Memories of Highfield, Wormit
Kenneth Hart recalls happy days playing at Highfield in the 1950s, the great stretch of open ground above Birkhill Avenue, an area now pretty much covered with housing.
“Highfield had some importance to me growing up. My great friend Aly Wilkie lived there in one half of the solitary house which was there. This was a very imposing semi-detached Victorian house which to my eyes, was enormous. It had a downstairs bedroom and even a library! Aly and family lived with his grandfather, Grandpa Bell, who was a gentleman’s tailor in Dundee. He was a fine old gentleman who advised we boys on important things. One of his instructions was to stand at the side of the railway line and make faces at the engine driver in the hope that coal would be thrown at you. We tried it on several occasions but clearly our choice of position or our lack of face pulling abilities was not up to scratch because no coal was ever thrown.
“‘Katie’s Pitch’ was a flat area on Highfield where we played football, pitched tents, played cricket etc etc. Katie was a sister of another friend, Gilbert Petrie, and a bit older than us. Gilbert came from a large family which was “looked after” by the oldest girl as the mother was dead. That girl cannot have been much older than 18 and they lived on ‘Electric Row’ in a joyous shambles where delicious thick cut jam sandwiches were enjoyed by us boys. We knew Highfield like the back of our hands. I recall the precise position of the only rowan tree there and two beautiful ash trees. There was a row of larches on the eastern boundary and the path which left Highfield going through to Flass Cottage passed through magnificent mature beech trees all of which had been climbed, or so it was said, by the sons of the minister, the Rev Mr Hutchison. Certainly their initials were inscribed near the top of the few that I managed to get up.”
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