Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

During my childhood, our family lived at three different homes: Drigg, Egremont, and Mirehouse Cumberland.

The first house my family lived at was 2 Chesser Loan, Edinburgh. This was the house where my father lived with his parents. They lived there before I was born, but my parents would sometimes travel back to Chesser Loan. One main reason is to meet their former neighbours there, the MacPhersons.

The MacPhersons were good friends. They sometimes went on short holidays together with my family. Other times, they visited us when our family had moved elsewhere. My mother always used to talk about them warmly. 

Nuclear Waste Repository

The next house was at New House Farm, Drigg, Holmrook, Cumberland, where I was born. A search on the Internet shows that the farm is now a hotel. I have also discovered that Drigg is a Sellafield nuclear waste repository. At the time, the Sellafield site was originally called Windscale. Ironically, this is a hot topic of debate in the Norwegian Bellona Foundation. The concerns were on climate change and environmental issues (I now live in Norway). 

I also noted that some of the work was done there in 1950 when I was born. Perhaps, this was in an establishment phase when my father worked there as an electrical engineer for the Atomic Energy Authority. 

Egremont Prefab

After living in the New House Farm in Drigg, our family moved to a prefab in Egremont, which was not far away. Prefabs were temporary homes built at the end of the Second World War to rehouse those people who had lost their homes during the German Blitz. Our family lived in the prefab for a short period around 1951 to 1952, when I was about two or three years old, so I can’t recall anything from that period as I was too young.

The photo shows me, together with my mother, three brothers, Mrs. Chapman and her two daughters, Gillian (the elder girl) and Judith, as well as another girl. You can see me in the foreground. Mr. Chapman worked together with my father for the Atomic Energy. It seems probable that these prefabs were cheap accommodation provided by the Atomic Energy. 

Mirehouse

The first house I have vague memories of was at 60 Bow Fell Road, Mirehouse, Whitehaven, Cumberland. I think this house was also rented from the Atomic Energy Authority. I have noted a date in my files: February 14th, 1953 (when I still wasn’t yet four years old) – this was perhaps around the time when we left Cumberland, and moved southwards to Culcheth in Lancashire. 

We lived at three different homes in Cumberland, first on New House Farm, Drigg, then in the Egremont prefab, and finally at 60 Bowfell Road, Mirehouse. Looking at a map of the area – it is easy to see that the various places we lived at in Cumberland are not far from each other and radiate from my father’s workplace, Windscale. Moreover, they are not far from the countryside districts in Eskdale and the Lake District. 

You can see the map of Cumberland again on this post: Mystery Tours from Scotland to London