Hoswick Man

In Hoswick Man Martin Smith looks back at the lives of himself and his forebears, in some cases using their own words to describe how they lived, worked and went to school. He was brought up in Hoswick and describes in detail what life was like for a small boy in a village where there were weaving sheds, a shop, numerous carpenters, a haulage contractor and several crofts, as well as a deep-litter hen house. The village itself had street lighting many years before the rest of Sandwick, paid for by the residents themselves. There was also a very efficient self-flushing drainage system built in the early 1900s that is still in use today. His father was one the ‘van men’ who kept the local communities from Sandwick to Sumburgh Head supplied with all their household needs in all kinds of weather. Martin Smith was born in Lerwick in May, 1948, and spent the next 14 years growing up in the small township of Hoswick, Sandwick. His family moved to Lerwick in 1962 and on leaving school Martin started working for the local fish-selling company, Lowestoft Herring Drifters. When he retired 44 years later, he began going through many years of his family’s records and decided that he would put together this book about their lives The book is illustrated with over 90 photographs.