Hi Paul,

My great aunt Ness Gilbert (nee Reddiex) and my grandfather Bill Reddiex grew up in Auchentibber. They passed on some years ago. Ness left some recollections of two farms that my grandfather and other family members worked at. She mentions "Whites of Kennedys" and the "Stewarts". The latter I thought might relate to Park Farm but that is only a guess (1901 census lists a Stewart family on Park Farm road but this is before my grandfather's birth in 1908). I'm hoping you might be able to identify these farms. Bill Reddiex would have worked on the farms between approx.1920 and 1926 (as he departed for Australia & NZ at this time). Here is Ness's recollections...

when Bill left school, he worked as a farm hand in two of the farms in the vicinity of the village of Auchentibber where the Reddiex family lived.   One of the farms was owned by a family named Stewart and that is what the Reddiex’s called the farm, just "Stewarts".   Their mother Helen Dawson Reddiex (nee McDonald) worked at "Stewarts" in some capacity in her single days and Ness remembers visiting there as a small girl and being given a hearty meal consisting of "girdle" (griddle) scones and cheese and homemade fruit cake. She remembers too that her mother was always very welcome at the farm. The other farm was always referred to as "Whites of the Kennedys”. Whites owned the farm and both Uncle Jim and Bill worked there. Ness went there many times as a little girl. She remembered the "byres" so vividly when her aunt took her there for a visit when she visited home in 1979. A relation of her aunt now owns the farm. The "byres" are not used now but they are still standing, and she was amazed at the memories which came flooding back to her when she saw them again after so many years. Ness doesn’t know how she came to be there so often. She guesses her mother would have taken her there too, maybe to visit the boys as they lived at the farm while working there. She remembers particularly the Scottish oatcakes they had for "our tea" as they would have said then and there was a particular type of food which was kept in bins near the barnes (which we called the "byres") for feeding the cows and it was quite good to eat. Ness thinks they called it "locusts". The byres are where the cows are brought in to be milked and where they stayed overnight.

Thanks,

Glenn Reddiex,

Wellington, New Zealand