SHANDWICK

There was never a harbour at Shandwick; the fishermen used the pier at Balintore, immediately adjacent. In 1882 there were 45 men and boys going to the fishing from Shandwick in a fleet of 20 small boats.
The name Shandwick means ‘sandy bay’ and the beach was much used for landing coal, lime and slates, and for loading timber and potatoes. The bay abounds in shellfish and shallow water fish, and the shore used to supply bait for many of the villages along the Moray Firth.
Rabbits were freely poached on Shandwick Hill and Cadboll Cliffs, and made very good eating. The poachers sold then from door to door for 1/- to 1/6d per pair and later from 2/6 to 3/- until the beginning of the Second World War. Scarrows (cormorants) were shot and stoned on the rocks, and then skinned and boiled for broth and eaten. They tasted just like wild duck.
From The Fringe Of Gold, C Maclean, 1985.

BALINTORE AND HILTON OF CADBOLL

The ‘bleaching town’ and ‘the hill town’. They both grew up as fishing villages, with a harbour at Balintore built in the 1890s, a pier at Hilton, a boatbuilder, a sailmaker and curing yard all available to fishermen. Barrels of salt herrings went to Russia, and the harbour at Balintore also exported grain and potatoes. The harbour is still used by a handful of small boats, mainly pleasure craft, thought there are some part-time lobster fishermen, and here is a salmon station in the village, with its drying green and anchors close to the harbour.
Not far from the harbour was a mound, known locally as ’Ghost’s Hillock’ and long regarded with superstition: anyone who passed by the place dropped a stone into a hollow to ward off the evil spirits. Quite recently the hillock was levelled to make way for new houses, and many human remains were unearthed: the place turned out to have been a Bronze Age burial ground.
Many of the inhabitants of Hilton came there after having been driven out of their homes during the Clearances. They were Gaelic speakers and members of the Free Church. The village was known locally as ‘Tir Goshen’ – the land of Goshen – for every house was God-fearing. The three churches in the small village all attach large congregations today, and such is the enthusiasm and devotion of the people that a new Free Church was built at Hilton as recently as 1980.
A certain amount of salmon fishing is still done from the small pier, and narrow sandy beach, although it dries out at low tide.
From The Fringe Of Gold, C Maclean, 1985.

ROCKFIELD

At Cadboll Point, about a mile north of Hilton, the sandy shore and low braes give way to a long line cliffs about 150 feet high. These continue in a north-easterly direction as far as the dramatic peninsula of Tarbat Ness, some seven miles further on.
Three miles from Tarbat Ness lighthouse is the picturesque village of Rockfield. Little more than a row of cottages sandwiched between the rocky shore and cliffs, there is nevertheless room for tiny strips of garden behind the houses.
Rockfield was built during the herring boom in the 1880s and has a short stone pier and slip way rather than a harbour. In 1886 there were 18 boats fishing from here, providing work for 54 fishermen. There is still some salmon fishing done from here, and a couple of lobster boats regularly use the pier.
Half a mile from Rockfield are the impressive ruins of Balome Castle, still remarkably intact, although the house has not been lived in since 1650. It was originally built by the Earls of Ross and later inhabited by the Earls of Cromarty.
From The Fringe Of Gold, C Maclean, 1985.

PORTMAHOMACK

On the western side of the Tarbat peninsula is the thriving village of Portmahomack, facing the Dornoch Firth. The bay on which the town is situated has a sandy beach, the place is well sheltered from the chittering east wind and the views across the Firth to the Mountains of Sutherland are impressive. It is not without good reason that Portmahomack is a popular holiday resort.
The first stone pier was built there by the Earl of Cromarty, and this was lengthened and improved by Thomas Telford, the famous harbour builder, in 1810. At the pierhead there are two fine old warehouses, one of them dating from the 17th century and still smelling of fish, and nearby is an old icehouse – all reminders of Portmahomack’s former importance as a fishing port.
In 1830 there were as many as a hundred boats fishing from here and six thriving curing yards engaged boats to supply them with fish all the year round. Two years later a cholera epidemic which had come from Hindustan in 1817 and swept Europe, claimed one-fifth of the population. The port is still used by two full-time lobster boats and is crowded with pleasure craft during the summer.
From The Fringe Of Gold, C Maclean, 1985.

INVER

The small village of Inver, four miles south-west of Portmahomack, lost over a third of its population in the 1832 cholera epidemic, and it struck with such terrifying rapidity that 11 corpses had to be buried without shroud or coffin. Many of the inhabitants fled to the hills and woods but ‘the pest followed them to their hiding-places and they expired in the open air’.
A certain amount of fishing was carried on from Inver – ‘haddock and flounder are the staple kinds of fish: cod, whiting and skate are also found in abundance, as is herring in its season’, writes the contributor to the [1840s] New Statistical Account – but the place prospered principally from its extensive mussel beds, used as bait by fisherman up and down the coast.
‘Pipe-smoking was common, the clay pipe, with thread wound round the stem to prevent cancer of the lip, and the briar being used, with perhaps an expensive meerschaum brought home as a prest by a member of the family in the Merchant Navy. Snuff was being used by the older generation, women as well as men indulging the habit.’
Most of the houses in the village today are modern bungalows, but the old fishers’ cottages, much modernised, can still be seen at the eastern end of the village.
From The Fringe Of Gold, C Maclean, 1985.