Family reflections on the Liverpool Lennons



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An Interview With Stanley Parkes

(page 2 of 5)

When you moved to Scotland, Liela and John used to come up and spend their summer holidays with you…

Durness Coastline

When I first moved up to Scotland, I would go down to bring John up because Mary wouldn't let him go anywhere unchaperoned, but as he grew a little bit older she did relent and let him come up on the bus. She would put him on the bus at Liverpool - either a Ribble bus or an SMT bus - and that would come up all the way through the border towns of Scotland up to Edinburgh. I'd meet him off the bus at

Cape Wrath

Edinburgh bus depot and take him to my parents' home at Murrayfield in Edinburgh. He'd stay there a week or so and then off we'd go up to the Sutherland family croft up in Durness in Sutherland at Cape Wrath, which is the most fartherly north west tip of Scotland.

What was the family croft like?

Well what a lot of people don't realise is that John went frequently to Durness, from the age of nine up until he was 15.

The family croft

The croft is a Highland croft based in the village of Durness. It was in my stepfather's family for generations and it always had to be worked as a croft even though my stepfather used it as a holiday home. It had to have sheep on it otherwise the Crofting Commission would take it off you. So his relatives in Durness looked after the sheep for him so it could still be a working croft. We have been connected now with the croft for over 50 years.

It is just completely wild countryside - with moorland hills, peat bogs and there are no buildings. No commercial buildings can be built there because there's no suitable land to build on. It's the last natural wild, rugged section of Scotland left I would say. John came up, and David and Michael. Liela didn't come up, although she qualified at Edinburgh University as a doctor she never actually got up to the croft. And they loved it. They could go hill walking, fishing, hunting, shooting and John as you know was a great drawer - he would sit and sketch all of the local crofts, the hillsides and the lochs. And he never forgot it.

In fact I've just had a letter from cousin David. He was hoping to get up to Durness for this event that's going to happen (the opening of the John Lennon Memorial Garden) and he said "Apart from the weather - if the weather was constantly sunny, there's no other place like it in the world". So that's another cousin who thought it was wonderful.

John had a deep love of Scotland through all his life, didn't he?

Yes, he never forgot his childhood holidays with his family.

In the 70's Cousin David noticed in the London Times an advert that the Durness Estates, that's the whole of the Durness village and surrounding acreage of 30-35,000 acres, was up for sale. He told John, who immediately wanted to buy it. But of course typical John, he left everything too late and sadly Belgians, Dutch and German people own the Durness Estates now.

Paul also has a connection with Scotland doesn't he?

Yes, yes. Well Paul used to ask John "Well where are you going for your holidays John?" "Oh" he said "I'm going up with my aunt and uncle and cousins up to Edinburgh and then we go up to Family croft which is right up at the north tip of Scotland in the highlands. It's great, it's great, man." Paul thought at that time, I think, that he had Scottish connections himself what with the McCartney name. Later he looked into Scotland and found this lovely croft in the Mull of Kintyre which happened to have an airport right next to it. That suited him, because he'd fly up from London, land at the airport and be in the croft in a matter of a couple of hours. But anyway he discovered that he wasn't Scottish, he was Irish!

Do you have a special memory of John in Durness?

Durness

I used to take him up there in a van or a car. We'd call in at Kirkcaldy where my stepfather's brother Angus lived and we'd pick up bits and pieces and furniture that he'd collected to go up to the croft. And I'd be driving John up and I got up as far as Inverness and he said "Where are all these mountains - I don't see any mountains? You said there were a lot of mountains." I said "John you haven't really hit the real Highlands yet." Anyway further on up from Lairg to Durness you're passing through various bits of the road where there are drops of 20-30 feet either side and massive mountains overpowering you and then he went white as a sheet and said "Oh I see what you mean now." Then during the rutting season you would actually get a stag attacking the van. One charged the van. Put its horns in the side of the van one year and this is the stag protecting its hinds. John never forgot things like that.