Bandirran

!930's  At the front door of Bandirran House

Monty on the far right, next is Commander Heathcote of The Den Earlsferry,

center is Stanley Norrie-Miller of Perth. Two Cripps brothers on the left.

Gerard Alexander Moncrieff (Monty) who was born in 1878 and who I often caddied for was the second son of Sir Alexander Moncrieff of Culfargie in Perthshire. He was educated at Winchester, Eton and Cambridge.  He had two brothers, two sisters, three  nephews and lady friends but he never married. The family home was the mansion house of Bandirran near the village of Balbeggie.  Monty was more than just a man I caddied for. Monty was a very good friend of our family and I admired the man. Like wise he took an interest in me and in time he became my very good friend and mentor.  Often on his walks around the village of Earlsferry he would drop by our house and spend an hour or so while he joined us for a cup of tea. He was two years older than my father and was a man who had a smile for everyone.

1942  Seaforth, Elie.   Monty at 64. I'm 16.

This beautiful soft suede leather coat with black astrakhan collar and cuffs  is exquisitely adorned with gold embroidery and is fashioned from the hides of Tibetan Yak, fur side in. The coat was gifted to Monty by the Dalai Lama at his palace at Lhasa  in Tibet. Monty was one of very few Westerners who had ever been invited to visit and stay at the palace, high in the Himalayan mountains.  This photo was taken and developed by my brother Noel using his home made, cigar box, cut film camera. The cigar box had contained Havana Corona cigars that were sent anonymously to Monty on a regular basis from someone in Cuba.  Monty was responsible for the building of a Cuban railroad that transported sugar cane and tobacco leaf from the Cuban outback to warehouses that Monty also had built in Havana.  Another interesting anonymous present that was sent to Monty every year from someone in China was a two foot cube size box of Chinese tea.

In the world of merchant banking and world wide corporate finance, Monty was a man of great accomplishment.  He maintained an office and staff at 56 Gresham Street, London EC2  which is the heart of London's financial district. He conducted his business by daily telephone instructions from his Elie home, Seaforth, that overlooks the harbour. An Edinburgh Law firm carried out his legal work. Monty's daily morning routine was to read the Financial Times and The Scotsman newspapers. From these he got information for his next game play in the market. His plan was to search for the best known  corporate name in the most depressed and ailing industry. He and his friends then bought shares on the open market until they had the controlling interest in the company. After this was accomplished they went on site with  a team of analysts and engineers to determine what it would take to bring the company  back to profitability.  Usually it meant new management and a huge infusion of new money which they could round up. After he had transacted his business for the morning Monty did The Scotsman's crossword puzzle.

Monty was the most modest and humble man that I have ever known. He did his best to convince me to join his business and go to his London office to learn what went on there and I made one trip with him to London. To transition from Earlsferry to London was just more than I was prepared for so I had to say, No. My future lay elsewhere.

I don’t know what Monty did to acquire it but he held the ancient title of Royal Archer which gave him the right to be in the company of any of the Royal family whenever they should be in Scotland.  

Monty was a practical man. He knew that I was mechanically inclined and he gave me my first lessons in mechanics. He taught me how to drive and take care of his car ( Rover) including religiously doing periodic oil changes. Now to this day at 82 years of age I still change my own oil and have maintained my vehicles and mechanical devices that in past years have included boats and airplanes to the extent that I never have had a mechanical breakdown of any kind or the need to employ the services of a commercial mechanic. 

 1911 Rolls-Royce (This R-R is identical to but not the Moncrieff family one)

The Moncrieff family home of Bandirran House when I began to know it in the 30’s was fully and lavishly furnished but it had not been lived in on a regular basis since 1920. At that time the 1911 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Cabriolet with but 20,000 miles on the clock was put up on blocks and there it remained for 20 years until the Military, including a detachment of Polish soldiers, occupied the mansion house during the years of World War II. However, while up on blocks this great old car wasn’t neglected.  It was run once a week and it’s oil was changed on a regular schedule for all of these years. What a wonderful machine it was for it’s day. It left the Rolls-Royce factory at Derby in June of 1911. During that particular month Rolls-Royce produced only two cars.  Rolls-Royce made only the engine and the chassis. The coach building firm of Hooper and Hooper in London made the body. Prior to the occupancy of Bandirran House by the military for the years of World War II the contents of the house were removed to Perth for storage and the Rolls-Royce was taken to Dunfermline in Fife for the duration of the war.

The Estate of Bandirran comprises many square miles and encompasses terrain of every description from fertile farmlands to timbered hillsides and wild heather covered moorlands.  

The high walled garden produced an abundance of every kind of vegetable. Bandirran strawberries and black currants were out of this world. Espaliered on the walls were many varieties of apples, pears and plums. It was the gardeners job to take care of the bee hives but Monty and I both were adept at the job. The hives produced several hundred pounds of comb honey. Starting in May the hives were moved from the garden to the clover fields, to the lime trees, to the epilobium (fireweed) and the wild flowers in the woods to finally, in late July, ending up high on the heather clad moors. Dark heather honey was my favorite. The greenhouse in the garden furnished tomatoes and grapes.

