Sarah Barrie’s Lair 2. Bellshill, Lanarkshire, Scotland, June 2019

26 June 2019. McLays Guest House, Renfrew Street, Glasgow

It is wonderful what a cheerful welcome and a good night’s sleep can do. Yesterday I arrived in Glasgow after a crowded Easy Jet flight from sweltering Paris, and met dullness and gloom. This morning at the guesthouse, as I prepare to visit Sarah Barrie’s lair at Bothwell Park Cemetery in Bellshill, everything is bright.

My senses are fine tuned as I stand here in my large upstairs bedroom. There are echoes everywhere, echoes of Bill as well as Sarah. The children’s voices drifting up from the school on the corner of Renfrew Street and Garnet Street – I hear Sarah and her friends in 1920. The young housemaids scampering around making beds and cleaning rooms – one of them is Sarah before her marriage. The full Scottish breakfast – Bill would have eaten this breakfast with gusto and enjoyed a word or two with the French guests at the other tables.

*

Two days ago, in Paris, I was strolling along the cobbled paths of the Père Lachaise Cemetery with a French couple, my friends for twenty years. He became breathless – his lungs trouble him – and he sat down to rest while she and I walked on ahead. I commented on the flowers adorning the crowded graves – fresh (in bouquets or growing in pots); ceramic, and artificial (silk were the most realistic, we agreed) – and I asked her advice on what flowers to take when I visit Sarah’s lair. She said that when she visits her mother’s grave in Brittany, she takes roses because they dry out gracefully. Her father and sister are also buried in the family plot; and there will be room for her brother, but not for her. She will be buried in Corsica next to her husband.

His health is not robust, I thought, so he is likely to die first. Not too soon, I hope.

‘In any event, my family’s remains will one day need to be moved from the grave in Brittany’.  She seemed philosophical about this.

‘An Italian friend told me that in her country, bodies are exhumed after ten years and the bones placed in an ossuary. ‘

‘Yes, that’s true, and it sometimes happens at Père Lachaise. It’s the family’s duty to maintain the plot, and if it falls into disrepair or the lease is over, the bones are moved to the ossuary.’

*

At Glasgow Central Station, I board the ScotRail train and find a seat with a table where I place my sheaf of white roses. The journey to Bellshill will take 17 minutes. I check once again that I have the section and lair number written down.

White roses. Photo: Ann Barrie

I am mentally prepared for the fact that Sarah’s name will have faded on the gravestone – it is, after all, more than eighty years since she died. Sarah was the grandmother Bill’s children never met, and I had asked Charles what he expected I would see.

‘Maybe a big concrete box,’ he replied, ‘with some trim but nothing ostentatious, a simple plaque. Probably obvious weather damage. Lawns kept but no sign of regular visitation by loved ones.’

‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m expecting,’ I said.

*

On arrival at Bellshill, I check with the man in the ticket office that the route I have worked out is a good one. Then I stride forth on the one-mile walk to the cemetery. The route is green and leafy, and helpful locals advise me on shortcuts and the best way to negotiate roundabouts and avoid getting hit by cars speeding onto the A721.

I arrive at Bothwell Park Cemetery with no mishaps, and see lawns, uneven but mown; dirt paths; sturdy trees; and graves, some with protective orange netting around them. Then I encounter a problem. The plan at the cemetery entrance shows alphabetically arranged sections, some very large, but provides no guidance on lair numbers.

There is a fine old house at the entrance to the cemetery, and a brick shed behind it, but no staff to be seen, and so I approach two women who are waiting for their transport home. They tell me the house is in private ownership now and the cemetery staff use the shed. Since there is no-one there right now, I’m best to follow the road to the back of the cemetery where the older graves are.

 I thank the women, and begin walking slowly along this road, stopping to check dates on tombstones. This might take me hours.

A utility vehicle approaches with two men on board and I hail them. ‘I’m looking for a grave in Section O.’

One of the men climbs down. ‘Do you know the number?’

