 |  | | | Childhood in the 1930s | There are 5 messages in this section. |
Margaret Strachan from Aberdeen. Posted 25 Mar 2002.
We were never bored, we played all the time: games like rounders and jumping from one air-raid shelter to another. When I look back, it was obviously dangerous, but I dont believe I ever had an accident. When the weather was bad we played cards inside or sat around a candle and told stories. We would walk round to the railway station and go up to the signal box to meet the signalman and chat to him for hours while he was working. Wed wait for trains to pass and then wave at them. In the Winter, I can remember sledging on roads. Wed get old syrup tins and tie string into them, holding the top of the string wed walk for hours on them as home-made stilts. | | |
|  | Alfie Smith from Stonehaven. Posted 18 Apr 2002.
To Margaret Strachan, Your bit about jumping from air-raid shelter to air-raid shelter, brought back these memories. Along the beach at Stonehaven evenly spaced were anti-tank blocks, about four feet square and five feet high concrete blocks cemented into the ground to stop the German tanks from invading Stonehaven. Though why the Germans would want to invade Stonehaven has always evaded me. (unless it was to steal one of our two horses See LIFE IN A SMALL TOWN) After the war these were uprooted and left lying at all angles against one another, which meant that there were loads of spaces where we could get into and use as huts or dens where we would meet and make a fire out of drift wood, then we would roast potatoes, they were always raw in the middle, and when we came out into the fresh air again we would all be ‘tinker tanned’ and kippered with the smoke.
These anti-tank blocks also went down the side of the Cowie Burn, one side only?!!? All the way down to the mineral well, which is just under the railway viaduct. These were left upstanding and were a challenge to us youngsters to se if we could jump block to block all the way to the mineral well. At the end of this row of blocks there was a much larger concrete structure with a door in it, I believe that it was an air-raid shelter. I can’t remember it ever being used. In fact the only bombs that landed near Stonehaven was a couple that landed in the kirkyard at Cowie Village, probably they were being jettisoned into the sea on the way back to Germany but a slight misjudgement of their position in the dark meant they hit Cowie. I’d like to think that anyway. Never the less anytime a plane was heard flying over Stonehaven I was sent to sit under the table, which I did in blind obedience, without asking why.
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| | Joan of Canberra from Australia. Posted 25 Oct 2002.
To Alfie of Stonehaven - it was your message that brought back memories.
I often jumped along those concrete blocks in the late 50s/early 60s. I can
only assume they were there to protect the railway viaduct and I think the larger
construction was meant to be a gun emplacement rather than a bomb shelter. The powers that be obviously didn't think the distillery on the other side of the Cowie
worth protecting (perhaps it didn't operate during the war). I also remember a wee
sweetie shop tucked down under the Cowie bridge on the town side - a great place to
spend my pennies!
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| | Alfie. Posted 14 Nov 2002.
To Joan of Canberra,
The sweetie shop you mention was still open with no changes (even to the decoration) one time I visited Stonehaven in the 1980s. However it was closed the next time I went in the 90s.
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| | Tom from Edinburgh. Posted 10 Feb 2003.
The Glen Ury whisky was mostly used for blending. After trying it on a couple of occasions I can understand why the Germans would not want to capture it. Bottling it was more than it ever deserved.
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