and these evacuees did live in the tower of Hoddom Castle. They were pretty rough and didn’t know much about hygiene so I don’t think the local people wanted them in their homes.
After about two years my father was called into the Royal Navy and we had to go home. The day we were due to leave, it had been arranged for a furniture van to call and take us - and all the bits and pieces that mother had collected - to Lockerbie where we would catch the train home.
Lady Doyle once again proved how very kind and thoughtful she was when she invited our whole gang up to the big house for lunch in order to save my Mother having to cook for us. We expected to eat in the kitchen but when we all trooped up the drive we were shown into the dining room and Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle served us themselves. After we had eaten, Lady Doyle asked Mum if there was anything else she would like and Mum asked for a cup of tea. Of course everyone had to have tea and Sir Arthur went round the table helping with sugar and milk. When he reached me I didn’t have a spoon in my saucer so he stirred my tea with a knife!

When I retired I came to live in Dumfries and started going on walks with Duncan Ford, the Hoddom Ranger. One of these walks at Powfoot, I suddenly saw the row of houses where we had got off the train and only then, 55years later, did I realise we had been at Cummertrees.

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