I consult the number written on my forearm. ‘Lair 512. Is it up there?’ I wave my arm toward the back of the cemetery.

He points to my arm and chuckles. ‘That’s the kind of thing I do. How long are you here?’

I explain that I’m a New Zealander and have just spent a month in France, most recently in Marseille and Paris, and now I am staying in Glasgow for three days.’

‘I’ve been in Marseille, in 1998, for the football World Cup.’

‘You’d recognise a lot of changes if you went back’.

‘Nah. I was drunk the whole time, so I don’t remember.’

We chat for a few moments and then I steer him back to the subject at hand. ‘Lair 512?’

‘You won’t find it here. Follow me.’ He leads me to a line of graves near the shed.

*

He locates a number carved into the base of one of the tombstones and counts his way along the lairs. My anticipation mounts. Then he stops at a grassed area. ‘It must be an unmarked grave.’ My shock must have shown on my face because he adds, ‘Perhaps they were poor.’

‘Yes, they were poor.’

‘Here. I’ll pace it out.’ He does so, and points to a spot in the grassed area.

I place my bouquet of roses on the exact spot. ‘The staff will leave it here for a while, won’t they?’

He looks sympathetic. ‘The wind will blow it away.’ He turns to his fellow worker. ‘Go and get a stake.’

He stakes the bouquet firmly into the lawn. ‘I’ll make sure it stays here for a while.

At my request, he takes photographs of me at Sarah’s lair before returning to his duties.

Bothwell Park Cemetery. Ann Barrie at Sarah Barrie's Lair. June 2019

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A stake in the ground. Photo: Ann Barrie

*

I take stock of the situation. I hadn’t thought about it before coming to the cemetery today, but Sarah and Archie must have been poor. Bill’s cousin said to us the first time we met him, ‘If it’s any comfort, our grandfather would sometimes say to one of Sarah’s sisters,"Take this wee bit o’silver round for poor Sarah to spend."’ Bill’s cousin meant well, but it was of no comfort to Bill – rather, it heightened his feeling of injustice. More recently, after Bill was dead, this cousin told me Sarah’s father paid for Archie to train as a bus conductor. 

I find I have adjusted to the fact that Sarah lies in an unmarked grave. The lair is hers, marked or not. At Bothwell Park Cemetery, lairs are provided forever – so far as you can have a forever – and they are maintained by cemetery staff. There is no need for Sarah to have a tombstone on her quiet piece of lawn. I will tell her story, and my children will keep it alive.

*

I prepare to leave the cemetery, and then stop short. There is something else – Bill’s ashes. I am startled I should have forgotten, but almost as quickly I forgive myself. It is right and proper that Sarah – this forgotten woman – should have a spell in the limelight.  It is also appropriate for me to spend time with her: she would have been my mother-in-law.

Sarah had her moment today, and now it’s Bill’s.  His ashes are in a strong little plastic container, which I have carried in my suitcase for a month, along with a note explaining the contents and a copy of Bill’s death certificate. I had not asked permission, and neither do I ask permission now, as I massage the ashes into the ground, around and under the bouquet of roses. The amount is not huge – it is representative. The rest of the ashes will be scattered at Owhiro Bay, as Bill wished.

I sit on the grass again, this time for a short rest. It has been a big day. The story is not ended – it never is – but I have done enough for now. I notice that the sun is still bright and the trees are sparkling, and I begin my walk back to the station.

Sarah Barrie’s Lair 1. Wellington, NZ, April 2019

My late husband, Bill Barrie, knew my mother well, because she lived to the age of ninety. But he barely knew his own mother. Her name was Sarah. She came from Hamilton, Lanarkshire; and she died when Bill – or Billie, as he was known in Scotland – was three and a half years old. All he retained was the faint and precious memory of her teaching him to read, as the two of them rested in bed during her final illness.

