A few weeks ago, there was an unexpected knock on my door. The visitor introduced herself as Sophie and she had parked her shiny Morris Minor on the street to investigate our address. Sophie was researching her partner’s family tree and had tracked down the Vary family to my home. The house was originally called Heathfield but is now known by a number, although the old name is still on the pillar on the driveway and on the glass panel above the front door. Without this, she would not have been able to find it. An unexpected encounter with a genealogy detective driving round Scotland in a classic car! This felt like the beginning of an ITV drama, and I was intrigued.
Sophie told me what little she knew about the former occupants, Jane Vary Campbell and David Sinclair Campbell. Jane was born in Glasgow in 1817, to parents Richard Vary and Flora Bell, who are documented as having an ‘irregular marriage’ on 19 May, a month after Jane’s birth. The day after the wedding, Jane was baptised. In 1839, aged 22, Jane married David, a wine and spirit merchant. They moved to the house in Lenzie at some point in the 1870s, but not before they had four sons and two daughters. These included their eldest, Richard Vary Campbell, who went on to have a distinguished career in law; and David Alexander Campbell, who followed in his father’s footsteps, presumably working for the family business. David is recorded as living at Heathfield after both his parents had died. He was eventually buried in the same place, at Auld Aisle cemetery in Kirkintilloch, a short walk north from Lenzie. Sophie has visited the grave, and she showed me a photograph.
During our conversation. I mentioned that I work at the University of Edinburgh and Sophie asked whether I knew an old friend of hers, who she had only just found out also lives in Lenzie. The friend turned out to be my colleague, Cathy, who happened to be the last person I had walked with for this project. With this amount of serendipity, it was clear that I should issue an invitation for a walk around the Moss, which Sophie received with enthusiasm. I shared my email address, and Sophie went on her way, promising to be in touch soon.
*
We meet a few weeks later when Sophie is back in Scotland (she lives in Sussex but has spent the last year in Edinburgh). Sophie flew up this morning after missing her original flight and consequently also her afternoon meeting, and we have arranged the walk for late in the day, just after sunset. It is overcast and dark when she knocks on my door again. Before we set off, I invite Sophie to see inside the house. We wander from room to room, noting how the internal architecture has changed over the years. The main and obvious difference is that the building has now been divided into two homes. I live in the lower half with the walled-in stairwell in my hallway. I wonder if there is still a grand staircase in there and assume I will never see it. This would have been a big house for a single family, and they must have had servants living here too. It seems very likely that the house would have been heated by burning peat from the Moss. I can almost smell the ‘peat reak’ as the thick smoke lingers on through history.
Having attuned to the Victorian era, we set off along Fern Avenue to the Moss. It is still light enough to see without the headtorch I have brought with me, but it is darker now than I have yet experienced on these walks. We try to imagine the darkness that David and Jane would have experienced when they lived here. It is impossible, of course. We leave the house into electric light from the streetlamps that line the avenue. The covert glow of light pollution and the intrusion of cars and planes accompany us. Fin de siècle Lenzie would have been very different. In the absence of moonlight, the town would have been drenched in darkness. The Moss would have seemed a wild and unknowable place. Families would have gathered in a single room, lit by candles or the glow from the peat fire.
The Moss still takes on a strikingly different character as nighttime takes hold. We talk with quiet voices, without the competition of busy daytime traffic. Occasionally, a glimpse of cars on distant roads reminds us that we are in the twenty first century. Several aeroplanes fly over, too. These have more prominence than usual as their lights shine out through the inky sky and their engines intrude on the silent landscape. Sophie is reminded of her earlier misadventure.
As we near the boardwalk, I turn my headtorch on to peer into the trees. A single moth is caught in the beam, and I watch it as it flies over the wildflowers. Tomorrow, I am examining Hannah Imlach’s PhD and her astonishing work with moths is very much on my mind, so this is a welcome encounter. In another moment of coincidence, I walked with Kat this morning, who set up Hannah’s doctoral project when she worked at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds nature reserve at Loch Lomond. I hope I will also be able to walk with Hannah and the moths of Lenzie Moss. Sophie and I reach the boardwalk, and we are greeted by two teenagers on an evening stroll – the only people we see at this side of the Moss this evening. Moths and teenagers. I am reminded that the Moss has different inhabitants at nighttime, and I plan to walk deeper into the night on future walks.
We emerge into the station carpark into the full glare of car headlights. We are early for Sophie’s train back into Glasgow, where she is staying at another address on the genealogy journey: the youth hostel at 7-8 Park Terrace in Glasgow. Number 9 was the home of David Cargill, with whom Kirkman Finlay, the son-in-law of Jane Vary Campbell, co-founded Burmah Oil. I wait with Sophie on the platform, and we talk about David and Jane, their family connections with Wemyss Bay and Dunkeld and Birnam, and the global industries that made them wealthy.
After the train pulls away, I walk back up towards Fern Avenue and although it is only a few hundred meters, I feel like I am walking back through centuries of history.
