rothesay isle of bute
Bill brought his family to live on the Isle of Bute in 1968 where his children and subsequently his two grandchildren also spent their childhood. These images illustrate something of what life was like for our family growing up there.
beaches
Frequent days at the beach of which Bute has many, were a source of many happy memories for our family. This is Bill at Scalpsie Bay with his grandaughter Holly taken about 2003.
bogany house
The first winter we moved to the island it snowed, which rarely happens on Bute.
The Cortina was Bills first car. The fine gothic church next door, St Brendans, burned down in 1973 or thereabouts. Bogey Mansions, as my sister and I referred to it, was quite the crumbling manor but we had room to play in the house and endless childhood adventures in the large wilderness of ruined gardens around it.
holly
Both my kids were lucky enough to have their Grandparents around, growing up. Bill and Holly were especially close.
cars
Cars in our family tended to end with a story. the blue Honda Civic bottom right of the picture of our back yard at Bogany was once his pride and joy, seen here in its latter days as an incubator for tomato plants. The gold Datsun Cherry in the centre was once disabled by a lemon. One of my favourite Bill stories. We had cars we had to park on a hill to start and that we could only exit or enter by one working door. It was the 70s and we can laugh about it now.
bills house
When Bill bought Bogany House in 1968 he had grand plans. It had been an amazing house, the first built on the Craigmore shore around 1800 by a Glasgow ‘Tobacco Lord’. It had the Sail Ship the Cutty Sark etched on the glass of the front door.
The basement where he worked for many years occasionally flooded and he would work until it came up past the top of his wellington boots. When the mortgage was paid off, he moved the workshop to the rear of the house.
In later years he talked about building a small outhouse with a flagpole, on top of a ruined cottage that stood in the yard. He wanted to be able to look out over the bay while he worked, but didn’t live to realise his plans for a workshop with a prime view of the Clyde estuary.
the view
bill
Was a man who loved a hat.
Always very neatly turned out, he wore shirt and tie at all times, even at the beach.
joe
Or Josephine - aka the author of this archive. Taken about 1985 at St Blane’s chapel at the south of the island, another idyllic location my family frequented over the years.
ferries
Naturally, ferries feature large in island life. Generations of Clyde steamers, paddle boats and other marine traffic passed by the front of our house every day. This is probably the MV Saturn and definitely the PS Waverley. Bill often grumbled that the new ferries that replaced the old steamers like ‘the Maids and the Glen Sannox’ were not fit for the Clyde but ‘had been designed for use on a Swiss lake’ when service was frequently interrupted during the winter months.
gregory
The first born grandchild, Greg had a big impact on our somewhat stilted family dynamic when he arrived in 1990. He had an especially close bond with his Granny Chrissie, who hailed from Harris.
workshop
My sister Janie holding Holly who was only a few days old September 1991. Janie left Bute forever shortly after, to live in Tarbert briefly before marrying a Yorkshireman and moving to the North of England, where our family can trace its roots in the silver trade in Sheffield, back many generations.
This is a rare glimpse of Bill’s workbench where he would listen to Radio 4 all day working away on his silver and humming tunes from the First World War that he learned from his Grandfather.
boats
Bill really loved boats. He spent a winter in the mid 70s building a small boat in my mother’s sewing room which we had to remove the large front window to launch. It was a 14ft row boat and like everything Bill created, elegant and beautifully finished.
Neighbours and sometimes tourists would help us wheel it to and from the jetty on the shore across the road from our house. My sister and I caught cod and mackerel and got sunburnt many times in that little boat. Spontaneous evening trips in the summer were the best.
rosemary
A rare image of mum with my sister and I. Rosemary didn’t keep well and avoided the camera at all costs. She was eventually diagnosed with underactive thyroid and with treatment, was able to enjoy much better health during the 80s and 90s when she picked up her jewellery making again. My mum also worked in textiles. She made clothes for us and beautiful rag dolls for us and our friends.
rothesay
A Royal Burgh that had seen better days as the iconic ‘doon the water’ holiday destination for tens of thousands of Glasweigians, we grew up surrounded by proper italian cafes and fish and chip shops and Cadona’s fair on the prom every Glasgow Fair fortnight.
the halls
This is a particular favourite of mine, one of many snaps that succinctly captures the subtle eccentricities of our family relations, in short, being ‘Halls’
family
The life of a jeweller is solitary and living on an island added to the remoteness of family life. Bill had few close friends beyond Rosemary but that suited them both. He adored us all in his own way and lived life according to his own mind. He was known to everyone as ‘Mr Hall’ and was held in enormous respect by all who knew him.
This picture was taken not long after my mother died and I was about to leave Bute with my daughter in 2003.