Bill told me that his mother’s family, the Glens, virtually disowned Sarah when she married Archibald Barrie. She bore four children in quick succession – Archie in 1926; Margaret, 1928; Billie, 1930; and Jean, 1933.  Sarah died in Hamilton, soon after Jean’s birth, and baby Jean was adopted by Archibald’s brother and his wife. Archibald’s sister helped care for the other siblings until, barely a year after Sarah’s death, Archibald married a young Irish Catholic woman, Annie Carolan. They soon had their own son, Iain; and Billie, a protestant boy in a Catholic household, was made to feel unwelcome and unloved. His two older siblings fared somewhat better, particularly Margaret.

After Bill emigrated to New Zealand in 1954, he corresponded with other family members for a while – particularly Archie, to whom he was close – but they gradually fell out of contact. Bill married a girl from a large Mangakino family, they had a daughter, got divorced twenty years later, and he married me in December 1977. Then suddenly, one evening in 1996, Bill received a phone call from Scotland. His younger sister, Jean, had, after a long search, managed to trace him.

The following year, Bill and I took our two teenaged children to Scotland to meet Jean and Archie. Bill was later also reunited with his older sister, Margaret, who visited us from the USA; and Auntie Jean, his mother’s youngest sister, who lived in Melbourne. Auntie Jean gave Bill this photo, his only tangible reminder of his mother: 

Sarah Barrie with two of her children: Margaret and Billie, 1931. Photo Barrie Family collection

In the photo, Sarah’s eyes are dark and shadowed. The bonnie baby in her arms is Billie; and Margaret is seated beside them.

*

Throughout our long marriage Bill was vehement that he did not want me to delve into his family history, particularly the Glens. He said his life began when he came to New Zealand.

But now Bill is dead – it has been more than three years – and I wish to place some of his ashes near Sarah’s grave when I go to Scotland in June. I believe Bill would understand. It is important to me to make this pilgrimage – to honour the mother-in-law I never met – but first I need to find when she died, and where her grave is. Perhaps I can also learn something of her story.

I have scant information. A family tree, prepared by a neighbour for Bill’s 80^th birthday – it focuses mostly on the Barries – includes an image of Sarah’s marriage certificate, and this is my starting point. 

Marriage certificate for Archibald Barrie & Sarah Glen, 31 October 1924. 

*

Sarah Glen and Archibald Barrie were married on 31 October 1924, at 52 Morris Crescent, Blantyre, Lanarkshire. This was the Barrie family home, and Archibald’s sister was a witness. Archibald was 21, a coal miner by occupation. Sarah was 20, and signed her name as Sadie Glen, domestic servant, Blantyre. The ceremony was performed, according to the Forms of the Evangelical Union Congregational Church.

This cluster of facts brings immediate questions to my mind: Why was there no involvement by Sarah’s own family? Who were her family? And why did they disapprove of Archibald?

Archibald Barrie, late 1920s. Photo: Barrie family collection

Basic information about Sarah's early years is supplied in the family tree prepared by our neighbour, and also in another tree prepared by Bill’s cousin and namesake, Bill Glen in Australia:

Sarah Glen was born on 14 August, 1904, in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, the middle child of nine children born to William Glen, a coal miner, and his wife, Eliza Henderson. Eliza died on 25 May 1918. So Sarah lost her mother when she was only thirteen. William Glen did not remarry. That means he brought up Sarah and her siblings on his own, possibly with help from family members. He died in Hamilton on 20 June 1940. 

*

My first challenge is to find out when and where Sarah died.

With little expectation of success – if Sarah’s death record could be found, wouldn’t that have happened already? –  I searched the internet site Scotland’s People. My initial search was unsuccessful, and so I broadened the search to ‘anywhere in Lanarkshire’. On getting one result, I paid to view the record.

It was Bill’s mother. The death record showed that Sarah Glen died of acute tuberculosis, on 5 October 1934. She did not die in Hamilton, as Bill believed, but in Bellshill, North Lanarkshire. She died at her home 5 Avon Drive, Mossend, and her husband, Archibald Barrie, was present.

