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The Bungalow, Corpach 1939-40

By Colin Burt - uploaded 10/03/2007

In October 1939, fearing that Hitler was about to start bombing London immediately, my mother and I - then aged seven - were evacuated to Corpach near Fort William. We stayed with two elderly ladies, aunts of my mother, in a house called 'The Bungalow' a mile or so west of Corpach village on a hillside overlooking the Road to the Isles and Loch Eil. It must have been built to the specification of somebody who had spent years in British India and was a long low timber house with a corrugated iron roof and a verandah out the front. Anything less suitable for the coldest winter in decades would be hard to imagine. There was a telephone - one of those old daffodil shaped ones with a separate ear piece and a crank handle box on the wall. A party line, the number of rings indicating if the call was for you, or one you could eavesdrop on if so minded. Outgoing calls you asked the operator for Mary McKay or whoever and she put you through to wherever Mary was at that time. There was no electricity, kerosene lamps and Alladin heaters were standard. An enormous fire risk, particularly the heater in the roof space to stop the pipes from freezing. Kerosene - called paraffin then - was delivered to the gate at the bottom of the driveway from a truck in 44 gallon drums which the two old ladies in their sixties, my mother in her thirties, and I then rolled up the steep gravel driveway using a long rope tied to trees and blocks to chock it with. Water came from an in- ground concrete tank uphill of the house which was fed by a small burn. It was brown like tea and peaty flavoured and took us city folks a while to get used to. And of course it froze often. A bucket of water stood in the kitchen to take out with you to the toilet to flush it with. You pored some in first to thaw the block of ice in the bowl, flushed with the rest, and refilled the bucket for the next customer. The cooking was done on a solid fuel monster and it fell to my mother to get up before daybreak to coax it back to full life, make the porridge, which had to cook for ages in a double boiler, and get the house ready for our hosts. This in trade for their kind hospitality.

School was in Fort William and a school bus picked us kids up at the gate of each property. The driver would wait for some wee bairn running down a long driveway. Or not, as he felt inclined. The school was of the old school ? a leather strap called a 'tawse' applied to the palm of the hand for disciplinary reasons. We enjoyed a sumptuous lunch at a café called - K. K. Cameron's? in Fort William. Mince featured most days, but it was quite good, hot, and plentiful. I remember watching locals skating on the frozen canal near Corpach and trying without success to stay vertical on borrowed skates. Fishing in the loch for fine mackerel.. Scrambling up a 'cliff' which was probably only eight feet high but seemed much more. And playing with a friend in a huge pile of brushwood which could be a plane, a tank, a ship, or anything imagination wished. In the spring of 1940, after the thaw, my father came up from London to spend a week with his lost family and we walked over the fields and were accosted by a herd of Highland cattle - the shaggiest beasts and very fearsome to look at with their long horns. They followed us. We became slightly nervous, then more nervous, and my father commandeered a toy pistol I happened to have with me to throw in the face of any attacker. Much good it would have done! Fortunately they got bored with following us and started to graze and we escaped. As the 'phoney war' progressed through 1940 it was decided that Scotland did not offer much advantage over London and we returned home.

I have fond memories of Corpach, which I expect has now changed out of sight. Have never been back, preferring to remember it as it was then.

Colin Burt, now aged 75 and living in Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia.

Previous Comments


George Anthony	Blairgowrie, Perthshire, Scotland
01-01-2010
Hi we recently had a holiday in the Fort William area, and visited Corpach we did the walk to Neptunes Staircase, we have added this walk to our website www.walkforfun.co.uk while doing some further research online we found your story and believe our readers will enjoy reading it, We hope that is ok with you, if not please let us know and we will remove it immediately, we have added a link to your site, your can view it at www.walkforfun.co.uk click on Scotland then choose walk 25, regards George Anthony

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