42
The Fit o’Gairn Kirkyard
Saint Mungo is credited with building his early church here, where the rivers Gairn and Dee meet. Mungo must have been a busy monk, as Holy Wells bearing his name can be found all over Scotland. As children, we certainly drank from Saint Mungo’s Well, which, in the 1940s, was an iron mug attached to a chain and fed from a rusty pipe above the graveyard. In recent times this source seems to have disappeared. One bright, but cold, morning last winter I visited Saint Mungo’s kirkyard and found it a profoundly moving experience. As children, we often cycled up the ‘auld line’ to Mrs Don’s shoppie at the Brig o’Gairn; we would buy chocolate or a soft drink before having a look in at the graveyard. At Easter, our main interest was birds’ nests in the ivy of the roofless chapel, and we would then explore Charlie Lawrence’s farm yard before heading back down the ‘auld line’.
by Ian Cameron
This time things were different. Alone, I took time to walk amongst the gravestones and found myself in a Rip van Winkle world. Here in a corner I found John Stewart, the registrar’s grave, the same John Stewart whose signature is on my Birth Certificate. I can still remember my mother saying how kind he was to her when she went to register my birth. Further along was Provost Richmond’s grave. The Provost ran the grocery shop at the corner of Golf Road and Dee Street. He drove a 1937 Dodge delivery van on country rounds and his performance in succeeding to fit this large van into its narrow Dee Street garage each night was quite memorable. Provost Willie Richmond also had the first post-war council houses in Ballater named after him at Richmond Place. Next I noticed Ian Sheach’s gravestone: Ian lived on Dee Street, only a few yards up from Willie Richmond’s shop. Ian suffered from ill