No 70. THE SQUARE.

A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.









No 70. “ THE SQUARE.”

“The Square”, the “Fairm Toon”, was everything about the farm buildings, an all encompassing phrase pertaining to a farm of my early days, a very real square indeed. It was a self contained entity where every activity on the farm began and finished, the hub of the farm, the dwelling place of all the farm people. The Square of Whitehall included the farm house and the farm servants’ cottages, though separate from the main buildings. So the Square actually at the farm was the buildings, but the Square to outsiders was the whole entity, dwellings and all.
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Each farm was a small factory standing in the midst of its own farmland and in its own right, the “Fairm Toon” of Lewis Grassick Gibbon. Often enough the phrase was used as an all embracing postal and local address for all those who lived there, sometimes even a letter was so addressed. So much to tell.

“The Square” contained the barns, the lofts, the stable, the byres, the middens, the odd sheds, the sheep pens. There was the blacksmith shop with forge and anvil, spare horse shoes and smithy tools hanging on pegs on the wall. It was there for the convenience of the local blacksmith who would come to the farm for a day and shoe a bunch of horses. It saved a passel of time not having to make the long trek with the horses to the blacksmiths own forge. It was also handy for the occasional loose horseshoe being replaced by a knackey horseman, or one of the men shaping or straightening a bit of bent iron for some purpose.

As bairns we had a bit of fun lighting the old forge, pumping the old bellows, heating a bit of iron red hot and hammering it on the anvil into something or other. Even tried hot welding two bits of iron, just to see if we could do it. Not too good, there was still a magic in the blacksmiths hands.
We had a blacksmith shop at Greenland Mains used by John Innes, the blacksmith from Rattar. There was one at Bardnaheigh, though too late for us as we had no horses there. There was the joiner’s shed redolent with the smell of sawdust and new wood.. There would be a well for water, sometimes a long enough walk, some spring feeding it.
The steading was surrounded with farm roads and small stone-dyked parks and odd pens and walls. There was the Bull shed where father hopefully fed some young Pedigree Aberdeen Angus for sale in Kirkwall. The stone walled sheep fanks had a sheep dipper incorporated into and under and through the wall of the sucklers byre. There was the remains of a sheepy house, fallen into disuse.

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The working day began there, finished there. In summer the horse men took in their horses from their grass field to the stable in the morning to harness up and then left the stable to go to the field, coming back at dayset to unharness. In winter all the beasts were housed there, save the sheep who would be outdoors on some rough ground or a poor field. We were literally surrounded by horse, cattle, sheep, pigs, hens, ducks, geese, turkeys, dogs, cats, rats and mice.

If there was a blizzard of snow cutting us off from the outside world we could survive all on our own. The well filled meal girnel in the loft with oatmeal ,and beremeal, the stash of white and black puddings buried in the oat meal in the girnel and which kept well there, the potato shed with its well covered heaps of many varieties of tatties. The neep shed would have a well heaped up pile of turnips, taken in over the days before the storm as most farmers could smell a storm coming by a look at the moon or a sniff of the air in the early morning. Extra cart loads were taken in from the field, Yellows or Swedes, and dumped in handy places if the sheds were full.
The barrel of salt herring inside the back door, dried sillocks hanging in the cottage kitchens, eggs in the henhouse, not forgetting the odd fat clucking hen who had her neck pulled on her way to a good pot of Scotch Broth. The cured hams hanging on hooks from the kitchen ceilings, or stashed in the brine barrel. All that was needed for just carrying on carrying on!!

The Square applied to the people as well as to the buildings. The men were called the Whitehaa Men, farm people who were sometimes born there, lived there, died there. Not just the workers but their wives, their children, their grannies, their granddads, their dogs, their cats, even a canary or a budgie or two. They usually had some hens and a pig or two, even the milking goat of one worker I knew, tethered by a chain as she would eat through any rope tether to escape and create mayhem.

At times their houses were just part of the square itself, fitted in to a convenient or even an inconvenient, corner. Sometimes there was a byre below and a house above, warm, central heating from the cattle. Or more often the other way round, cottage below and grain loft above. These steading dwellings can still be seen on many farms today, now long gone from human occupancy and serving as a store. Maybe not so long gone at that for I still come across someone who remembers living in a house actually in “The Square”. The cottages were usually built to suit the farmer, if they looked out onto a farm midden that was of little or no consequence. Oddly, full circle, today these old steadings are sometimes being converted into very desirable and very highly priced modern residences. I know quite a few, and well done they are too.
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On Whitehall the Square began with the nucleus of the thrashing mill with its grain lofts and straw barn, taking up all of one side of the Square, two floors high, the threshing mill and the barn midway. The lean to engine shed for the Campbell oil-engine was tacked on at the back. The stackyard lay above that at Whitehall with the two adjoining stone built hen houses, one in the upper left corner, one in the lower.

Climbing the roofs of the barn was one of our boyhood ploys, see who could go fastest from one end to the other along the ridge. Totally frowned upon, and total hell if we were caught, which no doubt added to the charm. Only one of us, a friend David McLeod whose father was a prisoner of the Japanese from the Fall of Singapore in 1941 to August 1945, and survived, could and did walk upright along the top of the ridge of the barn at Greenland Mains. Fearless. No Health and Safety then of course, but I do not think many today would try to emulate him. There was also in our boyhood Stewart Hewison of Trenaby in Westray who stood on his head on the top stone of the gable end of Queen Mary Stewarts too close friend Bothwell’s now ruined Castle of Noltland. Both totally mad in the nicest sense.

The barn I have described previously, but at right angles to it were two of the byres. On the upper side of The Square were the three calfie byres, built across the roof line. Each byre held 12 small weaned Spring born calves, tied by the neck with chains called asks in Caithness, neck bands in Orkney, three double stalls either side. The asks were on sliders which allowed verticle head movement for each beast, high enough to pull straw out of the heck or rack, or maybe just to reach across for a titbit of turnip from in front of its partner.
Tying the cattle up for the winter was a pantomime. A lasso was made from a cart rope and several men were in the byre with the door closed to prevent any escape. Throw a loop over a neck, run the free end through the slider in the flagstone hallan and hang on, pull in the reluctant beast until the neck chain could be fastened. Job done.

At the lower opposite side was the yearlings byre, or yearalts byre as we called it, with the Long Loft above. Below that the feeders byre, a lean-to construction with the roof tucked just under the Long Loft roof eaves but quite high and spacious, plenty good ventilation.
At the fourth side of the square opposite the barn and next to the Big Hoos was the cartshed with a handy neep shed at either end to service the calfie byres above and the yearalts byre below.
In the centre of The Square was the cattle midden, cleaned out in summer.
An old photo has survived of The Square showing Billy the Horse with our cousin Thora Johnston from Stromness, our cousins Jean, Robert and Margaret Flett from Edinburgh, and myself. I do not know if it is printable.

We must not forget the social side of “The Square” either. Another day perhaps.

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’