Verdant Works - The story of Jute

When we were on holiday visiting my family, we took a trip to the Verdant Works in Dundee.  I have close family connections with Dundee and those are also linked to the Jute industry.  My great grandfather was killed by a bale of jute which fell on him and broke his back,  my great grandmother had to go and work in the mill to keep the family fed.  She became very active in organising and supporting other women working there, there were many jute mills in Dundee and I'm not sure which one she worked at.  My grandmother worked as a spinner and my great aunt was a weaver.  So you can see why I wanted to visit this museum.

We started off in the Works Office, this was delightful, because when you press a button you can hear the staff talking to each other in lovely broad Dundonian accents, I enjoyed hearing the characters say 'eh' instead of 'I', you had to be there ;p

My mum was with us and she worked in an insurance office in Dundee in the early 1950s, her recollection was that this sort of office was still in operation with the high desks.

 

The thoughts of the typist were interesting, no downtrodden woman here, she was off to a suffragette meeting.

 

We learned all about how jute was grown but I particularly loved this scene which similated looking up at the masts of the clipper from the hold of the ship.

 

There was plenty of information about the processing of the jute as well as the machines used for the various processes.

Sack sewing was the very lowest of the skills associated with the jute trade and much of it was done in the home.

The exhibits then went on to tell about the products that used jute and the canvas and hessian was exported all over the world, products such as covered wagons, carpet backing, tents, bags, webbing, rope and string.

We then moved on to the exhibits which tell about the life in Dundee.  One of the most interesting things about that was that there was very much a matriarchial society because when the boys reached maturity they were paid off because men were too expensive, so it was the women to earned the money and the men stayed at home as 'kettle bilers' (boilers) looking after the children and making the meals.  They got seasonal work picking fruit and took the children with them to the berry fields but otherwise morale was pretty low.  They were some of the first to volunteer to sign up at the start of WW1.

These depictions of the Dundee tenement flats brought back lots of memories, as I can vividly remember visiting my great-grandmother in her 'room and kitchen' flat.  Her bed was in the kitchen and she let out the 'bedroom' to a relative.  There was a shared toilet on 'the stair', even at 4 or 5 it horrified me that she had to share a toilet with her neighbours.

If you are going to Dundee, I can thoroughly recommend this musuem/attraction,  it was full of information presented in varied and interesting ways.  Some of the film footage you can see there is very evocative and entertaining as well as educating.

Staycation

Part Two of my holiday photos.

Pittenweem Harbour

Pittenweem Harbour was full of working fishing boats, as it was Sunday there wasn't much activity, but the blue sky was reflecting on the water in the harbour and it all looked very pretty.

View between the houses at Pittenweem

I liked this view between these two houses,  I think was probably a slipway when each house would have it's own boat.

Houses close to the sea wall

We walked right along to the end of the village where these little cottages cluster close to the sea wall,  they must get battered in the winter with the storms, but on a sunny day they created a little sun trap.  Lots of these houses are holiday homes for rent.

Brian walking along the sea wall

After Pittenweem we headed to the next village to have our lunch, the harbour at Anstruther is for leisure craft and very busy, but not nearly as attractive as the other village harbours.  My dad used to do a lot of sailing around this coast and often moored at Anstruther where it is customary to have fish and chips!

It would have been rude not to take advantage of such a well-known chippie with a clutch of awards to its name.  We sat in and had to stand in line for about 15 minutes to get a table. It's pretty much like that every day, especially in the summer.

 

Mum and I ordered the Haddock & Chips,  I did look at the sustainable option of Hake, but it came from the south west of Africa, so I thought I would sustain our local fishermen instead!  

 

Brian ordered Herring in Oatmeal with his chips, the waitress misheard and brought him haddock, so that had to go back and it took rather a long time for the herring to arrive, when this was pointed out they immediately volunteered to waive the cost of that meal.  The food was very good, but the service was a little hurried due to the high turnover. 

We decided not to go to Crail, the last of the villages, but to go on to St Andrews and have an ice-cream at Janettas, an ice-cream parlour which has been in St Andrews since 1908 and I remember as a child it was the only shop that was open in St Andrews on a Sunday!  It's very different now and they have 52 flavours of ice-cream and a long queue out the door.   I didn't take any photos of the ice-creams, but I had Chocamocca in a chocolate waffle cone.  The perfect way to end a perfect day!

In the next post I will tell you about my visit to The Verdant Works, Jute Mill Museum in Dundee.