Mayburn Court

Flitting
'The prospect of a flitting is very daunting to people of a certain temperament, like me.'
     from Under Brinkie's Brae

George Mackay Brown's birth was registered at Victoria Street, Stromness, Orkney.  Apart from six years away studying in Edinburgh, all his life was spent in Stromness where he loved the stone houses creeping up the steep hill or jutting out on piers into the harbour.   

His earliest memories are of living in a little house on the corner of Victoria Street and Clouston's Pier, with views over the harbour to Orphir and Scapa Flow.  A fisherman's pier and slipway was at one end, Stromness's main shopping street at the other.  He remembered fishermen baiting their lines there, women cleaning fresh-caught haddocks, and of course boys bathing off the piers in summer.

There was one room with a blue flagstone floor for living and cooking.  Furniture was sparse; a scrubbed table, a sideboard and a sink.  For a long time his mother wasn't strong enough to manage the washing alone, and had a series of helpers.  But he remembered with clarity the enormous feeling of security his mother gave him.

When George was about six years old, there was some trouble with a neighbour who took against his mother, an unusual occurrence; Mary was liked and loved all her life.  Because of this difficulty, the family moved around 1927-28 to Melvin Place, a small square opposite the library.  Here for the first time, they had a flower garden and the loan of a vegetable patch.  Mary was the gardener in the family. 

It was at Melvin Place that George's father, John contracted rheumatic fever.  For the rest of his life his hands and feet were twisted.  One of the theories behind his illlness was that a drain ran under the flagstones of the floor, making Melvin Place an unhealthy house.  Whatever the reason for falling sick, John Brown was never a well man again, and the family finances suffered.   

As a child George didn't appreciate Melvin Place on any level.  Women artists used to set up their easels and capture it on canvas; he could never see why until years later. 

The house at Melvin Place   

The family stayed there about 6 years, moving next to a new council house at Well Park now called Guardhouse Park where they stayed for some 34 years.  The rent was seven shillings and sixpence, about 37p now, for the three bedroom house.  It was considered a bit steep, but they had a bathroom and gas lighting, and Mary had a garden of her own, front and back for the first time.  It was from this house that his siblings started to make their own lives.  George's three older brothers had moved out by the time war came; they served in the RAF. Families were obliged to take in lodgers.  Space was limited and since fuel was scarce, lodgers could not have a fire in their room.  George, his sister Ruby, and Mary shared fire and board with a succession of strangers; George described the arrangement as 'inconvenient'. 

Ruby became a teacher, eventually on Rousay.  Mary died in 1967 and George was left alone in the house.  Soon afterwards in Autumn 1968, he left Well Park for what he called his watchtower house at Mayburn Court, a maisonette on the first and second floors at a rent of eighteen shillings and sixpence per week.

Flitting was a daunting prospect for him, it upset the ordered pattern of life as exemplified by the way his furniture seemed to fit together perfectly.  He felt such a pattern ought not to be broken lightly.  But he packed his books and crockery himself, and in preparation for the efforts of all the labourers, he put on a home-brew which would come to fruition at the appropriate time.  

Of course, he had many helpers on the day, and the uprooting took less time than he imagined, He expected chaos at the other end, Mayburn Court, but he need not have worried.  His friends got into a rhythm of such sweetness and precision that within an hour, his new home was quite habitable.  By mid-afternoon, empty ale bottles filled the table, and again the furniture stands in for his feelings as he describes how, as the hours passed, it began to look at peace in the new house.  He even went so far as to say that all might yet be well before winter. For the first time, at the age of 57, he was living alone in a house of his choosing.  His first floor living room had three windows, one looking over the harbour, and there were two bedrooms on the second floor. 

Not a practical man as the self-deprecating stories in his weekly column attest, George wasn't given to DIY.  He happily ignored the growing gloom of his house, gloom brought on by staining of walls and ceiling from the open fire and from pipe smoke.  After 12 years, enough friends and visitors had commented on the state of the place for something to be done.  While George spent a long weekend away with friends, dreading the chaos of disordered books and space, another friend went in and dealt with the problem.  He returned home to a clean fresh living room, and soon the kitchen was given the same treatment. 

Being a tenant of the council had its advantages.  More DIY was spared; whenever anything needed repairing, it was fixed with a minimum of discomfort.  The immersion heater, the coal-shed door, leaking pipes, all the wear and tear of daily living. 

There came a period of several years when council house rents were climbing steeply.  In April 1977, the rent on Mayburn Court rose from £4.50 to £5.25 a week; in 1985, a single leap from £12.77 to £16.44 per week.  By then, George was considering the wisdom of buying his rented house.  The council were offering reasonable terms, but he was wondering why, on the verge of the old-age pension, he would want to burden himself with the ownership of a house.  It wasn't until the Spring of 1989, after 21 years of renting it, that George applied to purchase 3 Mayburn Court.  By November of that year, it was his.

George remained at Mayburn the rest of his life, pinning his little messages to the door when he didn't want to be disturbed at his writing, entertaining friends, receiving visitors from all over the world, lovers of his writing.  Some of his best work was done there, sitting at the little breakfast table surrounded by the trappings of breakfast, in his rocking chair before the fire in the evenings, perhaps with a glass of ale, reading a recent manuscript testing words for sound and meaning.  In April 1996, the strange little watchtower of a house lost the light from its windows. 

Summary

                            1921 to 1927–28            Clouston's Pier
                            1927–28 to 1933–34       Melvin Place
                            1933–34 to 1968            Well Park
                            1968 to 1996                 Mayburn Court