Margaret Forrest Mill
My Diary At Home In 1911, MS 1
Diary cover
"I am going to keep a diary of all we see and do during these holidays which we are to spend at home."
In 1911 Margaret Mill lived in Dorward Road, Montrose, with her mother and elder brother Dick. Her father had died the year previously in 1910, the year they travelled to Switzerland. In later years the family stayed closer to home, holidaying in Banchory and Lumsden in 1912 and 1913.
In 1911, the year after their Swiss adventure, they stayed at home for the summer and enjoyed the simple pleasures of life. Margaret's diary confirms our suspicions that summers used to be hotter and more idyllic than today. She records an enjoyable mixture of visits to and from relatives, walks, picnics, bathing and photography. Her daily activities are faithfully recorded and illustrated by photographs she took and developed herself. Margaret also "edited" a hand written journal called "Nature's Revels" which reflected her enduring passion for natural history.
Lazy Days
Five bathers and a dog
A typical day might have included an early morning bathe in the sea. Margaret and her cousins Inga and Vera sometimes had to wait quite some time before a bathing box was free. Margaret was not a good swimmer and rarely swam out to the raft. Margaret and another lady who was a poor swimmer bumped into each other whilst swimming. The older lady sank while trying to apologise to Margaret. Before lunch she would either play croquet, read or run messages for her mother.
On one occasion Margaret, her cousin Moya and friend Marie were sent to the harbour to fetch a block of ice and salt, important ingredients for making fresh ice cream. Moya found it hard to hold the ice block and kept dropping it. Marie and Margaret struggled with a large bag of salt which they dropped and spilled all over the pavement. Eventually they got everything to Dorward Road. The finished ice cream was most successful and worth the hard work.
After lunch visits were usually exchanged between the Mill family and their neighbours the Campbells at Walton Villa. Joint excursions were also arranged. One afternoon the families set out for St. Skae's Kirkyard, perched on top of a sea cliff above the Elephant Rock. They had a picnic and afterwards examined the "curious stone". This was a seventeenth century gravestone of a wicked man who was said to have sold his soul to the Devil. The stone gives off a sulphur smell when tapped. It was believed this was the Devil coming to see who wanted his servant.
To The Lighthouse
Scurdyness Lighthouse
On other afternoons Margaret and Inga set off for Scurdyness Lighthouse. They crossed the River Southesk by the wide rowing boat rather than go over the bridge. On their way through Ferryden they saw fisherwomen baiting and mending the nets. They spent a couple of hours happily exploring the rock pools below the lighthouse, searching for crabs and sea anemones. On other occasions they were accompanied by a larger party of Mills and Campbells. The lighthouse keeper kindly provided hot water for the afternoon cup of tea. They had to keep look out for ten year old Moya as she had a habit of leaning over into the water to grab seaweed and almost tumbling over. Marie had the misfortune to be stung by a jellyfish and knocked over into the sea by a wave.
The Johnstone Seals
Other afternoons were spent choosing a new book in the Public Library. Robert Louis Stevenson was a great favourite of Margaret's as was Rudyard Kipling. A more popular outing was to visit the seals at Johnstone's the salmon fishers. Two seals had been caught in the salmon nets, one 12 years previously and one 8 years previously. The 12 year old was cross and bad tempered, no doubt from being confined to a tank all those years. The younger one was more amiable and would allow people to stroke him. People made special visits to the harbour to feed them. If the seals were really hungry they would lean out of the tank, virtually falling out which they did sometimes, to get the fish all the sooner.
Games, Stories and Walks
Diary cover
Frequently afternoons were spent quietly at home playing ludo in a shady part of the garden or enjoying a game of croquet. Margaret often developed her photographs then, wrote up her diary or tried to paint. One afternoon she tried to paint her dog but he kept putting his nose in her paintbox. She gave up when the dog became covered in paint.
At the end of a hot day the family found it very pleasant to sit in the garden and watch the setting sun. Margaret and her brother Dick enjoyed an evening walk along the sand dunes before returning across the golf course in the dark. One such walk resulted in a disaster. Margaret and Dick both fell down a bank over some whin bushes into a bunker, then into a ditch before landing on barbed wire fence. Neither of them was seriously hurt. Other evening walks were less dangerous, with the harbour being a favourite destination.
Margaret's diary is not full of exciting adventures but rather records the day to day incidents of the happy and full life of a middle class girl. It demonstrates the gentler lifestyle of an age now gone, superceded by television and computer games. Margaret's privileged lifestyle may not have been that of the average Montrosian of the period but many of us today are possibly just a little envious of her.
Margaret’s diaries of her holiday in Montrose as well as those in Lumsden, Banchory and Switzerland are available in Angus Archives.
Written by Fiona Scharlau, Local Studies Librarian/ Archivist, Cultural Services, Angus Council.
© Angus Council 1998 - 2008