
Football
A family story of Pitlochry before the dam: a vanished football pitch, salmon, local legend and the landscape my granddad still carried beneath his feet.

Hello, let me Introduce myself.
A personal reflection on Riccarton Junction, the lost Waverley Route, Whitrope Heritage Centre and Wills Bothy, ending with Suzane Donaldson’s poem “Riccarton.”
Bonskeid House, Faskally, with members of the Barbour family in 1920, just prior to it becoming a youth hostel in 1921, my great gran is in the photo, although i am unable to identify her.
Historic Environment Scotland records the present Bonskeid House as an 1881 Andrew Heiton building incorporating an earlier house dating from around 1805. Local historical accounts identify it as the home of the Barbour family before they let it to the YMCA in 1921.
The fingerprints remain on the photograph because it has been held and kept. Bonskeid later became a place from my own childhood when I attended a music camp there during primary school. The house returned to private ownership in 2001.
Historic Environment Scotland: Bonskeid House Listing.
