To record the ‘Home Front’ memories of local men and women from WW2
Mackay Country
Home Front Oral History Project
Wartime Food
Scarcity and School Dinners
Well, as war progressed, food became scarcer, definitely. It was a job to get food on the table, really, apart from if you’d be able to kill a sheep and maybe get a bit venison from the estates – some of the estates were quite good; they would give bits of venison out at certain times of the year. But I think the estates could have given a lot more than that. In the winter-time, they only would give one hind to the school, and when you think of all the deer that’s on the hill!
“Crofters were quite lucky, really, because having cows, we had butter. You only got two ounces, was it, or four ounces of butter for a week, of your ration, but we had our own butter. And then we had eggs from the hens. All these things - town people didn’t have that. Rationing went on for, well … The war was from 1939 to ’45 … and our daughter was born in 1953 and I still had to get a ration-book for her.
So they were still rationing in 1953. Just the same rations as we got during the war. It went on for years after the war.”
The House Cow – ED4
Blairmore, Kinlochbervie circa 1950 -
Maurice Campbell and Callum McLeod
ED33A123
Ploughing - Angus Mackenzie with Polly, Scourie - ED63S
Playing on the croft at 3 Badcall, Scourie in 1940s - Hugh MacLeod and Hugh Mackay (Ruby Mackay's son). ED12J
Scones and Bannocks
“It was always scones and bannocks. We used to make them on the slourie - that’d be hanging down in the chimney. And put the fire on the top. And then they would put the fire on the lid … and that was the way that the bannock was cooked. You kept the fire going slightly – not high …in the bottom. And then that was your bannock. Your scones, your ordinary scones, you made on the girdle. And oatcakes. They were made on the girdle and then put in front of the fire, after they were cooked. There was a thing they had, made with wire and whatnot, and it sat just where the ash-pan used to come out a bit. it used to sit there, and it sort of dried them off … and half of us would be pinching them before they came off!”
1920's - On the croft at Kirtomy: Hugh Mackay and Mary Mackay Hoeing tatties, with the dog.
TF16D
Calum Mcleod Feeding hogs at Blairmore, Kinlochbervie – circa 1950 - ED33A112
Meat and Soup
“Mostly it was soups - it’s very seldom we would have a pudding. It would be semolina or that kind of puddings – sago.
They used to kill sheep and the meat was all put in - they were just round, things, round like jugs and salted and that was kept for the winter. According to the things today, we should be dead by now, with all the salt!”
We used to have a butcher that used to come round from Dornoch, once a week, but that was it, more or less.
I remember one time, it was Sacraments time, and my auntie was at home – she lived away down in Kinlochbervie. We went to church, we all went to church, and she was left making the soup. And she dropped a peat on it! Well, she got it out, and there wasn’t one bit of peat on it! She never told us, mind you, till afterwards. She dropped the peat in the soup, and she took it out that quick that there wasn’t one bit in it!”
Georgina Mackay's house in Skinnet, now Iain Boot's house.
First left wearing pinny, Georgina Mackay (Shordag); next left Robina Munro, married to Jack Munro, mother of Neil & John Peter Munro; Tallest, middle: Lizzie Forsyth, daughter in law holding baby Wilma (Boot), & friends; kneeling centre: Sidney (Boot), T. Photo taken by visitors, possibly from Denmark. Beautiful house & was kept spotless. Nana used to help keep house clean in her holidays. Pails of water were brought from the well. She Remembers it as so quiet and relaxing. TF9K
Food and Housework
“A bannock was something similar to a scone, but made in this pot. I think it rose higher, than a scone did. It was made in a ring, a round ring, and they would put the marks in it, you know, just for cutting it. You put the lid on the top, and the hot peat on the top. We had an oven in the side of the fireplace, but it was very, very seldom ever used. There used to be a wee square bit like that in the bottom, where they used to put the fire into it for the oven.
