PICTURES: Caithness and Sutherland venues celebrate Doors Open Days with ‘a wonderful mix’
Visitors to Doors Open Days in Caithness and Sutherland over the weekend were treated to “a wonderful mix of art, architecture and heritage”.
Twenty-five venues across the two counties took part in the national festival that sees organisations and volunteers offer free access to locations around Scotland.
The programme is coordinated at national level by the Scottish Civic Trust and locally by regional coordinators.
Ian Leith, the coordinator for Caithness and Sutherland, said: “People came from far and near to enjoy this year’s Doors Open Days in Caithness and Sutherland.
“Salt-making at Brora Heritage Centre, exquisite jewellery from Patricia Niemann at Berriedale, a fossil collection at Castlehill Heritage Centre, hard-hat tours at Brora, Castletown and John O’Groats and guided walks at Forsinard and Rosal were just some of the many opportunities being offered.
“It was a wonderful mix of art, architecture and heritage.”
He added: “Doors Open Days is only a success thanks to the willingness and enthusiasm of those associated with the various venues and through the planning and support from the Scottish Civic Trust.”
Visitors to the old herring mart at Wick harbour were able to see historic photos and seafaring artefacts courtesy of volunteers from the Wick Society’s boat section.
The mart was established in 1892 to give shelter and office accommodation to local fish salesmen and it was restored by the Wick Society in 2006. It contains the first telegraph office in Pulteneytown.
Malcolm Bremner, team leader of the boat section, explained that the mart cost £200 to build and at one point 57 people worked there, in six offices.
“It was the first temporary building to sell herring under cover and it’s the last one still standing,” Mr Bremner said.
It was classed as “temporary” as a much larger, two-storey building, complete with watchtower, was proposed for a nearby site where the present harbour office is situated. The bigger project never went ahead, though.
The original plans for it are on display in the old mart.
“We gave it a big revamp this year but there’s so much behind the doors that people don’t see,” Mr Bremner said. “You’ve got to tell the history of what happened during that time because this was a very, very busy place.”
He said it had been another successful summer for the boat section volunteers and their 19th-century vessel Isabella Fortuna, which won the award for best boat at the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival in Portsoy.
“That’s the third time we’ve won it,” Mr Bremner said, adding: “Local companies and local people in general support the Isabella Fortuna and the Wick Society in a big way.
“We take people out on trips because it’s just our way of giving something back.”
One artefact on display inside the old mart was of particular interest to local woman Alison Hill. It was a newspaper cutting from the Northern Ensign from October 1907 about a baby having been born on the St Ola ferry as it made its way to Scrabster from Orkney.
“The event occurred just off Dunnet Head and is the first recorded birth in the Pentland Firth,” the newspaper noted.
The baby was named after the boat – St Ola Marjory Asher Buchanan – and she would go on to be a great-aunt of Mrs Hill. The baby’s mother, a herring gutter, had been returning to Caithness from working in Shetland.
Mrs Hill’s husband Raymond had shown her a photo of the cutting but she was keen to see it for herself, alongside a copy of the birth certificate.
“We were brought up with the story,” Mrs Hill said. “We always knew that she was born on the St Ola, off Dunnet Head, and I wanted to see the evidence.
“She was my grandfather’s sister. I’m sure she married a Sutherland and lived in Halkirk before they moved south. She was always known as Aunt Ola.”
Nucleus: The Nuclear and Caithness Archives put on an exhibition in its community room on the Doors Open Days theme of Routes, Networks and Connections. Guided tours were also available.
Nucleus archive assistant Valerie Amin said: “It gives people a chance to see behind the scenes where the documents are actually stored, seeing areas of the building they wouldn’t normally see.
“We take them to the repository where we store all the Caithness archive records, we take them to the conservation room where documents are conserved, repaired and treated, and they can see the public searchroom where people come to consult documents.”