Death certificate for Sarah Barrie, 5 October 1934

I was partway there. Should it not be possible to also find her grave? Unsure how to proceed, I completed an online form designed for potential users of North Lanarkshire cemetery services:

‘I will be coming to Lanarkshire in July 2019, and hope to visit the grave of my late husband's mother. I searched Scotland's People, and found her death record:  Sarah Barrie (maiden name Glen) died on 5 October 1934 at 5 Avon Drive, Mossend, Bellshill. Her grave is not listed for the Bellshill cemeteries on findagrave.com. Can you provide any guidance as to where I might search next? Many thanks, Ann Barrie, Wellington, New Zealand.’

A few days later, an email with the header ‘Lair search’ arrived in my inbox. What on earth did this mean?  Was someone trying to sell me something? I clicked to open the email. And suddenly, what had been very difficult became very simple:

‘I can confirm that Sarah Barrie is interred in lair 512 Section O in the Bothwellpark Cemetery New Edinburgh Road Bellshill.  Hope this helps.’ Cemeteries Support Officer, Bellshill.’

At last I knew where Sarah was buried.

It seems anticlimactic to say so, but I had also, along the way, learned another meaning for the word ‘lair’. A lair is not only the resting place of a wild animal, but in Scotland it is the ground for a grave in a cemetery. [2]

*

So I now had the beginning and end of Sarah’s life –  and I knew where I would take flowers and ashes –  but I felt there was more to know.

I asked Bill Glen in Australia if he knew which school Sarah would have attended. He replied that it was most likely the same one his mother and her sisters attended: Low Waters in Hamilton. I learned from comments posted on the Facebook group for this school, that it was founded in 1878. The earliest photo shows a Victorian stone building with children running towards the camera, the girls wearing white smocks. [3]

I now felt I could visualise Sarah as a child, particularly when I married the Low Waters photo with a family group photo given to Bill by Auntie Jean. The six oldest Glen daughters are with their mother Eliza. By a process of elimination, Sarah must be the slim, alert-faced young girl standing beside her mother. Her long hair is tied back with a ribbon to one side, and she is wearing a dark long-sleeved dress with a bow at the collar. 

Eliza Glen with six of her daughters, ca. 1910. Photo: Glen family collection

But I still felt there was something important I needed to know.

I entered details of Sarah and Archibald, and their four children – Archie, Margaret, William and Jean – into My Heritage database; and I was directed to a family tree prepared by one of Bill’s relatives in Scotland. The four siblings appeared, but, to my surprise, there was a fifth, Elizabeth, born in 1925. No date of death was given.

Bill had never mentioned Elizabeth to me. She would have been his oldest sister. Was she the reason Sarah was married from Archibald’s home and not her own? Was she the reason Bill was nervous about my delving into his mother’s history? A shotgun wedding? Or perhaps Bill did not even know about Elizabeth? On calm reflection, I decided the latter was most likely.

Knowing Elizabeth must have died, most likely within her first year, I searched Scotland’s People for her death certificate. I did this repeatedly, over several days, always drawing a blank. Finally, after using the name Eliza, and extending the date of death to 1929, I was successful.

Eliza Henderson Barrie died on 22 January 1929, aged three, at 65 Donaldson Street, Archie and Sarah’s home in Hamilton. Cause of death was tuberculosis and peritonitis. So Sarah named her first born after her mother. The child might well have been nearly four when she died, in which case Sarah would have been pregnant when she married Archibald. Given the conservative attitudes of the time, I can understand why this was might have been too much for her staunchly Congregationalist father to countenance. So sad. Such a common story in those days.

*

Part of me wishes to delve deeper and deeper. But really, I now know all I need to know when I go to Scotland in June.

Blog by Ann Barrie

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[2] Collins English Dictionary

[3] Low Waters school was closed in 1990 and later demolished for houses.

Additional photos:

Bill Barrie, with his brother Archie and companion, in Lanarkshire, 1997

Bill Barrie with his Auntie Jean, Chadstone, Melbourne, 1999