Here is the first issue of our new SYHA Website Historical Archive feature, Treasure Trove, in which we shall be digging around in the vaults of National Office for pictures and stories demonstrating the SYHA’s rich heritage. We hope you enjoy the feature, and would welcome your memories, additional information, corrections, suggestions and request for further features.

Feughside and Alice Fairweather.

The first photographs are part of a collection recently sent in by John Smillie of Ayrshire; some time ago he acquired the photographic collection of JR Woods, a keen hosteller for many years in the early days of youth hostelling in Scotland. Mr Smillie has kindly donated these to the SYHA Archive. Please click on the images for larger versions.

The subject is the old Kincardineshire Hostel at Feughside, two miles south of Banchory, and its popular warden Alice Fairweather, later Mrs Alice Hay. Feughside was opened in 1936 to cater especially for Aberdeen walkers and cyclists, and Picture 1 (above) shows the hostel, with its distinctive verandah, in its early existence, in 1939. 

The second picture (right) is of a Halloween party for evacuees late in 1939. Feughside hostel was one that was able to soldier on through the war, no doubt with a mixed clientele of traditional hostellers, factory workers, displaced children and others seeking solace in the countryside.

Six years after the war, a cheerful gang of hostellers pose for a photograph with the warden, and enjoy a meal in the simple surroundings of the dining room (pictures 3 and 4). Note the period pieces - the rolled-up shorts, fat milk bottles, food storage compartments, large brown teapots, plain wooden furniture, bare timber rafters and tin cycle lamp and Thermos flask (though it appears to have a plastic cup).

In picture 5, warden Alice is in her office. What appear to be labelled jars of jam adorn a shelf, while a hidden figure attends to a plant. A precarious ladder suggests some irksome task just completed, or awaiting action, and there are more milk bottles.

Finally, one of our own pictures from deep in the vaults. Alice is in her den, dispensing pop, and perhaps some of the tinned goods, Punch chocolate bars (remember those?), ninepenny (4p) boxes of Sharps’ toffees (or, for those with more expensive tastes, Brazil nut, at one-and-a-penny, or 5.5p), on display. Under close supervision are the signing-in sheet and a pile of ten or so membership cards. The top card appears to be enclosed in one of the thick binders you could buy to protect it from the Scottish weather.

Feughside Hostel closed in 1969. During its lifetime, there were only three wardens. All were able to attend a reunion there on 27 September 1969.

Norma Wond, Aberdeen member, writes: Most of my early hostelling was cycling from Aberdeen.  Our ‘local’ was Feughside, where we used to land up on a Sunday teatime before all cycling home together. I remember lines of batteries lined up on top of the range, trying to get enough power to get us home. Alice, the warden, used to keep us in order – I think she eventually married a cyclist from further north. She wouldn't let the lads into the hostel wearing their cycling shorts, as she said they were indecent.

John Martin
SYHA Volunteer Archivist
October 2009

Please send contributions and suggestions to: archive@syha.org.uk