Blackness Road

The parrot that sat on the milk crates outside Keillors shop at the bottom of the Blackie, the sledging down the brae from the Blackie to the burn, so many kids there we had to line up to get your turn. Great days, but we were all kids then, we didn't know about life then.The woman that sold puff candy across from St Joseph's school, that's just a wee bit of great memories.

We lived in tenement at the bottom of Blackness Road / Brook Street. Only gas, no electricity and the loo was on the landing, my mother having to clean her part of the stairs, and as Billy Connolly would say we used an old army greatcoat as an eiderdown. Then the exciting time of moving to St Mary's to a three bedroom house with garden and a great treat of having a loo and bath indoors. Even though I was only 2/3 I remember the journey in the back of a removal van from our old tenement to our new home. Great days, I wish I could rewind and go back to those days (time move on). Read more......

In 1940 I was transported by tram car from Maryfield to Blackness School. As the war started in 1939 and we moved to Linlathen in 1940 and there were no schools there so a free tram car went from Maryfield to St John's in Tay Street and St Joseph's in Blackness Road and also to Blackness School, Logie and Mitchell Street. I was only 9 years old and left home at 8am walked to Maryfield and spent the day away.

My grandparents lived at Dunmore Lodge Ninewells on the Perth Road. As a child when my parents would take the journey from Birmingham to Dundee I would look forward to the walks down to the River Tay and the tram journey into the city. As I got older I was trusted to go on the tram each morning to fetch the hot morning rolls for breakfast. My grandfather worked as a gardener for the Dundee Council and set out the gardens at Magdalene Green and near to the Tay Rail Bridge. He died aged 100 at "The Rowans" nursing home. Read more......