KIRKINTILLOCH HERALD, WEDNESDAY 3RD AUGUST 1966
DIAMOND WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
‘We’ve had our ups and downs but we don’t regret them’ say Robert and Jean Wardrop of Glasgow Road, Kirkintilloch, who celebrated their diamond wedding last week.
The old couple celebrated their sixty years of marriage with their son and two daughters and their eight grandchildren, at the family home beside Glasgow Road bridge.
Jean and Robert wished to pass their diamond wedding quietly without fuss but their family and friends remembered, and every available space in the living room was crammed with telegrams and cards from home and abroad.
This grand old couple first met in 1905 when both were working on Tom Cuthill’s far at Shandon, High Baldernock. Jean’s mother had the job of looking after the poultry and her father tended the livestock.
Robert also worked on the farm and so they met and began courting. A year later they were married.
‘In those days’ said Robert ‘you had to work. There was no bureau money or parish aid. It was work or want. But I think we enjoyed ourselves more then than the youngsters do now.’
‘They say they were the bad old days but I don’t know. We were far happier then.’
Jean added ‘Aye, it was hard work in those days. I had to get up at five o’clock in the morning to pick turnips. Often we would get soaking but it hasn’t done us any harm.’
Robert worked on farms from eleven years of age until he was twenty three, then he went down the mines.
Robert recalled one of the more serious pit disasters of that time. It was the Mavis Valley No. 15 disaster in 1915, in which all 22 men who went down, lost their lives.
‘It was a Sunday at three o’clock. I let this shift down in the cage. It was quite a nice day; the sun was shining.’
‘Then fire caught the pit. Men worked to save the men trapped down there but only one, Mick McDonald, was brought up alive. He had been lying in a pool of water but he died on his way to hospital.’
‘But’ says Jean ‘It’s best now to look to the future then go back. We have had a great life. We could not have been happier.’
On behalf of readers, we would like to congratulate Jean and Robert on their diamond wedding, and hope that they will have as much happiness, if not more, in the future.
Shandon People and History 