Dingwall History Society, at its annual meeting in the Lower Town Hall, due to take place on Thursday, March 4 at 7.30pm, is showing objects relating to a couple of former drinks firms in town.

Society secretary Sandra Macdonald said former employees will be most welcome to attend.

"It will be the annual business meeting but will also feature memories, artefacts, photographs and memorabilia relating to Lemon's Aerated Waters of Stafford Place and Rowat's Tea (blenders and packers) of nearby Stafford House."

Dingwall was a hub for sourcing large empty plywood tea chests for use in flittings (removals) and storage of household items.

The prominent town centre site of Lemon's has been under redevelopment for several years, attracting adverse public comment and described by many as an eyesore.

Most of Stafford House - the premises once occupied by Rowat's and fronting the west end of High Street - belongs to the private three-storey Ross-shire Club and has done so since the sixties.

Lemon's empty glass bottles of all vintages are still being unearthed in gardens and at picnic spots and dumps around the northern counties.

Former Rowat's girl Margaret McSweeney (nee Urquhart) of Logan Drive in Dingwall told the Ross-shire Journal via her good handwriting and with the help of a close friend how she worked as a tea-packer from 1949 as a sixteen-year-old until 1960 when she married and travelled the world.

Left to right - and all Dingwall unless stated - back row, Ray Campbell (who kindly lent this and other staff pictures), Margaret ?, Hazel Cushnie, now Macdonald, Rena Reed, Avoch, and typist Betty Mackay, Strathpeffer - who later went to live down south; front row - Mary Murdoch, The Heights, Betty Matheson, Muir of Ord, Mary Fraser, now Sinclair, Lochussie, Mary Mellis, now Campbell, Muir of Ord and the late Mrs Mackay, typist, Strathpeffer.

Margaret, now 76, was born deaf. "I left home in Dingwall when I was very young (aged six) to go to boarding school, primary then secondary, in Aberdeen from 1938/39 until 1949.

"Then I returned to live in Dingwall and got a job in Rowat's for thirty shillings (£1.50) a week for five-and-a-half days, nine to five. Before I left in 1960 I was earning £4 a week.

"The girls I worked with in this picture were all very nice and we got on well though the work was hard packing the tea. It was sore on the hands! In 1960 I got married to Ron McSweeney and we went on honeymoon round the world to Australia - his homeland - for six months.

"Then we went to New Zealand and stayed for sixteen years.

"We returned to Dingwall in 1976.

"My father had died, then my mother and we stayed on here with our young family. Ron was an electrical engineer at Invergordon Distillery."

Sadly Margaret was widowed very suddenly in 1987. Then in a double-blow, the couple's 23-year-old son Morgan - an RAF man serving in Shetland - was killed in a motorbike accident in 1995 as he travelled to visit his mum in hospital at the time after massive heart surgery. Margaret has two married daughters, Karen in Dingwall and Donella in Dores, and four grandchildren.

Margaret named the mid-fifties Rowat's line-up of packers and office staff. She sits front row, extreme right.

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