Dunning Parish Historical Society in Perthshire Scotland has local Dunning history data including dunning village census and grave yard geneaology records Dunning history society logo text


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This item is by Lorne Wallace.

The Return of the Blacksmith’s Daughter

Marjory as a young woman

MARJORY AS A
YOUNG WOMAN (1945)

 

At one of Dunning’s increasingly busy crossroads, where Perth Road meets Bridgend, there’s a grassy corner lot with attractive ornamental trees and with houses on one and a half sides. The sign calls it St. Serf’s Terrace.

But for anyone who knows Dunning history, the place is still Smiddy Close.

Here for many decades stood one of the village’s blacksmith workshops. John Walker was the last blacksmith located here. When the ancient smiddy roof collapsed in 1940, he moved the business to nearby Forteviot.

In his thirty or so years in Dunning, John Walker’s smiddy had been one of the hubs of village life, where horses were shoed and farm machinery repaired, and where village people gathered to watch the sparks fly and to visit one another.

John and his wife raised their 14 children in a terraced home right by the smiddy. (One of them was Cameron Walker, the World War II Black Watch soldier who during the Nazi occupation of France was hidden at great risk by a brave Normandy family, the Huberts - see elsewhere on this website.

 

The youngest of the Walker family, born in 1926. was Marjory.

In the customary way, Marjory attended the "Infant School" up the Dragon, then the "Big School" in Dunning and finally Auchterarder High.

Everyone in Dunning knew her as Midge, the nickname she had been given as the youngest of the blacksmith’s family.

Like her siblings before her, every day after school she helped Uncle Joe Walker who kept a few cows in a nearby byre. Her assignment was to deliver milk around the village.

Wartime accelerated Marjory’s life as it did many others: in 1941, shortly after the family had moved to Forteviot she started in nursing school.

MARJORY AND FATHER JOHN

MARJORY AND FATHER JOHN

MARJORY AS A NURSE

MARJORY (ON LEFT) AS A NURSE

 

Her nursing career in war and post-war years took her to many parts of Scotland. Finally she ended up in Aberdeen where she met her husband Gilchrist (Chris) Addison, and where they raised their two daughters Sheila (Tina) and Carol.

Marjory always kept in touch with Dunning. Over the years, as often as she could, she came to visit village friends like Charlie and Rita Laing, as well as visit her family now scattered in Perthshire, Falkirk and other points south.

Still living in Aberdeen, she became one of the first long-distance members of the Dunning Parish Historical Society, and later contributed to its newsletters.

 

A few years ago, her health failing, she moved to Warminster to be near her daughters.

In 2003, she joined with daughter Tina and Society members in a Dunning Parish Historical Society expedition to Normandy, to finally meet and thank the Hubert family who had so courageously protected her big brother Cameron.

MARJORY 1995

MARJORY IN 1995

MARJORY'S FAMILY 2007

On December 23, 2006, Marjory died in Warminster. As she had asked them, her family was determined to reconnect her with her birthplace.

In May, 2007, Marjory (Walker) Addison’s ashes were brought back to be scattered in Dunning in a quiet family gathering, and her daughters’ families and her nephews visited the spots of which Marjory had so often spoken.

The blacksmith’s daughter had at last returned to her birthplace, the village for which she held a strong and lifelong affection.

 

MARJORY'S FAMILY 2007 AT ST. SERF’S TERRACE (FORMERLY SMIDDY CLOSE).

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