Campbeltown Courier From Our Files – 21.3.25

TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO
Friday, March 24, 2000 

 

Pot of gold for creamery

 

The 29 workers at Campbeltown Creamery are this week celebrating a cash injection of half a million pounds.

 

As well as securing the future of the creamery, the cash boost is good news for Kintyre’s troubled dairy farmers who sell all of their quota to the creamery.

 

The money will be used to give Campbeltown Creamery a complete makeover to improve its chances of competing in the modern marketplace. 

 

The 80-year-old creamery, which is owned by Scottish Milk, supplies the famous ‘Mull of Kintyre’ cheese all over Britain. It counts exclusive London store, Harrods, and supermarket giants Safeway’s and Sainsbury’s among its clients. 

 

Argyll and the Islands Enterprise (AIE) has provided £100,000, and an equal amount will be matched by KONVER II funding, which helps communities affected by the withdrawal of military bases. Scottish Milk will supply the remaining £300,000.

 

Chief executive of the AIE Ken Abernethy said: “This development is a welcome announcement that supports the future of a large number of jobs in one of Argyll’s most fragile areas and the future of a quality local product.”

 

The announcement was welcomed by Kintyre’s milk producers. Robert Millar, the Argyll and the Islands regional board chairman of the National Farmers’ Union of Scotland told the Courier: “This is excellent news and I hope it will help to secure the long-term prospects of the creamery, which is so important to the Kintyre community and absolutely essential for dairy farmers in the area.”

 

Cheese operations manager for Scottish Milk Matthew Glover said: “This investment will modernise large parts of our production process, increasing efficiency on the factory floor.”

 

Old-fashioned methods of weighing and wrapping using a wooden slats system will be replaced, and the storerooms and boiler house will be rebuilt and upgraded. Work will begin in August, but it was not clear whether or not the factory will stay open during the refit.

 

The factory started production in 1919, and churned out dairy foods such as butter and condensed milk. It began making cheese in 1974 and was bought over by Scottish Milk in 1997 after its previous owners, Scottish Pride, went into receivership. 

 

But there was bad news for Islay Creamery this week, with the announcement that it is being closed down. 

Lifeboat rescue drama filmed

 

Among the first service calls in 1999 for the new Campbeltown lifeboat, the Ernest and Mary Shaw, was the very satisfying rescue of four young children.

 

The children had been blown out to sea in an inflatable boat off the coast of Arran.

 

It was with keen interest then that the lifeboat crew set to sea on Sunday March 12 to re-enact the rescue for the BBC Scotland programme ‘Against All Odds’. 

 

Filming was mainly carried out at Lamlash, in conjunction with the Arran inshore lifeboat and a helicopter from HMS Gannet.

 

The time and date of the programme broadcast will be printed in the Courier as soon as it is known.  

FIFTY YEARS AGO
Thursday, March 20, 1975

 

Campbeltown man’s research project 

 

A Campbeltown man has just completed an important piece of research work.

 

He is Mr Campbell McMurray, son of the late James McMurray, 7 Kilkerran Road, and of Mrs McMurray, Lauriston Place, Edinburgh. He is a nephew of Mrs Wallace, 27 Longrow. 

 

After four years of research work, former Leith marine apprentice, Campbell McMurray has finished a project about life at sea between 1890 and the start of the Second World War.

 

The 33-year-old sociologist, a technical teacher in Southampton, was appointed by the Caird Fund, founded in memory of the Scottish ship-owner, Sir James Caird, to do the research and he made more than 600 hours of tape recordings containing interviews with ‘old salts’ throughout Britain.

 

“It has taken me about three years to process this information while working at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich,” says Mr McMurray, who served as an engineering officer in the Merchant Navy before taking a degree in sociology.

 

“Discussions are now taking place on publishing a book with the permission of the museum, and on March 20 I will use parts of it in a paper I am giving to the International Conference for Applied Anthropology in Amsterdam.”

