Tealing

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Balmuir House, near Tealing, 18th Century with Victorian additions

Tealing is a village in Angus in eastern Scotland, nestled at the foot of the Sidlaw Hills. It is just 6 miles north of the city of Dundee and 8 miles south of Forfar. With a population of just over 500, scattered across 15 square miles of fertile farming land, it has several large working farms mixed in with lots of comfortable family homes that from part of the Dundee and Angus commuter belt. There is an old stone built, but thriving little primary school with about 50 pupils at any one time and a further 10 youngsters attending the nursery school on the same site.

There is evidence of an early Pictish settlement around 100AD near a soutterain now known as Tealing Earthhouse. The first church in Tealing was built in 710AD by St Boniface, the papal missionary who founded around 150 churches in the north east of Scotland. Almost 1300 years of local worship came to a close in 1982, when the congregation of Tealing Church combined with the Murroes church. The church still stands and the small graveyard, which is still in use, has remains going back to the 17th century.

Tealing's picturesque, slumbering, peaceful and idyllic setting belies its colourful past. Its history is a tale of prehistoric settlement, ancient carvings, mysterious Picts, religious rebellion, World War intrigue, agricultural upheaval and community survival.

In 1728, the Reverend John Glas of Tealing Parish Church was suspended and formed a breakaway church known as the Glassites, creating one of the biggest upheavals in the Scottish church. Glas died aged 78yrs in November 1773. He had survived his wife and all of their 15 children. he is buried in the Howff cemetery in Dundee, alongside his wife and 9 of their children. During the Second World War, the Ministry of Defence built an aerodrome at Tealing and No.56 Officer Training Unit opened in March 1942, equipped with Hurricane, Masters and Lysander aircraft. The number of pilots training at the unit varied from about 35 to 40 in 1942, reaching a peak of 150 on 1943.

It was at the aerodrome that Tealing's most famous visitor arrived. On 20 May 1942, a strange four-engined aircraft appeared in the circuit at Tealing. It was one of the first Russian TB7s to visit Britain and it brought Vyacheslav Molotov, Russian Foreign Minister and Deputy Chairman of the State Committee of Defence, on a military mission to meet with Sir Winston Churchill at Chequers. Tealing airfield was probably chosen to attract as little attention as possible and, for security reasons, there was a local news blackout at the time.

Molotov was given the choice of two aircraft in which to continue his journey to England. The one he did not select, as later revealed by Sir Archibald Hope, Senior Controller of Fighter Command in Scotland in 1942, crashed in flames in the Vale of York, killing various members of Molotov's staff and senior RAF personnel. Molotov arrived safely in London for the signing of the Anglo-Russian Treaty on 26 May 1942. Tealing's place in history was once again reinforced in dramatic circumstances.