1944 - 2024
On 28th May 2024, our family will celebrate having lived and worked at Dalmore for 80 years.
Each week from January through to May, we will share our history and information about our family's life over this time.
We have lots of pictures through the years along with details of what life was like prior to 1944.
DALMORE FARM HISTORY: WEEK 1
28.01.2024
Catherine Begg married William Oag and in their early married life lived at Clatequoy Farm, near Halkirk in Caithness. At Clatequoy, they started their North Country Cheviot Sheep Flock in 1926 for which the Oag family - and subsequently Dalmore Farm - would become well known for. Here, they brought up their oldest children David, Hugh, Sheena and Sheila.
Having had advice from the doctor that for Catherine’s health reasons they should move south, they started looking for a new farm. They saw an advert in the local paper and following this up with the particulars, and a viewing, bought Dalmore Farm.
The farm move was to take place at the term time 28th May 1944. At this time, the only way to move home was to use the railway. The entire family's possessions, equipment, carts and most importantly the pedigree flock, along with their cattle and horses were loaded at Halkirk station and travelled south. Arriving at Alness they unloaded everything and walked the animals and all equipment to their new home here at Dalmore.
Having time to settle into the farm, Willie and Cathy very quickly established themselves as part of the local farming community and began making improvements to their new home.
One of the first projects was the new milking byre where they would milk their herd of 26 Ayrshire cows. Taking their knowledge from Caithness, they had large slabs of Caithness slate sent south to floor the new stalls, this was for the comfort of the cows. Another important improvement was to install full bathrooms in the workers cottages replacing the outside toilets.
Having settled well into the community, two years after their move to Dalmore, their fifth child Alistair was born.
Willie and Cathy worked extremely hard to make their new venture flourish. Cathy reared and sold all types of poultry as well as selling their fresh eggs, milk, cream and butter. The milk from Dalmore was delivered daily to Toni’s Ice Cream Shop in the high street where they made the famous - and totally delicious - ice cream using their Italian family recipe.
The work ethic they had, and their attention to detail, along with always trying to achieve the highest standards have stood all of us here at Dalmore in good stead. Cathie's early entrepreneurship locally has been cascaded down through the generations and is reflected in the success of our Farm Shop today.
DALMORE FARM HISTORY: WEEK 2
04.02.2024
Having just moved to Dalmore, David Oag (age 14) spoke to the late Doreen Patience for a local newspaper:
“When we left Caithness in 1944, and arrived it was a completely different new world. For a start there were no trees and the land was so flat in Caithness. It was totally different. I went to school in Invergordon and I can remember on my first day there, the boys all laughed at me. I couldn’t understand why, but it was six months later that I had the occasion to make a trip back to Caithness with my father to a farm sale and I stood and listened, I couldn’t help but smile I had not realised the difference in the dialect between Caithness and Easter Ross”
It was always a laugh when David was on the phone to someone from Caithness how quickly he slipped back to his speaking his Caithness tongue!
1944:
The staff who worked on the farm at that time were:
The Grieve: Kenny Gordon
Dairy Cattle: Mr and Mrs Henderson
Fattening cattle: Barbara Henderson
General workers: Norman Macdonald, Sanders Gordon, Jock, Charlie and Will Davidson
Shepherd: Jock Pirie
Horseman: Har Sutherland
Dairy: Donald and Mrs Lawrie and their daughter Annie Lawrie
Dairy/general: Annie Macdonald
At the time of moving to the farm in 1944, the work was very labour intensive, hugely different to today. Much of the cultivation work was done by horses and a great deal of back breaking work done by the farm labourers. The men working with the horses had a long day. We talk today about a 37-40 hour full time week. In harvest, that would have been equivalent to 2 and a half of their working days. They would start at 6am and work until dark. Grandad Willie Oag was always very proud of the stacks they made at Dalmore Farm. The stack yard was a sight to behold. People used to travel on a Sunday to come and look at the wonderful job they had made. It has to be remembered that whilst the men built the stacks in their working time, the tidying up and cross roping, along with netting was done in their own time at night to perfect their work. There was no overtime for this, however they were very proud of their work.
Just two days after the move from Caithness there was another new arrival, George Pirie was born in the cottage which Carolyn and Warwick have always lived in, he celebrates his 80th birthday on May 30th this year. George has always had a very strong connection to Dalmore and the family. He helped his Dad Jock with the sheep, getting them ready for shows and sales.
Carolyn writes:
To this day, George and Christine Pirie are lifelong friends of our family, a couple we are all very fond of. George still talks about his childhood here at Dalmore and his wonderful memories.
World War Two:
There were nearly 3,000 army personnel and people of different nationalities in and around the village of Alness. Before David went to school, he had to do a milk round delivering milk from the dairy here at Dalmore to the different camps, the sergeant’s mess, Air Crew restaurant, the NAAFI and the WAAF camp. The milk was all in 10 gallon aluminum churns which were returned. The sergeants mess was somewhere near 50 Salveson Crescent, the officers mess was down near the middle of the High Street. There were areas of RAF camp all around the farm. Where Alness Academy is now, is where the Free French camp was based, and Dalmore House was the officers mess. The area at the top of the road going to Dalmore Distiillery was all training ground for flying. The RAF headquarters were behind Dalmore Lodge, it was a solid reinforced building with no windows, the ventiliation was by forced air through galvanized ducts, it was supposed to be bomb proof. At the back of that building there was housing for 160 pigeons which were used for delivering messages. These were very important to the war effort.
1948:
Jock Pirie was the first person to learn to drive the new Fergusson Tractor when it arrived at the farm, although George got an opportunity too. In 1948, there were now only 3 horses but there were 3 tractors.
Life was hard on the farm and an extra pair of hands was always useful, both David and Hugh were encouraged to work and help on the farm and in the dairy after school. Both men went on to be passionate about breeding high quality stock and this we are sure, came from Granny and Grandad Oag’s grounding.
A family story:
On Willie Oag’s first attempt at driving the tractor in the Paddock field, when he got near to the fence he was shouting whoa and slow down like it was a horse, the tractor was not as obedient as the horses were, the tractor did not stop and he demolished the fence, and subsequently was never really allowed to forget that!
1952:
In 1952, the balance of crops on the farm was very different to today. We found a copy of the list of crops from 1952 when there were 28 acres of potatoes, 29.5 acres of turnips, 2.5 acres of kale and a much smaller acreage of grain than Carolyn and Warwick’s son David grows today. Nearly all the fields now grow oats or malting barley. This reflects the change in the times quite dramatically, in the list of crops there is mention of 7 acres of permanent grazing, this is the paddock field beside the farmhouse, that field has never been ploughed in the 80 years our family has been here. This was the field where they lambed the sheep and calved cows as it was easy to see everything from the farmhouse.
The picture included here with the horses ploughing in a curve was the Crawl Park, Alness being ploughed to use it to grow food for the war effort. It was the last time it was ploughed and a very difficult job for the horsemen to do.
Carolyn writes:
The 40s and 50s were very different times indeed with many families being dependent on the farm for their income. We have the old wages book and a record of what everyone was paid. We also have a copy of the record book for the Royal Agricultural Benevolent fund, this was for the farmers from each area to contribute to for the support of farm workers who needed assistance if not able to work because of illness or accident. Granny Cathy Oag was the local treasurer and its lovely to see the names of the neighboring farmers at that time, many of those families still farming today or living locally.
