Ministry 1951 – 56 – Alex MacDonald
Submitted by: Sally Brewis - 23rd November 2021
In those days many hill shepherds lived with their families in remote cottages. We did not see them in church very often except at the quarterly Communion Service when the congregation would number fifty or sixty.
The Ministry was very much a question of going out to meet people in their homes. The vicar, the Rev. Wilkinson Renwick, kindly showed me the way to some of those cottages harder to find such as Puncherton and Milkhope (the old Milkhope).
The vicar and I alternated in taking an evening service in Netherton village hall. The service was Anglican on Sunday and Presbyterin the next, with much the same congregation. This was followed by a sumptuous supper at Netherton South Side, laid on by Violet Black, housekeeper to Jimmy Pringle and Cyril Healey. One was an Elder and the other a Churchwarden.
As well as Harbottle and Netherton I took a fortnightly service in summer at the old school, halfway up the hill, at Windyhaugh. Services had been held at Windyhaugh for 300 years ever since covenanting preachers came over the Border from Scotland.
In winter the Windyhaugh service was monthly, and held in the kitchen at Barrowburn Farm on the Wednesday nearest to the full moon, so that people could walk or ride over the hills.
A similar service was held on the Thursday nearest the full moon at Grasslees farm, again in the kitchen. We were liable to bang our heads on the sides of bacon, and I always seemed to be given the hot seat nearest the kitchen range.
Space does not permit me to tell of hazardous journeys made in our 1938 baby Austin: usually we had to park it up the valley and walk for up to five miles. Places like Battleshields, Fairhaugh, Uswayford and Kidlandlee did not get many visitors. (I was a governor at Kidlandlee school).
We had great fun with the Sunday School. It was curious how attendance used to improve just a few weeks before the summer outing to Bamburgh, Warkworth or Newbiggin-by-the-Sea. This always included a sand-castle competition and a free tea.
There was also the Sunday School Club. I remember cooking jacket potatoes over a camp-fire on the hill, and making sweets in the Manse kitchen. June said that everything was sticky for weeks afterwards.