 

Mr McMurray, who will be home in Edinburgh at Easter, intends to take 12 months off within the next few years to study for his PhD, taking his research as a basis.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Saturday, March 21, 1925

 

Alarming fire – net factory partially destroyed

 

A most alarming fire occurred in the town on Monday forenoon, as the result of which the Campbeltown Net Factory, belonging to Messrs Thomas Brown and Co, was partly destroyed.

 

The factory is situated in Kinloch Road, near the Old Quay. There is corner group of buildings there comprising the Royal Hotel (which has frontage to Main Street and Kinloch Road), the Victoria Hall and the net factory.

 

Between the factory and the Albert Halls there is a vacant space occupied as a coal and tile yard.

 

The factory buildings include a two-storey section fronting Kinloch Road and a long wing running near to Bolgam Street. The latter section of the factory houses the net-weaving machinery, and, fortunately, it was not involved in the fire. 

 

The saving of this valuable part is most gratifying from the point of view of the re-start of the factory.

 

The two-storey house fronting Kinloch Road, which was completely gutted, comprised office and store with boiler and engine shop and blacksmith’s workshop behind, all on the ground floor. The second floor was occupied as a store and finishing shop.

 

The fire started in the boiler shop, and while the immediate cause of it is not absolutely certain, it was it no doubt due to the ignition of some inflammable material used in net manufacture. 

 

The flames spread with extraordinary rapidity. 

 

The first concern of the manager (Mr Thomson), who was on the premises at the time, was to get all the employees out. There would be slightly over 50 persons working, the majority of them females.

 

A number of the latter were in the finishing shop, in the upper storey of the building which was destroyed, and owing to the flames spreading immediately in that direction, their situation was one of real peril. The women, however, kept their heads splendidly, and all reached safety without mishap. 

 

As quickly as possible, the factory hose was got into action, but it had small effect in checking the fire. Some people got into the store and commenced throwing nets and manufacturing material out on to the street, but these salvage efforts have to be quickly abandoned, so rapidly did the fire make progress. 

 

The burgh hose is housed in Bolgam Street, practically at the rear of the net factory, and willing volunteers recruited from passers-by got connections from hydrants in Kinloch Road and Bolgam Street, thus attacking the fire from front and rear.

 

When the fire was at its height, it presented an awesome spectacle and created the greatest apprehensions regarding the possibility of it spreading to the Victoria Hall and ultimately the Royal Hotel. 

 

For a short time indeed, the prospect of the fire becoming the most serious and destructive conflagration the burgh has ever known was grave indeed, and onlookers were not re-assured by the puny and futile appearance of the fire appliances possessed by the burgh. 

 

The condition of sections of the burgh hose was far from creditable, and motor vehicles were brought into service to collect hose from private works with the object of re-enforcing the inadequate public appliances.

 

So serious was the situation with regard to the Victoria Hall that rifles and ammunition were hastily moved elsewhere, and the removal of other property and the caretaker’s goods was beginning when the collapse of the roof of the doomed building brought welcome relief, and it was seen that the fire could be confined to the seat of outbreak. 

 

Though the net factory is adjacent to the Victoria Hall, the two buildings have independent gables. 

 

This division of the properties enabled the men directing the hose to play the water on the burning building and the threatened one in such a way as prevented the fire spreading. One man working from the rear did particularly good work in this connection.

 

The rapidity with which the fire consumed the building will be realised when it is stated that from the time of the first alarm till the roof collapsed and the menace was over scarcely an hour had elapsed. 

 

Another fortunate circumstance was the fact that there was only a very slight wind, otherwise the work of the firefighters would have been much more hazardous, and there might have been a very different story to tell.

 

The damage is considerable, and will probably amount to about £5,000.

 

Apart altogether from the destruction of the property, the fire is a great misfortune from the point of view of employment in the burgh. 

 

The industry, after years of depression, was experiencing a welcome renewal, and prospects of work being plentiful for a considerable time were bright.

 

There were some 54 employees on the factory books at the time, and in addition a number of home workers were benefitting by the trade revival. Practically all have been thrown idle, and a regrettable circumstance is that a considerable number of them have not been long enough at work to be entitled to unemployment benefit.