A Walk Round Rowanburn Brings Back Happy Memories

This afternoon Gaye and I went a walk round the village of Rowanburn where I lived until we moved to Langholm in 1958. It was an old mining village and my father's first job when he left school at the age of 14 was in the Rowanburn Coal Mine. He only lasted there for 6 months as he hated it and it actually closed 3 years later in 1922. My parents house was No. 50 on the extreme left of the photograph and my father was brought up in No. 60 which is the second house on the right of the photograph. We had no TV and all the kids played outside even in the dark during the winter months. Kick the Can was great fun in the dark. We kept Hens and I had my own Bantams and I sold the eggs to the Grocer who came round in his van.  

This is the famous Barrel Row at Rowanburn so called because every house had a barrel at the front door. The houses were completed in 1863 and they had no sanitation so the toilets were outside on the opposite side of the street. They were flushed twice a day from standpipes outside numbers 10, 24, and 55. Nos. 1-33 were knows as Barrel Row which are these ones in the photograph. 

On our way home we stopped off at one of my favourite places on the Esk at Irving House. I was very annoyed to find that a lovely seat overlooking the pool just upstream from this photograph has been removed. It was the nicest place to sit and watch the wildlife on the river and quite often we would see a Kingfisher there. 

We had walked down this part of the river to see how the Brambles were doing this year. It has been a disaster as they are all very small and a long way from being ripe. This time last year we were collecting them in huge numbers.