The Retreat William Maclean died December 10th, 1930. He had been ill less than a week with bronchial problems. His friend, colleague, neighbour and brother-in-law, Richard Brodie, stepped in to support the grieving widow. Dr Brodie registered the death, organised the funeral, wrote an Obituary for the Ross-shire Journal and replaced Dr Maclean as Medical Superintendent at the Seaforth Sanatorium. Then tragically, by the end of that same month, he too died suddenly. He was buried alongside Dr Maclean and they share a slab gravestone in Fodderty cemetery. The Brodie family rented the Maclean family home in Hood Street when Dr Brodie became School Medical Officer in 1923. William had inherited the house from his Aunt Alexina in 1909 but preferred to continue living in the superior Maryburgh Cottage, leaving his father, Hector, in the family home. After Hector’s death the house was modernised and rented out bringing William in an income of £18 per annum whereas Maryburgh Cottage was worth £30 pa. On William’s death Louisa had to leave Maryburgh Cottage. She donated his archaeological collection to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in Edinburgh and sold his prized library including some first editions, for £700, a considerable sum in those days. With the death of Richard Brodie the two grieving widows came together in the Maclean family home, naming it ‘The Retreat’. Eventually Louisa built a bungalow in the grounds of ‘The Retreat’ and continued to live there while her four nephews and nieces grew up, moving back into the main house with her sister when her niece, Mary, married Huisdean Matheson and needed somewhere to live. Huisdean Matheson remembers going curling with Dr Maclean in the 1920s and has many stories to tell of Dr Brodie, the jovial School Medical Officer, whose daughter he married in 1934. Louisa died, aged 72, in 1945 while her sister, Margaret continued to live in ‘The Retreat’ until her death in 1954. The sisters and their respective husbands are buried together alongside the Brodie’s eldest son, Purse. ‘The Retreat’ remained in the possession of the Brodie family until 1991. Photo: 'The Retreat' in Hood Street, Maryburgh