Old Photograph

So this is 'our' house in 1965: (sorry for the glare - it's not easy taking a photo of a photo in a frame outside!)

It's a piggery on the right, in case you were wondering...

How cool is that?!?  

The guy that used to live here - from when he was 3 to when it was sold in 2014 to our next door neighbour who knocked down the attached steading, converted the inside of this house and built four more houses including his own on the quarter acre of land that still belonged to the house which you can see here - has been cycling past our house (and all around greater Inverurie) for the past two or three years.  I've always meant to stop him, but you know, he's cycling past, or we're cycling past him on our way to school, and it's not that easy to stop an 80 year old man on an electric bike!  Anyway, he increased his trips past the house during lockdown and one day stopped on the lane to let us reverse into the driveway.  I jumped out the car before he could get going again and asked if he minded stopping for a wee while so we could ask him some questions about the house. So ask him we did!  And it was really fascinating...

Anyway, he popped back up to the house this evening with the above framed picture to show us. It was taken in 1965 shortly before they sold 13 of their acres (keeping one) to Barratt Homes to build the Townhead and Millfield development currently behind us. We learned all about where the dead horse was buried (not in the front garden as Oma had been told), where the other family pets were laid to rest, about the old coal bunker and that the farmer who owned the house before his family sold milk down in the village.  There also used to be an old farmhouse directly across from Netherfield - though all that's left is  the old front step - and clearly it was Barratt that planted the line of tall trees that run along the side of our house, and they're not ancient old, so I feel less bad about cutting down four of them in preparation for our extension!

I really do love talking to old people about the places that we live, and look forward to finding out even more about the house and this village that we live in...