Pancakes, oh, yes, yes, pancakes too. They made all that things and fairy cakes, as time got on. They went in the oven. That was the rare occasion the oven was on. It was good, too, when you think back on it, but I wouldn’t go back to it now.
And then filling your lamps, or cleaning your lamp-glasses and … and whatnot. And you’d do that on a Saturday – they had to be all done on the Saturday night, everything. All the water had to be taken in and all the lamps filled up and ready for Sunday.”
Angusina Fleming at the grocery van in Fanagmore circa 1930s - ED61B
Oh, the salt herring. Scattan - we used to have them either way; either fresh or salted. We had our own eggs. And we would get bacon in the shops. The shop was a zinc building and they had mostly everything. And they’d be cutting the butter with the wire. Pulling it through the butter and the cheese. We used to get everything in it, really. You see, it all used to come on the mail bus, and into the shop. You’d go into the shop, and you’d be in there blethering for hours!”
Making Hay at Bettyhill – TF17C
Home on the croft: Outside 3 Badcall, Scourie circa 1930 - Agnes Mackay (now MacKenzie) with neighbours Mr & Mrs MacLeod and William Mackay (Agnes' cousin and Ruby Mackay's future husband) ED12B
Shopping
“We used to buy butter in the shop, at times, but we used to always make our own butter and crowdie. I used to love, when they were half-way through making the butter – that creamy, buttermilk, and you put oatmeal and a wee bit of sugar in it. You’d be pinching it, and Mother used to be chasing us! Oh, it was good!”
Georgina mackay outside the shop in Badcall, Inchard.
Georgina came from Fort William, Ontario, Canada, and married Mr Mackay in Oldshoremore School in 1936.
Mr mackay and his wife Georgina outside Mackay’s Shop – now London Stores, Badcall, Inchard – 1936. ED14B2
“What sort of things were rationed? Oh, the butter, and sugar - most of the things would be rationed. And bread –there was so much used to come in of bread, in the big, square boxes. Milk - everybody had their own. There was no milk coming on the buses then.
Cheese … more or less the things that you’d be using every day were rationed. The flour and the things like that used to come in by boat to the pier and everybody was going down with their horse and cart. Somebody would be up for orders, like, before the boat came, and you used to go down to the pier and get whatever you ordered - we used to get it in the tea-boxes.
And tea, that’s another thing. Aye, tea, and sugar - I think we used to get sugar and that, in that boxes as well. That must have been after the rationing. There’d be everybody be off down there with their horse and cart to the pier - taking it down empty and coming back full. But just what they ordered, mind you.”
Trawlers at the old Pier – Kinlochbervie. ED35A26
A lot of household goods used to come in by steamer. Steamer entering Badcall bay circa 1945. ED19H
Around 1940 - 129 Roadside, Kinlochbervie. Mackay Morrison and Robina Morrison. ED35A35
Princes Margaret Rose Orthopaedic Hospital, Edinburgh
Memories from a Nurse who worked there between 1940 and 1943. Minnie Jean Macleod (nee MacDonald) of Kinlochbervie was a patient for a year.
“There was not much to do during the night after we had thoroughly cleaned everything: we had our supper and tea on the ward, then settled down to mending the laundry. At midnight, the junior Pro.s went in twos to the Plaster Room where for one hour, with our bare hands, we scrubbed Plaster of Paris into gauze bandages for splints etc. When hunger overcame us, we would make what we called ‘chocolate blancmange’ with MOF (Midlothian Oat Flour Baby Food) and flavour it with cocoa, then leave it to cool, hidden on the veranda till the Night Sister had been round.
We were always hungry; food was strictly rationed and never enough to satisfy our hunger, as we worked in the open-ended wards. A weekly dinner dish was ‘Woolton Pie’ (Lord Woolton was war time Minister of Food). This delicacy was pastry made with flour and water and, underneath in water sat chunks of carrot and turnip – not even an onion. There was a war on!”
