‘It was something he always wanted to do’: Stephen’s recollections of working at Dounreay

Stephen Cashmore was a natural storyteller who was always able to see the funny side of life among his fellow shift workers at Dounreay.

Terminally ill with cancer, he channelled as much energy as he could manage into compiling a collection of uniquely wry observations from his time in the nuclear industry.

The result is a posthumous 50-page booklet, entitled Out By, which is being produced by Whittles Publishing and will be on sale at a number of outlets across Caithness.

Stephen completed the collection about a week before he died in November last year, aged 76.

“He really was very stoic,” his wife Hazel said this week. “It was just sheer determination that he was going to do this.”

Stephen and Hazel, both from Warwickshire, moved to Thurso in 1978 and spent 40 years in the county. At one point they relocated to Oxford when Stephen worked at Harwell but returned to Caithness within a year.

He was a project manager during his time at Dounreay, mostly doing shift work. He also taught apprentices.

Stephen was the author of Dounreay: The Illustrated Story, published in 1998 by North of Scotland Newspapers, and was a valued contributor to the John O’Groat Journal with a column called Stray Leaves from the Tea Bowl.

Hazel explained that the Out By collection was “something he always wanted to do”.

She said: “From the cards and letters I had after Stephen died, people said it was a pleasure to work with him.

“He would never ask anybody to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself – he was that kind of person. People really liked him.

“He did like doing shift work. He was an owl! He used to say, ‘I come alive at two or three o'clock in the morning.

“His mind would switch on. He liked the challenge of it.

“He just had a good way with people, although he was quite a private man in a lot of ways. It didn’t matter how much you thought you knew him, there was a whole lot more.

“But he was good at putting things across, whether it was verbally or written. He would look on the positive side.”

The couple moved to the Borders after leaving Caithness to be nearer their daughter Emma and family in Edinburgh, and also ailing parents further south.

Hazel (75) says Out By “isn’t a money-making venture”. It will be priced at £5 and there is a print run of 100.

She has been contacting a number of shops and heritage centres in the county to ask if they will stock the booklet and the response has been encouraging so far.

Hazel is well known on the arts scene. As a painter she has exhibited widely since the 1980s, notably at the Union Gallery in Edinburgh as well as at Caithness venues.

For many years her dramatic, panoramic landscapes featured in the annual exhibition of the Society of Caithness Artists.

She says she and Stephen loved their time in the county, as did Emma.

“People in Caithness are extremely friendly,” Hazel said. “I loved it, and that’s why I painted it, but it’s the people – they take you as you are.”

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