Places of Significance: Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Kemnay, Scotland
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Kemnay is a little village 16 miles west of Aberdeen, situated on a bend in the River Don. Ella’s family would ride the bus to this location in the countryside, for picnics or to pick wild brambleberries. On a scrapbook page Ella had made with some photographs taken there in 1939, she described these summer holidays as “blissful summer days.” Ella said, “I loved it out in the country. My mother used to say, ‘Ella needs to marry a farmer.’”(1)

During World War II, in the early 1940s, Ella spent 2 or 3 summers in Kemnay, to keep her out of the city and further from the danger of German air raids. Ella wasn’t sure how her family became acquainted with the host family - she stayed with the Cheyn family (maybe spelled Cheyne?) - but it wasn’t uncommon that families from the city would arrange for their children to stay in the country during the war. Ella remembers that she stayed in an upstairs room of the farmhouse, and she remembers the host family had a son. She would help with farm chores - milk the cow and collect eggs from the chickens.(2)

High Street, Kemnay
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Ella remembers one night during the war, when she and her host family watched what seemed like fireworks in the sky, but it was really probably the British artillery on the ground firing toward German bombers overhead. "It's still so bright in my memory...the flashing." She wasn't worried for her own welfare; she was far enough out in the country that the planes didn't bother to go there. But she was worried about her parents and sister back in Aberdeen (her sister was in a hospital for treatment of tuberculosis at that time).(3)

Kemnay, Scotland
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Ella enjoyed her summers in the countryside, but she remembers anxiously waiting for her mother at the end of one summer, excited to see her coming down the lane after arriving by bus.

Add to our to-do list on our next trip to Aberdeen: Having a picnic in Kemnay.

These family photographs show George and Katherine (Kate) with 
their children Ina and Ella, as well as George's sister 
Madgie (or Madge) and an unnamed family friend. The bottom left
photo also shows "farmers children" - perhaps this was the family that
Ella would later stay with in Kemnay during the war? Did they have
a relationship prior to the war?

Sources: 

1. From a conversation with Ella on 13 January 2017
2. From a conversation with Ella on 16 January 2019
3. From a conversation with Ella on 30 May 2014