The Shop at Old Bridge End

The village shop in Nethy Bridge has attracted many favourable comments recently for the wide variety of goods it offers to satisfy the ever-changing needs of the community.  Customers, both locals and visitors, are equally impressed by our butcher’s shop with its amazing array of top-class meats.

However, shops that supply everything their customers require are nothing new in the village, as I have discovered by leafing through a fascinating piece of history – the account book, from 1892 to 1902, of the shop at Old Bridge End – the “Butcher, Baker and General Merchants” owned by my Great-Grandfather, John Macaulay.

The shop was at the corner of Dell Road and Culvardie and I remember it being referred to as The Old Bakery.  The older name of Old Bridge End, used on some family documents and mentioned in Forsyth’s “In the Shadow of Cairngorm”, suggests that the Nethy was bridged here in earlier times when its course must have been different.

John Macaulay himself, or “Old Macaula” as he was known – using the Gaelic pronunciation of his surname  -  was by all accounts a bit of a local character, who played the bagpipes, led the singing in the Auld Kirk and ran the equivalent of a taxi service, supplying horse-drawn transport as required.  He was married to Grace Grant and they had 11 children, many of whom died in childhood or early adulthood.  Their names on the family gravestone form a sad tribute to the mortality rate of the time.  But one of those who did survive into adulthood, and in fact to the grand old age of 94, was William Macaulay, my Grandfather, who worked in the family business until he married in 1914 and became a farmer, first at South Clachaig, then at Lettoch.

As a young man, John Macaulay went to Aberdeen to train as a master baker. Possibly this was a fairly new trade in the area, where oats were traditionally grown so the locals ate oat-cakes and bannocks rather than wheat bread.  He also kept his own cattle and sheep to supply the butchery side of the shop.

Leafing through the account book provides an insight into Nethy Bridge just over a century ago.  Some things have not changed very much and it is comforting to see that there was a Kennedy at Dell Farm and a Black at Laggan of Clachaig, as well as various Grants in the Braes of Abernethy – just the same as today. 

The goods that were for sale have changed, however, and it is noticeable that, apart from the loaves of bread that appear on just about everyone’s order, there is very little sign of baked or processed goods – just the raw ingredients for home-baking, such as flour, sugar, butter and currants.  Oatmeal, sold by the boll, is very much in evidence, as is “Indian meal”, which I assume must be maize.  Tea is also common, but I noticed that Andrew Steele at the School House – obviously a sophisticated, educated person – was one of a very few to buy coffee.  Bad habits are nothing new, with most accounts including tobacco and matches, and in one I found “pipe clay” – did they make their own pipes with which to smoke the tobacco?   Sweet cravings, meanwhile, were satisfied by plenty of syrup and treacle, always popular in my own home when I was growing up.

The shop also supplied coal and paraffin which would have been required for heating and lighting, as well as blacking, which housewives of the time would have made much use of to polish the cooking ranges and fireplaces.

As well as supplying households, Macaulay’s shop held accounts for various organisations.  Captain Cumming of Curr Mains ran the Volunteers, whose meetings were catered for by large quantities of food and drink.  The entry for January 1893 lists: 12 sandwiches at 3d (old pennies) each, 6 sweet sandwiches at 1d each, 98 small bottles of aerated water (soda) at 1d each, 49 large bottles of ginger ale at 2d each, 86 tickets (for tea), totalling four pounds six shillings, a bottle of lime juice for one shilling and the hire of waggonette and dog cart twice to Dulnain Bridge, for the princely sum of 13 shillings.  There is no mention of the whisky which may have accompanied all the aerated water – perhaps it was bought elsewhere or even home-brewed– but in May two dozen pints of beer were ordered, suggesting that the Volunteers weren’t all teetotal.

Social services in those days consisted of the Parochial Board, which also had an account at the shop.  In 1892, “goods” were supplied to various people, some of whom lived at the Poor Houses and some who were labelled as widows, “as per Inspectors Report”.  Most of the goods are not specified, but at least one person received beefsteak and eggs, while almost all were supplied with coal – the forerunner of our current heating allowance?  By 1898, the organisation appears to have changed its name, for the Parish Council was fulfilling the same function.

In February 1896, the Mutual Improvement Association of Tulloch and Kincardine paid two pounds two shillings and threepence for goods for a social meeting.  It would be interesting to discover exactly what improvements were planned there.

Of course one account book cannot tell us everything about a village, but we can tell that there was a post office, a hotel, a sawmill, a bootmaker, a surveyor, a gamekeeper, a carpenter, a mason,  a postman who lived in Tulloch, and the grandly-named Countess of Stamford and Warrington – plus a “pundler”.  My research tells me that this is a Scottish word to describe either an impounder of livestock or the keeper of a tree plantation.  Let us hope that John MacPherson was the latter.  Apart from these, it is apparent that the largest number of residents, or at least those with an account at Macaulay’s shop, were farmers, farm-workers or shepherds.  That certainly wouldn’t be the case now.

Of course, all this can only be a snapshot of life in Nethy Bridge at the turn of last century, but what a tantalising snapshot it is. It has certainly left me eager to find out more.

Jane Macaulay