Exhumations From William Cross, FSA Scot: February 2025

Beechwood : A Story of Childhood

Anecdotes from Author William Cross, FSA Scot recounting his childhood in Scotland in the 1950s and 1960s.

Beechwood, Cleland, was the Cross family home from 1900-1965

BEECHWOOD TODAY

Quotes On Childhood

“Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them!” Max Muller

“What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.” GK Chesterton

"We carry our childhood with us.”– Gary D. Schmidt

The passage of time changes a village landscape. We have a responsibility to record something about the place(s) where we grew-up and recall to memory the people and things remembered from time-past.

The recounting of this is important : it is of value to the next generation to pass on to them: and to ourselves it is a sort of life passage. It can be a mix of the wonderfully sentimental exorcising some ghosts, but not everyone has pleasant memories to recapture from childhood.

In this illustrated talk Will Cross recalls to life some of the affectionate memories of his childhood and family roots. The work was inspired by his late parents Daisy & John, his late grandmother Peggy Bryce and late brother Charlie, who died aged 40 in 1995.

BEECHWOOD, CLELAND, BY LANARK, SCOTLAND

There are stories of ghosts, spies, writers in the family, including science fiction guru, John Keir Cross, singers, including Dickie Valentine, and the importance to the family of Kate's Well, a natural spring of 15th century origin, from the ancient hills nearby at Shotts.

The tribute is also to the village of Cleland, in Lanarkshire, Scotland and a precious period of childhood lived at Beechwood, Cleland the family home of the Crosses and collaterals from 1900-1965.

Cleland remains a small, proud and charming village in Lanarkshire, Scotland with an industrial past, a famous old iron works at Omoa ( an adjoining hamlet to Cleland) and a notable brick making company based at Auchinlea (another hamlet).

AUCHINLEA

They make them "big" in Lanarkshire: Take John Weir...

An 8-Stone Baby! Cambusnethan’s famous "giant baby" is buried in the old churchyard. The stone is now almost unreadable but the transcription is ---

"Erected by John Weir and Jean Elder of this parish in memory of their son James who died 20th August 1821 aged 17 months and 9 days. This child, when only 13 months, measured 3 feet 4 inches in height, 39 inches round the body, 20 inches round the thigh and weighed 8 stones. Said at the time by the medical faculties of Edinburgh and Glasgow to be the most remarkable child of his age on record".

William Cross, FSA Scot is a writer, researcher and lecturer based at Newport, South Wales. He is the author of books on the Morgans of Tredegar House, Newport and on the Carnarvons of Highclere Casle ( Downton Abbey).

Will's latest book, available from April 2025, is a biography of Tom Mitford, the only boy in that outrageous family of six Mitford women, all seeking attention.