Crossroads and Characters
12. THE TIED TWINS.
When transportation was mostly by foot, estate owners used to provide accommodation for their help close to their work. For unmarried men, this accommodation often took the form of a bothy or small outbuilding - the bothy system was popular in south Perthshire. For married workers the accommodation was usually a tied cottage, a family's residence there being tied to the father continuing to work for the landowner. A cottage was either rented or rent was calculated as part of wages: even as late as the twentieth century farm workers were paid comparatively little cash, but instead received a share of farm produce as well as housing. These twin boys were photographed outside a tied cottage on Pitcairns farm, that part of the Rollo estate in which the present Lord and Lady Rollo live. The infants' father was a gardener on the estate.
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