In one of Bandirran's woods is an ancient Druid Stone Circle and close by that is Dunsinane Hill that Shakespeare tells of in his play Macbeth.   Imagine walking amid a Druid  stone circle and thinking of the rituals that went on in this place by the ancients that inhabited the region, then scrambling to the top of Dunsinane Hill and tracing the outline of where Macbeth's castle had stood, then looking to the north-west to Dunkeld and Birnam Woods in the distance and thinking of the battle at which either Siward, MacDuff or Malcolm Canmore slew Macbeth and Malcolm was proclaimed the new King of Scotland. With all of this your home is in the village of Earlsferry and your playground is MacDuff's cave at the Earlsferry cliffs where MacDuff sheltered as he was waiting for a boat to take him to the other side of the Firth of Forth to evade his pursuers. Such were the places of my childhood. 

One day I filled a back pack with supplies for a possible over night campout and  hiked for several miles to the southeast of Bandirran House and up on to the high heather covered moors until I had almost come to Kinnaird Castle and the valley of the River Tay. As I was thinking of turning around to head back I was approached by a strikingly beautiful girl of about my own age, the only person I'd seen all day. She had observed that my bag was full and I was carrying a gun.  This didn’t deter her. Far from it. She came towards me and looked me straight in the eye.  Without the glimmer of a smile she was the first to speak. In a very English  and authoritative voice she asked, “Ah you  away that you  ah on Fingaaask ?  As it sunk in to me that she thought I was a poacher I responded in my best Scottish brogue,  “No, but I think you may be on Bandirrrrrrran."  We both let down our guards as laughter prevailed and the ice was broken.  ( People who live to the south of Scotland  have a difficult time with their R’s.) She said that once a year in the spring she came north to visit her relatives at Fingask. The purpose of her visit was to see her special place high in the heather hills that was a moorland marsh. Her marsh was the home at this time of year to hundreds of nesting black headed gulls, ducks and snipe. She volunteered, ”I’ll show it to you but you must tell no one that you know of it."  I promised not to tell. When we got to her place we took off our shoes and waded amongst the nesting birds. What an experience that was. I was sorry when she had to leave  and head homewards.  I later found out that where we met I was on Fingask.

My brother Noel and I were very fortunate in that Monty took us along with him on day and sometimes week long trips where we camped out in the spotlessly clean but unoccupied old mansion house. (in the years before the gardeners cottage was added on to) While there we hiked over the hills and moors and hunted and fished to our heart’s content. What glorious days these were. Monty told Noel and I to come to Bandirran and to use the house and the estate just like we owned the place, any time we wanted to, even when he wasn’t there which we did on many occasions.  The estate of Bandirran abounds in a wealth of game animals, rabbits, hare and some deer, game birds such as wood pigeons, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, blackcock, capercailzie, grouse, mallard and other ducks, snipe and geese. In the winter time when the snow was on the ground, great flocks of geese descended on to the harvested stubble fields. Sometimes late summer winds and rains flattened the grain in the fields to make it difficult to harvest. When this happened it was just left for the geese to feed on. At other times the farmers of the fields just left several acres unharvested for the geese. In such fields I used to make a blind out of corn stooks in which I would conceal myself just as it was beginning to get dark when the geese would descend in their hundreds to within inches of me.  The pond by the gardener’s cottage and the hillside burns were home to numerous speckled trout and unlike the burns that were great places to dangle a worm in the pools the pond was a great place to fly fish. In the winter time the pond would freeze over and it was a great place to skate. There were occasions when we put Aladdin lamps out on to the frozen  pond and we skated till almost midnight.

Added-on-to gardener's cottage

My brother John built the boat from Bandirran lumber

As the mansion house was way too big to be kept staffed for only the occasional visitor, Monty got the great idea of adding on a living room and bedroom extension to the gardener’s home by the pond. This was highly successful. Part of the original gardener’s cottage house was combined with the new addition which became the dining room and an upstairs bedroom to make two separate but connected homes. All of the downstairs addition became a great south facing living room that overlooked the pond. The upstairs, over the new addition, became two new bedrooms and a bathroom to give the addition three in all bedrooms upstairs. The cottage had no electricity but what a snug, cozy house it was when Aladdin mantle lamps and a big flickering wood fire were lit in the evenings and the rooks and the knights were set up on the chess board. At the time of the make-over Monty had the kitchen of the gardener and his wife’s part of the original house completely remodeled and a wonderful new AGA heating and cooking stove was added. The gardener became the caretaker of all and his wife became Monty’s cook and housekeeper. It was a great arrangement.

