port henderson : past & present - Royal Commission on the Ancient ...

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after arriving home he was chatting to Duncan Mackenzie from croft 10 when there was a noise at his door. Willie opened it to find Queenie who had made her way back home all the way from Perth. After contacting his nephew Willie found that Queenie had gone missing the day after he had left but Hector hadn’t wanted to tell his uncle because he knew the news would upset him! (Willie, son of William MacMillan, a fisherman, was ten years old on the 1901 census. Duncan died in 1977 at the age of 65 so this story probably happened a few years before that date). ‘Smiling Morn’ On croft 7 there is a very small cottage on the east side of the croft. The garden is now overgrown and covered in rushes but in times <strong>past</strong> the land was quite good. There used to be an outhouse on the north side of the house. When the cottage was re-roofed a few very large photographic <strong>port</strong>raits were found of whiskered gentlemen. However, it was impossible to make out the facial features. The old lady who lived there was known as ‘smiling Morn’ because she obviously wasn’t! (See Katy Nicholson's Smiling Morn's cottage today account on p. 81). (In 1910 it was re<strong>port</strong>ed in an Inverness newspaper that a puffer called 'Smiling Morn' arrived at Badachro harbour with coal for Mr. J. Mackenzie. Is the ship's name a coincidence?) 3) Fishing in Port Henderson Traditionally in this township it was the fishing industry which provided the main additional employment which in later years sustained the crofting way of life. Salmon fishing The former salmon fishing bothy (and An Sgùmán salmon station) was not included within the croft allocation in 1845 and was retained by the Laird, Sir Kenneth MacKenzie, who rented it out. Later it was sold. On the 1901 census the salmon fisher’s house was recorded as being unoccupied and it appears that it stopped being used in the early 1900s although rent was still paid for the building in 1968 and it was lived in for some years (see p.15). In the early years of the 20 th The salmon bothy before it was converted into a holiday home century there were about 25 salmonfishing stations operating in Wester Ross. Local crofters turned to salmon fishing once the peats were cut and would stay in the bothies when the season was at its height. 16
Salmon-fishing using bag-nets was an old tradition but ceased when there were no longer any wild salmon to be caught in the sea. Fishermen blamed the introduction of fish-farming and the increase in the seal population. The last remaining salmon-fishing station, at Red Point further down the coast from Port Henderson and still in the Parish of Gairloch, closed in the year 2000. The salmon season was from February to September which meant that in practice the salmon fishers during the last years of the 20 th century worked from about mid-March to August. Hundreds of salmon would be caught every day and the fish would be sold locally or for the continental market via Aberdeen. About eight bag-nets were put out at a time and these were hauled in three or four times a day. Herring fishing Fishing for herring took place in the Gairloch area with some men working full-time and others combining fishing with crofting. In the early years of the 20 th century drift nets were used. Local boats were often of the ‘Zulu’ design (see p.21 for the section on boats), some of which were built in Wester Ross. The main herring season in Wester Ross lasted from October to March and the fish were measured in crans, with one cran re<strong>present</strong>ing roughly 1000 fish. Herring fishing always took place at night and it was re<strong>port</strong>ed that the best fishermen could identify where there were herring to be found by hearing the sound of a shoal moving through the water. In late summer and in the autumn the fishermen looked for the herring when phosphorescence (losgadh in Gaelic) lit the sea. In the 18 th century fisherpeople developed into distinctive communities separate from the cottars, their farming neighbours and work was organised on a family basis. Although the British Fisheries Society (inaugurated in 1786 and closed more than 100 years later) tried to develop west coast fishing settlements not many landlords in the west took interest in developing fisheries. It is possible that fewer shoals of herring appeared in western waters. Therefore west coast fishing people became spread out into widely-spaced small holdings and these families mixed fishing with farming. Whereas the east coast fishers were looked down on and maligned by others this did not appear to have happened on the west coast. At the end of the 18 th A map to re<strong>present</strong> where the fishing village was situated century John Knox, a former Edinburgh bookseller and an adviser to the national government, proposed that 50 fishing villages should be built in the Highlands of Scotland each containing about 30 or 40 houses with gardens, as well as harbours, storehouses, curing sheds, schools and churches. This was sup<strong>port</strong>ed by the House of Common’s Fisheries Committee which concentrated on the inshore fishermen and the herring industry and the government and landowners deliberately tried to develop full-time fisheries. However, there were few such villages on the northwest coast, just Ullapool (begun in the 1780s) and the private fishing village of Plockton (which was more a crofting community than one for fishing). However, it is possible that small communities like 17
Page 1 and 2: PORT HENDERSON : PAST & PRESENT The
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS Page 4 1) Description, loc
Page 5 and 6: The name Port Henderson is also sai
Page 7 and 8: village of Port Henderson.’ At th
Page 9 and 10: used for washing, not for drinking.
Page 11 and 12: old sand dunes, am Mealbhán, the
Page 13 and 14: The cave of the gold (according to
Page 15: The man and the beast (as told by I
Page 19 and 20: egulations were abolished. Also nee
Page 21 and 22: egistered with the number U.L. (Ull
Page 23 and 24: Roddy ‘Seacrest’ MacKenzie (but
Page 25 and 26: Before the crofts came into existen
Page 27 and 28: the winter, could be fatal. Gaelic
Page 29 and 30: Henderson would be wise to stick to
Page 31 and 32: consequence of failure of the fishi
Page 33 and 34: (The first census gave no numbers f
Page 35 and 36: 1847 ‘as man on Poor Roll’. The
Page 37 and 38: Original 10/Croft 7. Alex McPherson
Page 39 and 40: law of young widow MacPherson and h
Page 41 and 42: pupils only spoke Gaelic. By 1826 t
Page 43 and 44: usual square Gairloch pattern. Crof
Page 45 and 46: foot spade and the tenants were all
Page 47 and 48: old and in poor repair internally.
Page 49 and 50: years and then the amount was reduc
Page 51 and 52: and then just two Macdonald childre
Page 53 and 54: There were statutory school holiday
Page 55 and 56: 1 Port Henderson had an eye examina
Page 57 and 58: ack on the road. ‘A part of the r
Page 59 and 60: and an Isabella Nicholson started w
Page 61 and 62: windows rattled in the wind making
Page 63 and 64: After the second world war school d
Page 65 and 66: have been killed. The fields were s
Page 67 and 68:
(and according to the 1901 census t
Page 69 and 70:
the second world war began. The las
Page 71 and 72:
the war Murdo sailed from Glasgow i
Page 73 and 74:
number is not recorded but it is co
Page 75 and 76:
preserve them when they were made o
Page 77 and 78:
Gairloch and John MacKenzie Bus Dri
Page 79 and 80:
still be seen today. The water was
Page 81 and 82:
couldn’t drive he would visit his
Page 83 and 84:
including her own mother, were very
Page 85 and 86:
section on boats). Crubaidh used to
Page 87 and 88:
My mother used to do washing and ir
Page 89 and 90:
Kirk Hand Weave (a shop in Gairloch
Page 91 and 92:
Memories of the village of Port Hen
Page 93 and 94:
We normally stayed overnight at the
Page 95 and 96:
front of croft 5 but then this was
Page 97 and 98:
Henderson it can be seen that Port
Page 99 and 100:
cigarettes) Household Radiant washi
Page 101 and 102:
his Factor, or estate manager. In 1
Page 103 and 104:
A local verse Mach a Port a’ Sgum
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