Authors: Raymond Lamont-Brown
T
he Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum stands at the corner of Moodie Street and Priory Lane, Dunfermline. At 2 Moodie Street, the actual birthplace, is a restored late eighteenth-century pantile cottage with swept wallhead dormer windows. It was once the end of a terrace and a portion of the earlier single-storey building – used as a shop – was demolished in the twentieth century to reveal a north-facing gable pierced with two upper-apartment windows. The south-facing gable was breached to link with the memorial building of 1928 designed by James Shearer, a construction he flavoured with seventeenth-century Scots styles.
The Carnegie Birthplace Memorial Fund and Museum was founded in 1926 with the intent: ‘To tell the story of Andrew Carnegie’s humble beginnings and his remarkable achievements.’ Louise Carnegie’s original wish was to establish a ‘Memorial Treasure House’ for her husband’s honours. From her original endowment of £10,000 and a further £2,000 in 1932, this fund has received regular endowments and grants; Mrs Margaret Carnegie Miller (daughter) continued the family endowments during her lifetime.
The first Museums Director was appointed in the late 1960s and during 1983–4 an important renovation programme was undertaken at the museum through a fund supported
inter alia
by the Carnegie Trusts and the then Scottish Tourist Board.
The visitor enters the museum though one of the original front doors of the cottage from Moodie Street whose alignment has greatly changed from Andrew Carnegie’s time, with facing buildings demolished. From the reception area the visitor is led through the series of rooms on two levels that Andrew Carnegie would have known as a child. One room exhibits a loom of the style invented by the French silk-weaver from Lyon, Joseph Marie Jacquard. On such a loom Carnegie’s father William worked his fine damask cloth. Period furniture, a wall-bed and other artefacts show how the Carnegie family lived in the 1830s; the furniture includes a desk given to Mrs Ailie Henderson, who had lent them £20 towards their passage to America in 1848. Other displays show Carnegie family and local Dunfermline history relevant to the period of Andrew Carnegie’s childhood.
Downstairs, from the reception area the visitor enters a spacious hallway with a significant collection of cartoons depicting Andrew Carnegie, both humorous and satirical. (These are sometimes replaced by exhibitions of artworks and paintings which form part of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust art collection.) From here steps lead off into the Memorial Hall proper. The displays are featured in bays, and cover the whole of Andrew Carnegie’s life. His private office at Skibo Castle is recreated and there is a stunning display of the caskets Carnegie received when he was honoured with the freedom of many cities. Overall the museum exhibits a range of Carnegie ephemera, from royal tributes from King Edward VII and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia to his travel albums highlighting aspects of his life little known to the general public. A particularly moving display is based around the centrepiece of the Roll of Honour of the Carnegie Hero Fund Trust.
O dear blue mountains of my home firth,
My heart is sad because I must leave you
And it will be long before I see you again.
Margaret Carnegie Miller,
Skibo Guest Book
, 1933.
O
n the afternoon of the last day of February 1920 Louise Carnegie, accompanied by her sister Estelle ‘Stella’ Whitfield, arrived at Ardgay (Bonar Bridge) railway station, Sutherland; this was her first visit to Skibo since Andrew Carnegie’s death. Thereafter Louise spent successive summers at the castle where she was often joined by her daughter Margaret, son-in-law Roswell and her grandchildren. Slowly, too, she began to fill the place with guests, old friends and new, as well as employees and associates of her husband’s trusts. Even so, during the 1920s and 1930s the castle was seldom used. Louise Carnegie spent her last summer at Skibo in 1939; she left the castle on 1 September, the day Germany invaded Poland, and at 11.15am on 3 September Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government declared war on Gemany. Just like her husband back in 1914, Louise Carnegie’s visits to Skibo were thwarted by war.
After Louise Carnegie’s death on 24 June 1946 Skibo entered a new era. Louise’s will confirmed that Skibo belonged to her daughter Margaret, who returned a few weeks after her mother’s death. She entered the gates – under the familiar banner
WELCOME TO SKIBO
– with her daughter Louise (Dede), her son-in-law Gordon Thomson and their four daughters. She was now the Lady of Skibo.
