In 1971, I was a young-ish architect working for Sir Frank Mears and Partners, and architecture and town planning practice in Edinburgh. When the competition to design the new Burrell exhibition gallery was announced, so with a fellow architect I entered the competition to design the new gallery in Pollock…
Last autumn, before everything went pear-shape, we answered a telephone call from a lady in southern Ayrshire, who explained they have lived since 1970, but were now leaving: she had a room filled with everything that they didn’t feel able to take with them. It included lace, textiles, China, churns,…
I consider myself blessed because not only did I grow up in a house with books, I had the good fortune to attend Irvine Royal Academy at a time when the Head of English was Dr Alec Forbes. Dr Forbes was famous for two things: the first was that on…
In week twelve of our new life, confined to the house and gardens, I thought that a blog, with the story of one of my trips around the world, or Europe anyway, might be a slight diversion and show how one’s view, in any kind of design can be changed…
I sometimes wonder what Wordsworth would have said had he been able to publish a blog. Would we have had descriptions of the daffodils, instead of the poem, or would we have had both? I ask this question because to my astonishment, my blog posts appear to have been read…
About two years ago, I took on the task of writing a companion book for my History of Dalgarven Mill which was to cover the costume collection, the putting together of it, the quality of it, with little offshoots into lace making, Paisley shawls, Ayrshire blankets and the like. Usually,…
This has been quite an eventful week, I suppose in the fullness of time we should expect, at this the darkest and coldest part of the year, that some old friends might simply fade away. The year began with what I took to be an aberration, and that was in…
My grandson has just informed me that at 12noon he is going back to bed. The reason, is of course that he stayed up until 4.30 last night listening to the election result. And for the first time, I thought back to the days of yore, when I was his…
May I start by thanking the few of you who have taken the trouble to come and say how much you have enjoyed the blog posts, so I thought it was incumbent upon me to sit down and write another! I had thought about writing about politics, but the only…
What appears to be many moons ago, I did write a book about the history of Dalgarven Mill, and its eventual transformation through the Manpower Services Commission exercise into the really rather nice set of historical buildings that you see today. Two things have happened recently. The first thing that…
The Trustees and the Millers Kitchen regret that under the present circumstances we are closed for at least the next eight weeks.