Woman finds life-size portrait of her mom hanging in a pub

By Alistair Whitfield

A daughter was surprised after spotting a life-size portrait of her 91-year-old mother as a teenage beauty queen in a pub.

Lorna Crombie had been enjoying pre-Christmas cocktails in The Granary in Elgin in Scotland when she went upstairs to the toilets.

It was as she climbed the pub’s staircase that she suddenly came face to face with a familiar image on the wall.

Lorna said: “The original black and white photo of Mum was taken in 1950 when she was picked at the age of 17 to be the Elgin gala queen.

“I’d seen the photo before but being confronted with a huge jazzed-up version of it was a very pleasant shock.”

Given what could be described as an ‘Andy Warhol treatment’, the picture has been hanging in The Granary since the pub was renovated in September 2023.

Lorna, who recently returned to Moray after years down south, added: “Mum is full of stories about being gala queen and what fun it was. She reckons she was treated like royalty for a year and still thinks of it as her heyday.”

Lorna returned to The Granary this week to view the picture again and to find out what her mom, Margaret ‘Meg’ Crombie, thinks about it all.

Despite the many years since, Meg, whose maiden name was Hay, still remembers Elgin gala week very well.

She was chosen as queen following an interview along with about a dozen other girls, during which she’d taken the opportunity to play a few songs on the piano to try impress the judges.

Regarding gala week, she says: “The main day was held in Cooper Park.
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'There were thousands of people there. My dress was made of red velvet. It was quite pretty but I also thought it a bit old-fashioned. My gold crown was actually made of brass.

“Two little boys aged about eight and wearing kilts were there as my gala pages. One of them, Stuart McHardy, was from the same family as the footballer [former Elgin City and current Buckie Thistle player Darryl McHardy].

“Then in the evening there was a dance.”

Between 10,000 and 12,000 people are said to have lined the streets of Elgin to watch a parade that stretched for nearly a mile and included 40 decorated lorries and floats, plus a whole series of pipe bands.

Amongst its ranks was Meg in a horse-drawn landau carriage, accompanied both by mounted outriders and others on motorbikes.

The paper praised “Miss Margaret Hay and her retinue” who, it added, “had shown throughout the stresses of the week a charm and grace which has done much to enhance the events at which they have been present.”

One such happening was an “old timer” football match between veterans of Elgin City and Buckie Thistle. A grainy photo alongside shows Meg having the honour of kicking off the match while dressed in her red velvet ball gown.

Meg, in her role as Gala Queen, would be invited to a whole series of dances during the summer of 1950, including those hosted by RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Kinloss. Sometimes a car was even sent to take her to an event and run her back home again afterwards.

Having left Elgin Academy that same year, Meg worked at the Barr Cochrane & Son music store on Elgin High Street.

The son referred to was Bill Barr Cochrane who was not long returned from the Far East where he’d been held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese.

Harking back to that era in the shop, she remembers with a smile the consternation caused when they first received a record by a young American singer called Elvis Presley. The sound on ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ was so drenched in echo that it was originally thought there must be something wrong with the disc - but tastes were changing.

Meg added: “Within a fortnight it seemed everyone in Elgin was listening to it.”

It was also while at the shop that, one day, an old school friend walked in to say he was writing a musical and she stood star in it.

That friend was a 19-year-old Henry Robertson and the musical he’d written, Magic of the Glen, ended up being performed in the Elgin High Church Hall on South Street.

Henry, with the help of the Elgin-based impresario Albert Bonici, would later move to London and change his name to the more American-sounding Harry Robinson.

As the leader of Lord Rockingham’s XI big band, he’d go on to top the charts with the novelty song ‘Hoots Mon’, which included the immortal spoken refrain, “There's a moose loose aboot this hoose”.

Showing his musical versatility Henry/Harry would also write the soundtracks of several UK movies made by the Hammer film studio, as well as act as musical director for both Marlene Dietrich and Tommy Steele. Another highlight during his long career was the orchestral part he arranged for ‘River Man’, the best-known track by the folk musician Nick Drake.

As was often the norm in those days Meg became a full-time housewife after the birth of her first child, Annie, and would later have twins Lorna and Ian.

Years afterward, once her three children had grown up, she returned to employment, working as an administrator at the Maryhill Maternity Hospital in Elgin, which was sited where the GP surgery stands now.

Meg said: “I’ve been very lucky to have lived when I have. Elgin was full of very nice people.”