Margaret Carnegie Miller set about repairs and maintenance of the castle, and the reviving of the estate after six years of war, with the help of estate factor Whittet and head keeper Harry Blythe. In her father’s time there had been a staff of 85, now there were fewer than 30, with 5 gardeners instead of 18. Much work was done to try to make Skibo estate self-sufficient.
In 1947 Margaret’s daughter Dede Thomson fell ill, stricken with poliomyelitis; she died on 13 August. The family were greatly affected by the early death. Roswell, her father, in particular was devastated. Margaret and Roswell divorced in 1953. Their American home on 90th Street, New York, was given to the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Thereafter Margaret looked upon Skibo as her spiritual home, although in time she had a residence in Connecticut. After Dede’s death, the castle provided a permanent home for the Thomson family. Margaret was particularly delighted when her now-widowed lawyer son-in-law Gordon Thomson, who was appointed a King’s Counsel in 1953, was elevated as Senator to HM College of Justice in Scotland as Lord Migdale. Members of the Carnegie-Miller-Thomson family were the most regular visitors to Skibo, along with various trustees and associates of Andrew Carnegie’s many philanthropic agencies. Hospitality was very much reduced from Margaret’s father’s time when Edwardian opulence held sway. Nevertheless in 1964 Skibo made ready to receive a royal guest. This was the year that Queen Elizabeth II (and I of Scotland) and Prince Philip made an official visit to the county of Sutherland. Lord Migdale was Lord Lieutenant of Sutherland from 1962, and it was his responsibility to welcome the royal party to the county, with Skibo as the location for a royal lunch. So on 5 June 1964 Margaret Carnegie Miller received her royal guests; that evening Margaret, Lord Migdale and her daughter Margaret (‘Migs’) were dinner guests aboard the royal yacht
Britannia
moored in the Cromarty Firth.
By the 1970s Margaret began to suffer debilitating arthritis, which restricted her movements. As she grew older it was suggested that she should make Skibo her regular home. This idea did not wholly appeal as she considered herself American, and the United States as her home country. Skibo was the ‘heaven’ of her childhood, but as she faced worsening infirmity it was likely that she would be unable to make any regular long journeys from her residence in Connecticut to Scotland. Her family then advised that Skibo be given over to Carnegie Trust projects.
Margaret now had discussions with her New York lawyer John Gray, Stephen Seaman (the representative of her Scottish solicitors) and Fred Mann (executive secretary of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust). Margaret made her last visit to Skibo in the summer of 1980. She had now formally decided that Skibo Castle and a parcel of 600 acres of property should go to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, with the idea that it should be converted to some kind of meeting place for international scholars to carry out research and cross-fertilise their ideas. Alas, the trust turned down the offer; they did not have the funds to convert and maintain the property and the castle’s position in the north of Scotland made it an inconvenient place to get to. A whole range of ideas as to what Skibo might become were discussed, but in the end Skibo could always be sold and the money given to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. Even so, there were legal and tax mountains to climb as well as the fine detail on such things as the family’s retention of fishing and shooting rights.
In May 1982, amid much local and national press speculation, Skibo was put on the market by selling agents Savills and local representatives Renton Finlayson of Bonar Bridge. In all 19,000 acres including the castle were put up for sale, in lots or as a whole, at a guide price of £1.85 million; in the event portions of the estate were sold to family partnerships. The castle remained a separate entity. On 27 July 1982 the castle and remainder of the estate was sold to Derek Holt, of Holt Leisure Parks Ltd, Renfrewshire, for a sum in the region of £2.5 million. Holt carried out various improvements to the castle and gardens and held ownership for eight years. In 1990 the entrepreneur Peter de Savary bought the castle and 7,500 acres for £5.6 million and spent £10 million restoring it and establishing the Carnegie Club for paying guests. The property was sold again by the holding company Westbrook Partners (in which de Savary was a minority shareholder) for a sum in the region of £30.5 million in 2003/4. Today Skibo Castle remains the home of the Carnegie Club, ranked highly as ‘one of the world’s most exclusive private clubs’.
