A massive Victorian hotel built in 1868 as Strathearn
Hydropathic – one of a number of facilities created in Scotland in the mid-19th
century to deliver a hydropathic approach to health care, defined as ‘an entire medical system, exclusive of all other forms
of treatment, based upon the internal and external application of water.’*
Crieff Hydro, in keeping with the temperance ethic of the hydropathic movement
was ‘dry’ until the 1980s, and had close links with the Church of Scotland –
clergy and their families could stay at a reduced rate.
I first went to the
hotel with my parents probably in November 1965, by which time its hydropathic
activities seemed to have largely ceased. My parents were attending the
Scottish Conference of the Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) which was at that
time held there annually, running across a weekend from Friday to Sunday
evening. At the Conference were several hundred medics and spouses, accompanied
by their children.
There were sessions on
medical themes which I didn’t attend (‘Are you going to be talking about what’s
in the news?’ I asked once on seeing
from the agenda that there was to be ‘discussion of the morning’s papers.’) But
I was normally present, in 1965 and subsequent years, at the four sessions of
Biblical exposition over the weekend, hearing luminaries such as Eric Alexander
and John R. W. Stott preach, and getting a handle on how an expository sermon
should be structured.
I loved the building,
which seemed to me like a small town, warm and brightly-lit, a secure place in
the chill of a Perthshire autumn. I loved the broad corridors which ran the
length of the building, including the one in the basement which not only led to
the swimming pool and the television room, but took you past the hotel’s
service facilities, the humming machinery and gently-hissing pipes which made
you feel you were in the bowels of a great liner.
The first years I was at
the Hydro there was a quiet writing room, with elegant tables and chairs, and
blotters, and headed notepaper, but this calm refuge was soon converted into
bedrooms. I loved the big glass conservatory at the front of the building, and
the enormous meeting room with its pipe organ which accompanied hymns at the conference
with a satisfying degree of reverberation. Just behind the hotel was the Knock,
a hill with a gentle gradient which you could easily tackle on a Saturday afternoon
and be inside again in good time for afternoon tea.
One of these early
visits to the Hydro was pure magic. During the evening conference session on
the Saturday I larked around with some of the other doctors’ kids, thundering
together along the corridors and feeling accepted by them, one of them almost.
Next day came the inevitable sadness of leaving for home, and losing that
fragile sense of belonging. They’d taken a big group picture of all the
conference attendees that year out on the lawn. ‘Please order one!’ I urged my
father, in the vain hope that a record preserved in black-and-white on glossy
photo-paper would somehow conserve the magic.
And then there was the
year I was smitten by the daughter of one of my father’s colleagues. I remember
standing with her on the balcony as the conference drew to a close on the other
side of the great curved glass panes behind us, the organ thundering, a brisk
autumn wind disturbing the trees in front of us. I lacked both the confidence
and the vocabulary to begin any kind of lasting friendship with the girl. Soon,
my parents and I were driving down the dark road to our home in Carluke, where
I sat miserably in the cold living room, my lovelorn ache birthing a poem which
made more significance of the event than it could have ever borne. ‘Myself and
her and silence, eloquent.’
I accompanied my parents
to the Conference for too many years, long past the time when I should have
been fending for myself back at home. My parents were too protective; I lacked
the initiative to protest. ‘What are you doing here?’ said another of the
daughters of my father’s colleague, there in her own right by virtue of being a
medical student. I had no satisfactory rejoinder to her scorn.
In the early 1970s, I
attended some student and young people’s Christian conferences at St Ninian’s
Church Centre in Crieff: many of them seem as I recall to have been held between
Christmas and New Year. I had no desire to go, as I found such events stressful
and unhelpful, but hey, this was the kind of thing Christian young people were
supposed to do, and I meekly conformed to expectations, perhaps hoping that
something would happen, that I would be zapped by a transforming spiritual
whirlwind, or meet a girl who liked me.
I’d leave home far too
early for these events, simply eager I guess to get the grim business under
way, but I wanted to delay checking in to whatever conference I was attending
until the last possible moment. Arriving at Crieff in the gathering darkness, I’d
head the car up the long drive to the Hydro, and slip in under the wing of its
fleeting security – it was such a big, busy place that there was no difficulty
gaining access as a non-resident. I’d go down stairs into the womb-like anonymity
of the television room, and sit in one of the high-backed chairs glazedly
watching whatever was on until came the dreaded hour when I would have to go
public and present myself at St Ninian’s.
*Taking
the Water-Cure:The Hydropathic Movement in Scotland, 1840-1940 by James Bradley,
Marguerite Dupree, and A!astair Durie. Business and Economic History, Volume Twenty-six,
no. 2, Winter 1997 (426-437)
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