Alice Wallace was born in Benquhat (Alice’s preferred spelling of Benwhat) in 1945 and she lived there until her family moved to Bellsbank, Dalmellington in 1952. Alice was one of three children and recalls her time living in the village and the exciting experiences of getting a new house with her own room and hot water. For many years, Alice took her mum to meet up with their Benquhat neighbours (still her mum’s close friends) and would listen to their stories of life in the village. Her stories are not only that of a childhood remembering her house, playing with the other children and school, but also her mum’s stories of being a miner’s wife. Alice’s testimony is unique as it offers insight into women’s lives and what emerges is a rich recollection of female support, labour and neighbourliness within the mining communities.

Alice describes how the women would fetch the water for the day.

Transcript :

Aye, well, my mother would bring water in. You see, down at the end of the rows, that’s where the water was and it wasn’t even a tap that you turned on, it was a pump! An’ the women had to get their pails, two at a time, right, up there, pump the water into the pails and carry them back up to the house, two at a time, and back down with another two so it took them a while to stock up the water for the needs for the day! I mean, they’d have to go back down later and get some more fresh water but this water was fed from the hillside. It was, sort a, routed down wi’ a pipe to this pump, and the women had to pump it there to get the water. So, it was only cold water, carried up to the house and that’s where they had t’ use this stone sink. So, they would heat the water up for getting washed an’ doing their dishes and things like that. But when they were … by with the water, they could nae pull out a plug and let it run away, there was no plumbing! They had t’ bail this water back into a pail and back out the back door an’ there was a, a trough that went down. It was made of bricks, I can remember that. Er, and you threw your dirty water into that an’ the rainwater flushed it away so, that’s what happened to your dirty water. Aye.

Maternity Care in 1945

Well, they had a blether and that with their neighbours and their friends. Er, they made time for that. I mean, they were busy but they still made a wee bit o’ time for one another. And they would go along to see somebody else was alright and take something, something nice for them to eat. A couple o’ slices of cake, things like that. I mean, they could nae give, like, a full cake! They were all working wi’ their rations, their flour and dried eggs and you name it! But they would make what they could an’ take a nice couple o’ slices o’ that and some pancakes and that was a nice tea. Aye, apparently, when I was born, er, the women went to their bed for ten days to a fortnight and that was their, sort of, ante natal care and their neighbours came in and helped an’ the nurse was coming up every day to see that things were OK an’ Mrs McBride, that stayed at the other side, had came in an’ my Mum never liked margarine, she liked butter. She hated margarine an’ would nae eat it kinda style! If she’d nothing else, she would just spread it on so thin that you didnae get the taste. But she loved butter and she would have it as thick as she could but it was on ration, you see? Now Mrs McBride had a bigger family and she’d more butter in the house so she came in with a wee tray an’ a nice wee cloth over it an’ a cup o’ tea and a plate wi’ just bread and butter but nice thick butter! “Here you are, Sadie, I thought you would like that!” And my Mum says, “Oh, my God, that’s lovely! Oh, that’s good!” She said, “I never enjoyed anything as much that day!” It was just that nice that somebody came in wi’ that, something that she liked. An’ she was so happy! An’ she talked about that afterwards. I mean, that was a nice thing.

YM: That’s kind!

Aye, they looked after one another. Quite amazing, hey? They had a bond.

Electricity comes to Benquhat

TRANSCRIPT

So, this electricity power station was working and it had this electricity ready for use so they fed it up to Benquhat but there was only enough to give everybody a ceiling light in the house – that was all! They had no sockets, you could nae plug anything in. They didnae have electrical stuff anyway but, there you go, aye. It was a ceiling light and that was all. And I remember once, Billy had come running into the house to say that Mrs so-and-so (I can nae remember who it was) had, er, got a hoover and the hoover was connected in some way into this ceiling light fitting an’ she was trying to hoover the floor wi’ this but it was nae strong enough and it had exploded! [Laughs] An’ he had come running in to tell ma Mum and all these folk were looking into this woman to see if she was OK! Aye! [Laughs] So, it would nae work any hoover or anything at all! Aye, just a ceiling light and that was the only electricity.