Should Andrew Carnegie return to Skibo today there is much he would recognise. Much of the furniture, carpets, antiques, pictures and wall hangings remain as they were in his time, and his beloved pipe organ made for him by Brindley & Foster (1902) still fills the hallway with the music he loved. The whole ambience of Carnegie is here in the study, downstairs rooms, corridors, lift and library – although a large proportion of the books were sold during Peter de Savary’s ownership. Carnegie’s portable writing table, now a little the worse for wear, serves as a reminder of the inspiration Skibo brought to his writings.
In the vicinity of Skibo the farms of Fload, Acharry and Creich that Carnegie knew are still in the ownership of Carnegie descendants and his great-granddaughter Margaret Thomson still farms the 500-acre Ospisdale Farm which her father Lord Migdale bought in 1968.
Today, the Skibo estate is being revived for the twenty-first century with such plans as a regenerating wooded development, the reintroduction of shooting and the purchase of properties like Meikle Ferry House to bring them back into the estate. The dozen cottages and lodges on Skibo estate, including the battlemented ‘Mrs Carnegie’s Castle’, have also been refurbished; many of them once served as the homes of Andrew Carnegie’s estate employees. The Carnegie Links Golf Course has been redeveloped and plays an important role in Highland and international golf.
1
. Pattiesmuir was known in Andrew Carnegie’s time as Patiemuir; there were also various other spellings.
2
. Seceders: members of various branches of the Secession Church. In 1732 a group of Presbyterian ministers, led by Ebenezer Erskine and Ralph Erskine, erstwhile minister of Dunfermline, departed from the Church of Scotland to form the Secession Church. This group favoured the rights of the congregation to appoint their ministers and pursue a conservative emphasis on faith rather than works.
3
. Sir John Sinclair (ed.),
The Statistical Account of Scotland
, vol. X, p. 404.
4
. In 1909 Carnegie attended the funeral of Constance Mary Carnegie, wife of Victor, 9th Earl of Elgin, at this churchyard but found no trace of his family graves.
5
. Sir William Frazer,
History of the Carnegies, Earls of Southesk and their kindred
.
6
. Correspondence between the author and the Earl of Elgin, August 2002.
7
. Martha, Lady Elgin,
Household Account Book
.
8
. J.B. Mackie,
Andrew Carnegie: His Dunfermline Ties and Benefactions
, p. 7.
9
. R. Rait and G.S. Pride,
Scotland
, p. 268.
10
. Raymond Lamont-Brown,
Fife in History and Legend
, p. 201.
11
. Today Pattiesmuir remains part of the Elgin estate and the ‘college’ is used as a village hall.
12
.
Elgin Estate Cash Book
, entry for 1 January–30 December 1826.
13
. Burton J. Hendrick,
The Life of Andrew Carnegie
, vol. I, p. 11.
14
. Andrew Carnegie,
Autobiography
, p. 3.
15
. Raymond Lamont-Brown,
Discovering Fife
, p. 36.
16
. Andrew Carnegie,
Autobiography
, p. 11.
17
.
Ibid
., p. 23.
18
. John Pattison, Holograph MS. 1935, Carnegie Museum.
19
. Tom Morrison, ‘Heddekation and Handication’,
Register
, 21 December 1833, pp. 720ff.
20
. Andrew Carnegie,
Autobiography
, p. 4.
1
. To date only two thoroughfares in Dunfermline bear Carnegie’s name: Carnegie Drive, at the eastern entrance to the town, and Carnegie Avenue, abutting Pitreavie golf course to the south.
2
. A.H. Millar,
Fife: Pictorial and Historical;
and Raymond Lamont-Brown,
Fife in History and Legend
.
3
. A.H. Millar,
Fife: Pictorial and Historical
, p. 234.
4
. Peter Chalmers,
Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline
, pp. 327 and 375.
5
. Edgar Street no longer exists, the site having been redeveloped.
6
. Andrew Carnegie,
Autobiography
, p. 52.
7
. Raymond Lamont-Brown,
Fife in History and Legend
, pp. 175–6.
8
. Strangely Andrew Carnegie makes no mention of his sister in his
Autobiography
.