Furnace for Argyll

After the article about Mrs. Bertha Bradley in last month’s issue of the Furnace Press, the editors were delighted to receive this letter of thanks from her - transcribed below. It is good to know that the FP issues are appreciated, both in Furnace and around the world!
Dear Mike,
Thank you so much for sending the [...]

Ted Briggs has died. He was the last of the three men who were the only survivors from the 1,418 men aboard the Hood when she was sunk in short order by the Bismarck in 1941 in the Denmark Strait.
In paying tribute to Mr Briggs and recalling the epic story of the Hood and the [...]

John Gillies, Secretary of Furnace Table Bowls Team, is taking a team of four athletes from Mid Argyll to next year’s Great Britain Special Olympics. He and Karen Heafey, a colleague from Lochgilphead Resource Centre, have been coaching Flora Currie, Campbell Ferguson, Iain MacDougall and Sandy MacKellar in Boccia and will go with them to [...]

Rebecca Martin, who has given Furnace so much fun with her video of Spock dancing at Neil’s 80th birthday Party (below) and her videos made to promote Auchindrain Museum, is away in Ireland. For Visa reasons, she’s had to leave the UK for six weeks - but she’ll be back. In the meantime, we;re tracking [...]

Inveraray & District Pipe Band has been declared Champion of Champions in the juvenile grade of the Pipe Band Championships in 2008. They won the World Championships in the grade - their first time in it as they came up from the Novice section last year - and they won the grade again at the [...]

The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum is starting an oral history project, recording themed stories around the experiences of members of the Argylls, past and present. For Argyll has been in touch with the Museum to tell them about Jimmy Sinclair’s wartime memories (published above under Life Stories) of being a POW in the salt [...]

Furnace’s Moira Cameron, the first woman Beefeater at the tower of London and a regular reader of the Furnace Press - was the subject of a recent feature article in The Sunday Times. Her Scottish roots show in her commitment to starting the day with porridge, although her parallel daily habit of wearing pink braces [...]

Last month Neil McKechnie celebrated his 80th birthday at the Furnace Village Hall. They danced, they sang, they dined, they drank……A fun time was had by all. If you were unable to make the celebration, here is a glimpse.

The For Argyll website has paid tribute to Furnace’s Jimmy Sinclair by publishing his wartime experiences as the very first in its Life Stories series. Any person or community can nominate people whose stories they feel should be told. This series exists to celebrate the living and the dead, the young and the [...]

Gemma Young is to become a teacher at Inveraray Primary School after graduating from Edinburgh University with honours in primary education. Sarah McKee has become a qualified nail technician. The area is about to be peopled by well educated young people with glam hands.