More work from an artist in the village
Those of you familiar with this website or the inside of the Kinleith Arms know that there is a painting on the wall of the pub by a local artist, Bill Forrest. The picture depicts a ficticious scene with a number of regulars of the Kinleith in the late 1940s supposedly listening to Robert Burns as he recites one of his poems. Recently, another series of six drawings by Bill Forrest has come to light and they are included in this article.
When my father, Jimmy Corse, was sick in bed Bill Forrest produced this series of drawings to help cheer him up.
The A & B images (above) are the front and inside of one of the cards. The first scene shows a bunch of his friends coming up the stair to our house at 23 Ivy Terrace, Belmont Avenue.
The next drawing is based on the image that began a BBC TV programme entitled Face to Face and shows Bill Forrest [the artist] and the back of my father's head.
The C & D images (above) show my father up and about although I must confess that the symbolism of the pail and brush escapes me. The D image inside the card shows 4 of his friends playing dominoes in Bennet's pub [The Railway Inn] with a drawing of my father on the wall above them.
The domino players going round the table from the fellow standing up are Jimmy Stewart [he worked at Pass's farm across from the Juniper Green railway station, Willie Finlayson [also known as Boris] who was a schoolteacher in Denny [he was in the army with my father from 1940 onwards], Harry Tweedie [he lived in the house on the corner of Belmont Road across from Sheila Wilson] and the fellow with his back to us is only known to me as Ginger Tom.
It is possible that this image of the Railway Inn dates from the early to mid 1960's. Notice, for example, that one of the cars in front of the pub has a C licence plate. Note too that the wall around the Lamont's property (the house name was Montpelier) which was next to the pub is visible in this picutre. The present site of the Royal Bank of Scotland is on the site occupied by Montpelier. Finally, the more observant will see that the bus stop for buses going to town is down directly across the road from St Margaret's Church which is also still in existence at the time of the photograph.
The E & F images (above) rework the drawings from the C & D card except that the domino players are on the front of the card this time. They are the same people as in image D.