16/01/17
Today I was fortunate enough to visit Irongray, apparently an ancestral home. Expecting a village, I was pleasantly surprised to find country roads that led onto a quaint lane and the church isolated in the midst of beautiful scenery. The parish has apparently 500 people but the only people to disturb the silence were a lone horse rider and the occasional tractor driver passing by on the country road.
One information board showcases the animals that could be spied by a patient enthusiast: red kites have recently joined sparrow-hawks, kestrels, and buzzards to hunt from the sky, while foxes, badgers, stoats and weasels patrol the undergrowth. Roe deer can be spied in the early morning, and we are reassured that "the red squirrel still holds its own against the grey."
The other board gives a historical overview of the area, including literary inspiration. Irongray's Helen Walker inspired Sir Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian: "Helen walked barefoot to London to beg a pardon for her sister accused of murdering her infant child." Robert Burns was taken with the area, as was Robert Louis Stevenson, who described it as "a country most beautifully wooded and various under a range of hills." There are also more morbid anecdotes: the cemetery holds the gravestone of Jane Haining, a a missionary in Budapest who died in Auschwitz after refusing to abandon the Jewish orphans in her care. Six Covenanters (Presbyterians opposed to the monarchy-imposed Episcopacy in the time period known as the Killing Times) were executed in 1685.
Today I was fortunate enough to visit Irongray, apparently an ancestral home. Expecting a village, I was pleasantly surprised to find country roads that led onto a quaint lane and the church isolated in the midst of beautiful scenery. The parish has apparently 500 people but the only people to disturb the silence were a lone horse rider and the occasional tractor driver passing by on the country road.
One information board showcases the animals that could be spied by a patient enthusiast: red kites have recently joined sparrow-hawks, kestrels, and buzzards to hunt from the sky, while foxes, badgers, stoats and weasels patrol the undergrowth. Roe deer can be spied in the early morning, and we are reassured that "the red squirrel still holds its own against the grey."
Opening a metal gate, wrought with the church's name, admitted entrance to an apparently deserted churchyard. The graveyard itself is stunning. The church's light colour seems unusual but welcoming, and while some gravestones are so new as to seem pristine, others are so faded that it was impossible to make out a single letter. On five of the stones, however, my own surname was legible, and on another was my mother's maiden name. A monument to the men killed in World War I is erected in front of the church, bearing the name of another long-dead Grierson.
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