Cameron

High on the heath lies the parish of Cameron, with an austere, lonely church, and cottages and farms, each one remote from its neigh-bour, dotted over the high landscape. This stretch of country was once desolate, empty moorland, but now it is a pattern of pasture and grainfields. Generations of hard-working farmers are to be praised for this transformation, and many historians have paid tribute to the determined efforts and frugal habits which dragged wealth from the high fields of Cameron.

Striking evidence of the difficulties these farming folk had to meet we can find near the church. We find that evidence in the graveyard, perhaps one of the strangest graveyards we shall ever see. When the churchyard was filled from wall to wall with the bodies of their for-bears, the parishioners of Cameron had to provide more ground as a resting-place for the dead. They faced a great problem. The ground around here is so wet that wherever they dug to a depth of 5 feet they came to water. They could find no more land suitable for a grave-yard. They solved their problem in a way which, although novel, is, we feel, typical of the courageous husbandry that has created the farms we see around us. They laid on top of the old graveyard another graveyard, putting four feet of earth over the old graves, and thus creating a second tier into which the new graves could be dug.

The church of Cameron is the third to be built on that site. The first church was founded by Act of Parliament in 1592. The present one, built in 1808, is bare and austere indeed, but how welcome it must have been when it was built, for its predecessor was in a sadly ruinous state. A chronicler of that day describes how in wet weather stepping-stones had to be placed in the aisles so that parishioners of Cameron might get to worship with dry ankles, and the preacher was drenched in the pulpit.

Within living memory there stood not far from Cameron Manse a cottage known as Kate Dalrymple's Cottage. Here, it is said, lived the heroine of the song-in her "wee cot house far across the muir, where peaseweeps, plovers, and whaups cry dreary".

Up the hill beyond the church is a reservoir, but although this Stretch of water is of so utilitarian a nature, it has pleasantly wooded banks and is a favourite haunt for anglers. To the west of Cameron church a winding quiet lane leads us to where we can look between the shoulders of the hills and see, far off, sparkling views of St Andrews Bay.

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