The “Deeriers” lived in a close near the foot of the Hilltown called Deerhorn Close because of the carved deer’s antlers above it.
The name was applied to the locality between its Hilltown frontage and Dallfield Walk to the west. Deerhorn Close has long been demolished, but its memory lives on.
The close led to an almost rectangular concrete-paved court, flanked on the south side by two-storey houses with outside stairs and on the north by a row of one-storey houses fronted by a flagged path.
At the far end the court narrowed to a passage formed by some white-washed cottages with slabstone, moss-covered roofs and baked-clay floors.
These had been the dwellings and workshops of the first Irish handloom weavers to settle in Dundee before the middle of last century.
Beyond them stood the factory of Duncan & Son, reed makers.
The Deerie in its heyday was a sunlit court in which robust-looking women in striped flannel petticoats and bare feet sat sewing sacks.
Some were also threading heddles for the loom cams made by Messrs Duncan.
Source: ‘The People’s Journal’, Saturday 23rd June, 1973