1937 Yews made an arched focal viewpoint in Bandirran's garden.

Shortly after the remodel of the cottage the pond to the front that over the years had become silted up was drained and dredged to it’s original depth.  A bypass sluice gate and a diversion burn were created to bypass the pond during the times of heavy winter water flow. The engineering of the bypass sluice and the diversion of the burn was my project. My method of finding the new watercourse was to take a stick and scratch it on the ground.  If a lot of water flowed into the scratch then my scratch was too much downhill and if no water flowed into my scratch then my scratch was too much uphill.   Primitive but highly functional. While the pond was drained I also oversaw the installation of the new draw-down pipe line and the six inch Ismailia drain valve and  operating mechanism.

My brother Noel and I treasured Monty’s companionship and it was obvious that Monty valued our youthful exuberance for his Bandirran property.  Bandirran House comprised three stories above ground level and one complete basement level, which when the house was occupied was the domain of the household staff.

There were several things that intrigued me  about Bandirran house.  On the second floor above ground level if you counted the windows of the house on the outside then went inside to do the same thing there was one less window on the inside. A part of the house was sealed off such that it’s existence was undetectable.

Below ground in the basement, near the south-east corner of the house and also completely undetectable was what looked like a cupboard door. Far from being a cupboard door Monty showed us that it was the secret entrance to an escape tunnel that exited about a hundred yards away in a tree and brush covered dell. At the dell the exit of the tunnel was completely camouflaged such that it’s existence was undetectable. The tunnel shaft was about five feet high and three feet wide and was completely constructed of heavy stones. The roof was arched and the floor was V shaped such that the center provided a drainage channel for seeping ground water. Twice in my years of visiting Bandirran I traversed the tunnel from the house to the dell. Spaced along the tunnel were two ventilating shafts to the surface that let in a tiny amount of light. To travel the length of the tunnel was quite an experience.

 Bandirran House had the legend of a ghostly visitation. As Monty told it to me, each time one of the Moncrieffs died, a hearse with a team of horses was heard to clomp and clatter up the curving driveway to the front door of the house, stop for a period of time then turn around and drive away till all was again quiet. Supposedly this phenomenon had happened each time after a member of the Moncrieff family had died.

In Monty’s later years he suffered several mild heart attacks, twice at Bandirran when I was with him, for which  he carried pain killing nitro-glycerin tablets or as he called them his dynamite pills. During the last three years of his life his doctors advised him to spend his winters in a warm sunny climate. His place of choice was the Portuguese island of Madeira where he lived in the Reid Hotel in the town of Funchal. While there he kept in touch by infrequent postcards except for the last year. Since I had not heard from him for several months I went to his Elie home Seaforth to ask his two house keeper sisters if they had heard from him. When they answered my knock on the door it was obvious that they had been crying.  Without a word being spoken a telegram was handed to me to read.   Monty had died. 

The next day after learning this awful news an overpowering force compelled  me to go to Bandirran.  Knowing where a key to the house was hidden I entered the big house then locked myself in. The silence was total. I went into the oak lined library which was a large room. The oak paneled ceiling was completely covered with Moncrieff coats of arms that traced the lineage of the family over the centuries. As I stood there in my grief as to the loss of my friend my hair raised up as I heard the rumble of wheels and noises on the driveway. The sounds came nearer then stopped. I heard voices and a rattling of the front door. Others had arrived for some reason.  For what,-- the stone of destiny ?  The big house had stood empty since the military vacated.  I felt an oppressive weight descending on me. I fled to the basement to where was the entrance to the tunnel. By now I was in a cold sweat and my heart was thumping. I opened the entrance door to the tunnel, climbed into it, ducked my head and made a mad scramble for the other end. The exit was completely covered over in brush and thorny bramble vines. I pushed my way through and got thoroughly bloodied up in the process. In a blind panic I fled through the trees and the heavy brush. I came to a clearing in the woods where there was a downed log that I sat on to get my breath back. As I looked up at the puffy white clouds in the blue sky I was looking at the trunk of a tree on which was nailed a wooden crucifix.  In that moment I was transfixed. As I gazed in amazement at the cross the weight that was pressing on me lifted and a voice seemed to say, “Dry your tears, I’m all right.” It was like Monty had returned from his

   "island valley of Avilion

where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

nor ever wind blows loudly;

 but it lies deep-meadowed

happy, fair with orchard lawns and bowery hollows

crowned with summer seas."

.

The foliage  of the place that I stopped at showed no sign that anyone had  visited the place in years yet the wood that comprised the cross was unweathered and looked recent.  How did that crucifix come to be nailed up on that tree ?  Why did I find it at this time ?   To this day I still wonder.

 A few years later I made one of my compelled-to-return visits to Earlsferry.  In short time I went to Bandirran to once more wander it’s hills, retrace my steps and live in the past as I remembered my dear friend and the happy times that I'd spent there with him.

When I got to Bandirran the Moncrieff mansion house was no longer there. Vanished.

Bandirran Mansion ~ Gone but not forgotten

I never learned how Monty died. 

 I know he came home but I never learned as to whether his body ever did.

 I'll always remember him as my very special friend.

  "And on the mere the wailing died away"