The gairden is also part of the project and we are delighted to have a plot of flax as well and are in talks to take the project further next year.

Talk of flax reminds me of a sad, but uplifting tale about the humanity behind a wee gravestone that resides in the kirkyard at the back wall. ‘Wee Jim’ was the son of a local flax mill girl who died of TB at age five. The mother was unable to afford a headstone so her workmates, themselves not wealthy by any means, clubbed together and provided for one.

An act of kindness that has lived through the years and more proof if needed that we’re capable of being ‘Aw Jock Tamson’s Bairns’.