From Yesterday to Bute (Part 3)

Over the next eight years, the Crafts Centre in Corwen, North Wales takes in several thousands of visitors, including coach parties from Manchester, Liverpool who are entertained by our resident band. At the same time, tens of thousands of our books are distributed far and wide.

With the money earned from the Crafts Centre and from our wholesale jewellery trade, we purchase some smallholdings on the island of Eday, Orkney and begin experimental organic farming. Why Eday? Well that, as they say, is another story. But it’s a long trip from Corwen to Eday, and with no particular need to stay in Wales, we decide that it’s time to relocate northwards.

Dorothy, Bill and I spend months looking for a suitable property in Scotland and the North of England. We investigate old school buildings, derelict hospitals, castles with no roofs, bonded warehouses without windows, and even another old workhouse. Nothing is exactly what we want.

Then in 1988, whilst watching News at Ten, we hear that a disused oil-workers’ village in a place called Portavadie, on the West Coast of Scotland, is up for sale. Dorothy and Bill head off to see it. But by the time they arrive it has already been sold. Whilst in the area, they go to see the local planning officer, who points them in the direction of the Isle of Bute. “If you’re looking for large, empty property at a reasonable price, that’s the place to look,” he says.

They arrive on the island on the short, five-minute ferry from Colintraive. A twenty minute drive takes them through Port Bannatyne, and then into Rothesay. And that’s when they fall in love with the island. Rothesay, set in a beautiful bay, surrounded by hills, is our new home - they just know it. There’s something different about this place, something serene, something safe - and yet something needy. It’s seen better days, for sure, and perhaps, just perhaps, Rothesay needs us as much as we need Rothesay. All we have to find now is bricks and mortar.

These come in the shape of the ‘Isle of Bute Hotel’ and adjoining shops, situated off the main square. Despite the fact that the owner has not wanted to sell to anyone at any price, as soon as she meets Dorothy and Bill, a door is unlocked, a window opened, and suddenly the property is ours.

Gradually, we move our business, our belongings and ourselves to Bute and settle in. I arrive in December 1988, sailing in from Wemyss Bay on the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry. I’m captivated by my first view of Rothesay. This isn’t the place I’d envisaged from my conversations with Robert Paterson fifteen years earlier. Yes, it’s quiet - but there’s nothing boring about the island. And Rothesay is a proper town - with shops, pubs and restaurants - as well as motor cars, telephones and even electricity!

Looking back today at an article published in the local newspaper, The Buteman, regarding our move to the island (‘Move to Bute Complete’, 10 February, 1989), a group of twenty-eight of us are pictured celebrating with a few drinks in a Rothesay pub. We all look very happy. When asked by a reporter what is was like coming from down South to reside on Bute, one person replied, “It’s like coming up from the Underworld to live above ground.” And so it was.

From Yesterday to Bute (Part 2)

After graduating from Edinburgh, my life’s journey takes me to Leeds for teacher training, and then onto London to study astrophysics. I love being a student too much to give it up just yet. But after finishing my year at Kings College, London, I have to find a ‘proper job’, and eventually end up teaching mathematics in a North London Comprehensive.

Teaching for me is both heaven and hell. Heaven being the sixth form, who have chosen to study maths (because they actually like it!), and also the top-steam second year class who adore tests (a punishment for them is to cancel one). Several of the second years also regularly ask for extra homework. Yes, extra homework.

Hell is all the other classes - in particular my bottom second year class, the antithesis of my top stream. They explode into my classroom with unrestrained energy and emotion. I can hardly stand it - I want to run away - but there’s nowhere to run. I put them in detention - then realise that this only means I have to spend another forty minutes with them after school. There’s something wrong here.

Despite the nice parts of teaching, I come home from school mentally and physically exhausted and turn on the television to watch ‘Grange Hill’. It’s cheaper than drink, doesn’t cause a hangover, and provides sympathetic therapy. To see other teachers suffering makes my job just about tolerable - that and the long vacations.

I spend mine in the town of Corwen, North Wales, helping to renovate an old Victorian workhouse for a newly formed educational Trust. The building is to be a College, teaching a new way of life and a natural means of health - based on Inspiration and Common Sense. The Trust is non-religious, non-political and non-medical - and its aims appeal to me very much. So much so, that after handing in my notice at school, I join the Trust and move to Wales.

The renovation work involves the usual things you have to do when faced with a building that has hardly changed in a hundred and fifty years. With only limited resources, we patch up holes in the roof, de-nail and sand down old timber (rescued from an old Victorian hospital in Liverpool before demolition), and generally turn ugly into beautiful. The workhouse has been virtually a prison, and now, from our new headquarters, we intend to do our part to set people free. Free from disease, free from indoctrination, and free from old ways of thought.

The building is also going to be a Crafts Centre, providing much-needed funds for the Trust. Candle-making, rug-making, spinning and weaving, jewellery-making, corn-dolly work and flower-craft will all take place under one roof, seven days a week.

In the evenings, when we’re not working on the building, those of us with an aptitude for music get together to write and record our own songs - encouraged by Dorothy Fosbrooke, a founder of the Trust and the original source of all our writings. Another founder, Bill Dawson, has a daughter called Debbie who suffered with cancer of the kidneys at the age of eight - but is now totally cured, thanks to a change to an animal-free diet.

Debbie has a lovely voice and bubbly personality and becomes our lead singer. Our makeshift band performs our songs to any visitors unfortunate enough to stay overnight. Standing up and playing in front of an audience is a totally new experience for me. And though at first I find it daunting, I get so used to it that a hook on a long pole is required to take me off.