Kirkwood Place

I couldn’t think at first how to write this story, because the individuals concerned aren’t my direct ancestors and yet they loom very large in my memories and affection.  Then I realised that a lot of the story revolves around one four-square house in a Scottish seaside town.

But first to the roots of it.

A blacksmith named William Selfridge of County Derry in Ireland had a son Henry who came to Scotland as a young man and married a Scottish girl, Margaret Elder. They lived in Hamilton and had nine children, the youngest of whom was Hannah Elder Selfridge, born in 1893.  This was my Great-Aunt Hannah. In 1911, she married Joseph Higgins.

It’s very likely that the Higgins line came originally from Ireland too, although I have little information on this at the moment.  Joseph was in the middle of a family of twelve and his elder sister, just two years older, was my grandmother, Martha Robertson Higgins.

Joe and Hannah lived in Hamilton till the middle of World War I and daughters Peggy and Martha were born there, along with their first son, Joseph, who died as a baby. I don’t know yet why they moved out of Lanarkshire and down to the coast to a small fishing town called Girvan. If it was for the healthy seaside air, it must have been a cruel irony when the first child to be born there, Henry (Harry) died of bronchitis as a toddler.

The next two children, both boys, were named for their dead siblings.  This seems morbid to us now but was quite common in those days.  So – another Joe and another Harry.  The three youngest – Hannah, Eddie and Agnes – completed the family.

The children grew up in a tenement block called Ailsa Buildings named after the great rock Ailsa Craig which dominates the horizon of that part of the Ayrshire coast.

They probably moved to Kirkwood Place just after the end of World War II, when all but two of the children had married and moved away.  Harry, the second unlucky holder of that name, had been killed in 1944 clearing mines on Whitby beach, but Joe was safe and sound and married to Duffus.  They would later move to Nottinghamshire in England (England seemed a lot further away in those days than it is now!) The two youngest girls, Hannah and Agnes, remained single and lived with their parents at Carlton Cottage in Kirkwood Place.

Eddie, the youngest son, lived nearby with wife Agnes (always referred to as ‘Eddie’s Agnes’ to differentiate her from his sister Agnes) and children Helen and Joe.

People called Joe in this branch of my family are almost as numerous as Roberts in my Benson clan. There was Old Uncle Joe (whose grandfather was the Irish blacksmith), Joe that died as a baby, Joe that married Duffus and went to England, Peggy’s Joe (confusingly, often called Young Joe although his surname was Fulton, not Higgins), and Young Joe (Eddie’s son).

For me, there was Old Aunt Hannah and Young Aunt Hannah. And when we visited, people referred to Tom’s Helen (my mother) and Helen Higgins (Eddie’s daughter).

This is the family around 1950. Back: Peggy, Joe, Harry (a space was left for this brother who died in 1944 and an image of him inserted by the photographer), Eddie & Martha. Front: Hannah, Joe (Snr), Hannah (Snr) and Agnes.

The house was a four square stone affair with low front walls (perfect for an excited child to jump over as she raced to the beach) and was one block up from the sea front. It was surrounded by paths and sat in its own small patch of land.  Next door were tenement blocks, where the McCrindles lived, who had a pigeon loft much visited by Old Uncle Joe and my dad.

I think my parents were very close to Old Uncle Joe – my dad lost his father to a pit accident while he was just a wee boy and Old Uncle Joe (his father’s brother-in-law) must have seemed like a father figure to him.  He was one of the first people my mother told when she knew she was going to have me.  He knew how much she longed for another child but sadly died a few months before I was born, so I never knew him.

The front door of the house was never used by the family – a blue back door coming straight into the scullery lay permanently unlocked and people came and went at will.  Joe Fulton (Peggy’s Joe)  planted and tended the garden and was especially proud of his Ayrshire potato crop.  He was a handsome young man whose wife Molly was seamlessly integrated into the extended Higgins family.  I’ve been chasing after the taste of those potatoes ever since! Eddie, a plasterer to trade, could turn his hand to most things practical and was always on hand if anything needed fixing at his parents’ house. As a shy child from a quiet family, the garrulous and easy-going Higginses were a revelation to me.  Eddie was a broad man with a terrific twinkle in his eye who could tease me into giggles.

When Old Uncle Joe died in 1954, the spills to light his pipe with stayed by the fireside and Old Aunt Hannah took over his chair there, always at the heart of the house. For me, she was a small round white haired figure with a  kind expression.  Kissing her before I went to bed was a softly whiskery experience.

Girvan was a popular destination for Glasgow holidaymakers and the two front rooms of the house were let out in the summer.  When they weren’t booked, we made the trip from Fife and stayed in those rooms, my much loved dog, Zona, sleeping beside my put-you-up bed.

In 1964, Old Aunt Hannah died and my aunts Hannah and Agnes, the two unmarried sisters, became the heart of the family.  Agnes was always the baby of the family and Hannah, a bus conductress, was the perfect housekeeper.  They both knitted but Hannah had the edge, knitting complicated designs without a pattern while listening to the radio and drinking a cuppa.  I still have a sweater with blue reindeer on it which she knitted for me. The two sisters were bingo fiends, an activity which seemed alien and glamorous to me.

Aunt Hannah was one of my favourite people in all the world. Her voice had a slight rasp to it because of the chain-smoking in which she indulged and she couldn’t be beaten at card games.  Gin rummy was the game of choice and whist.  There was always a cupboard full of games compendiums in the hall and I remember games of snakes and ladders and ludo. She bought me knickerbocker glories in a cafe and refused to condemn my addiction as a teenager to the town’s amusement arcades.

The easy-going Higgins family was a real contrast to my own, fairly strict upbringing.  On holiday in Girvan, even my father seemed to unbend in the bosom of such good-natured bonhomie and my mother drank a lot of tea and laughed a lot.

Every Higgins of my parents’ generation is gone now, and I have lost touch with younger relatives.  There are still a few in Girvan, although the house that was so important to me for many years was pulled down sometime in the 1980s. I’m very glad to be in touch with Joe Higgins from Nottinghamshire, my 2nd cousin, and he’s the one who kindly sent me the photographs in this post.  We keep saying we’re going to meet up someday – in Girvan of course – and I should really do something about making that happen. Looking at the photos (scans of photocopies I’m afraid) I see a strong, broad Irish look.

I don’t know if I’ve caught the spirit of the large cast of individuals that made up the Higgins family but I’ll always be grateful for the wonderful memories they gave me.  If I had a daughter, I would have called her Hannah.