Monument record MHG56151 - Canteen - Evanton Airfield, Alness

The site of a wartime canteen was noted by ARCH's Evanton Wartime Remains project in 2013. The Mugdoch Hut Canteen was a wooden building named after the people who gifted it for use as a canteen for service personnel. It was still there in 1960s, but was demolished, and the existing Church Hall is on its site. Cathy Gallie remembered that is was a very busy place, used by the convoys heading north and personnel from the RAF and Navy camps. The hut had a stage/platform with a piano, and a game’s room with a billiard table, table tennis and darts. It could take about a hundred people at a time. Norwegians, Canadians, Newfoundlanders, Poles, Mauritians, French and Indians all attended, and there were even Islamic prayer gatherings. After the war, displaced persons came to the tea room. Eleanor Munro remembers that Miss Thomson ran the tea room. She later lived at Ardullie Lodge. Her sister was a companion to Helen Keller, and Helen Keller visited her later. Contributors: Catriona Fraser, Eleanor Munro. Interview with Cathy Gallie, collected by Adrian Clark as part of the Evanton Oral History Project. <1>