James Merchant: Bid to save shoemaker's shop in Aberdeenshire untouched since owner died in 1941

Push open the door of James Merchant’s shoe workshop in Ballogie, Aberdeenshire, and it sits more or less just as he left it before his death in 1941.

Barely a layer of dust covers shoe polish, boxes, tools and old boots that are strewn and stacked across the two-roomed hut.

It appears to have been a busy workshop, or soutar’s workshop (an old-fashioned word for someone who makes shoes), with more than an inch of leather cuttings sitting around the fire where James would have made and repaired shoes for those living in his community.

Alison Bell, a member of the Birse Community Trust, told STV News: “He came here from Kincardine O’Neill. He was in his forties when he moved here with his growing family.

“James took over the croft here, so he would have had a horse, grew barley and raised bees and of course he came here as a trained soutar.

“He established this workshop and worked here from around 1899 until he died in 1941.”

James Merchant passed on the business to his son, James, which he didn’t carry on.

The Birse Community Trust believes is because of the changes to the way shoes were sold and repaired after the Second World War.

Therefore, the workshop has sat – with all the contents inside laid out as if ready for use – for the last 80 years.

It was later gifted to the Birse Community Trust by the Merchant family 25 years ago.

Alison said the building and the items it houses are a special asset: She said: “We believe it’s unique in Scotland, in as much as it’s a soutar’s workshop, unaltered in its structure and with its contents largely intact.”

The A-listed building’s front windows boast a deep red border with a floral design, mimicked in some of the windowpanes it surrounds.

Those features and the inside of the workshop appear to be weathering well but the workshop’s exterior, particularly its wooden cladding, is beginning to show signs of age.

Plans have been submitted to Aberdeenshire Council to preserve the workshop and its contents, and a fundraising campaign hopes to raise around £200,000 to complete the works.

Soutar's workshop. — Soutar’s workshop. STV News

Nancy Davidson, who’s also a volunteer for the Birse Community Trust, said: “It’s largely the outside of the building which needs some work done to it, as far as we’re aware at the moment.

“The wood has been here for a long time, and in this part of the world we can get very cold winters, and very warm summers, so with this expanding and contracting this wood really does need to be repaired.

“Every time I walk in here, my eyes are drawn to a different item, but my favourite is the one baby shoe that sits by itself on the work bench.”

Volunteers for the Birse Community Trust hope funding can be found sooner rather than later to guard this piece of the area’s history.

Alison added: “The workshop tells a story about a rural community between the wars in the first 40 years of the 20th century.

“When you look at the connections of what James Merchant was doing then, these connections are still powerful today.”