Silverhillock Farm

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Silverhillock Farm

An image looking north east showing Silverhillock Farm in the 1950s.

The property, through which flowed the Gilcomston Burn, was located at the junction of Westburn Road and Foresterhill Road.

The Royal Infirmary buildings can be seen in the background.

Foresterhill

Farms

 

 

B16_16

Aberdeen Local Studies

Correspondents Graeme Fraser and Joan Clark inform us that the farm was inhabited by the Rae family prior to the property being developed in the southwards expansion of the Foresterhill complex.

Joan's paternal grandparents, lived there before moving to Hazlehead, where her grandfather worked with Smith & Sons Nursery. Her parents moved in when they married in 1927.

Philip Wright, another correspondent, explains that in 1953 the farmhouse was used as a stable for a horse drawn cart that sold vegetables around the houses in the Midstocket area. As a young boy he would feed the horse when it reached his home at the top of Harcourt Road, beside St. Ninian's Parish Church (now Midstocket Parish Church).

Following on from the above comment, correspondent Alan Watt explains that there was a farmer in the area, around this time, called David "Davie" Mess who sold vegetables from a cart around Midstocket and that Mess might have owned the horse Philip remembers feeding.

Historical electoral rolls indicate that David Mess lived at East Summerfield Farm. This farm was located where Westray Crescent is now, to the south of the Lang Stracht between Summerfield Road and Stronsay Drive.

Alan himself helped a different farmer called David Lawson in around 1951-53 who also had a farm off the Lang Stracht. Though Lawson had a tractor rather than a horse and cart.

Electoral registers suggest Lawson was based at No. 1 Holdings, Whitemyres. The Whitemyres holdings were further west along the Lang Stracht, across the road from Whitemyres House and Farm.

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