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Lossiemouth

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Template:Infobox Scotland place with map Lossiemouth (Gaelic: Inbhir Losaidh), is a burgh in Moray, Scotland. It lies on the south coast of the Moray Firth, at the mouth of the River Lossie. Originally a port linked to Elgin, it was also an important and innovative fishing port. The town is now popular for its beaches[1], the Moray Golf Club with its two 18 hole golf courses, and marina. It also has a small but excellent museum based on the fishing industry.

The town can be reached by road by the A941 from Elgin, about 6 miles away and a regular bus service links the towns. Elgin is the nearest railway station and Inverness (about 30 miles) the nearest airport.

St. Gerardine (St Gervadius) who, legend has it, warned passing ships off the rocks using a lantern. The parish church is named after him as does one of the local primary schools. The town was also the birthplace of Ramsay MacDonald, Britain's first Labour Prime Minister. He was born in a small cottage near the railway line. In later life he lived in the 'Hillocks' - a house he built in Lossie.

The town's premier football club is Lossiemouth F.C.[2], and they play in the Scot-Ads Highland League. The club play their home games at Grant Park, but have a history of finishing down the bottom end of the league. It has, though, won several trophies in recent seasons, including the Highland League Cup and several North of Scotland Cups. The town's junior football club is Lossiemouth United. RAF Lossiemouth also has a junior football club. In addition, the station also has a rugby union and a cricket club that play in their respective North of Scotland leagues.

Overview

The Town

The present day town was formed over the past 250 years and consists of Stotfield, the first significant settlement, and lies to the north west of the town. Next community to be built was the Seatown - a small area between the river and the canal consisting of 52 houses, 51 of which are the historic fisher cottages. Following the decision to build a new harbour on the River Lossie, the 18th Century planned town on a grid system known as Lossiemouth was established. Branderburgh formed the final development during the 19th Century. This part of the town developed entirely as a result of the new harbour with its two basins.

The quarry on the east side of the town that produced the stone for the building of Branderburgh produced the largest variety and total numbers of fossil reptiles from the late Triassic Period to have been found in the UK. This was a total of eight species and 97 individuals; five of the species are unique to Lossiemouth, one of which is an early form of dinosaur. This quarry is ranked as Britain's most important fossil bearing location of this period.

Lossiemouth High School is located in the south west of the town and is surrounded by the playing fields as they are known locally. Adjacent to the school is the swimming pool and community centre with a playschool. Lossie High serves the Burghsea area: Lossiemouth, Hopeman, Burghead, Cummingston and Duffus including rural areas. The feeder primaries are Hythehill, St.Gerardines, Hopeman and Burghead. There are over 700 pupils separated into four houses; Covesea, Kinnedar, Pitgaveny and Spynie.

RAF Lossiemouth
617 Squadron badge
617 Squadron badge
German battleship Tirpitz in 1944

To the west of the town is the RAF Lossiemouth air station. After the war, the airfield was handed over to the Royal Navy and the station was renamed HMS Fulmar. The Royal Naval Air Station was returned to the Royal Air Force on 28 September 1972. The base is currently home to a number of Tornado squadrons including the famous 617 'Dambuster' Squadron. Coincidentally, during the Second World War, 29 modified Lancaster bombers from No. 617 Squadron along with aircraft from No. 9 Squadron, left RAF Lossiemouth for Norway on 12 November 1944 to bomb the German battleship Tirpitz. Each of the aircraft was loaded with a single Tallboy bomb. The Tirpitz was located at a range of twenty miles and opened fire on the squadrons when the aircraft were thirteen miles away. Unfortunately, one of the Lancasters was shot down. All of the remaining aircraft managed to get their bombs away – three of which hit their target. Within 10 minutes of the first hit, the Tirpitz had rolled over completely.

History

Roman to Medieval

Although the Romans never conquered the peoples of the North of Scotland, they made several journeys to the Moray Firth coast. A substantial fort has been discovered near Cawdor, Nairnshire and a suspected marching camp at Wester Alves, Moray. Their ships circumnavigated the British Isles and they even produced primitive maps.

Ptolemy's World Map - click to enlarge

The Greco/Roman astronomer and geographer, Ptolemy, describes the mouth of the River Lossie as ostium Loxa Fluvius in his document which translates as "Albion Island of Britannia". Settlement in this area has a long history. St Gervadius, a celtic hermit inhabited a cave overlooking the entrance to the sea loch, Loch Spynie. In his time, the River Lossie entered the loch further to the south. The rocky promontory is recorded in the ancient charters as Holyman's Head and it is said that Gervadius (St Gerardine as he became known in later times) would walk around the headland with a lantern to warn ships away from the dangerous rocks. Even today the Halliman Skerries retain the reference to St Gervadius. He died in 934 A.D. and his cave became a place of pilgrimage right up to the 16th Century. The cave was eventually quarried out.

The settlement at the river mouth is significant particularly in its relationship with the Royal Burgh of Elgin. An argument between the Bishop of Moray and the Earl of Moray was documented in 1383 regarding the ‘ownership’ of the port of ‘Losey’. This document mentions that Losey was commonly known to fall within the limits of the episcopal estates. The Bishop’s description of the port suggests that it was well downstream from his fishing station at Spynie. It seems likely, therefore to look upon Losey as not merely a fishing station but as a trading port that the Elgin Burgesses used as a counterbalance to the Royal Burgh of Forres's trading port of Findhorn. The dispute with the Earl of Moray went further. That same year of 1383, the Earl wrote to the burgesses offering them the use of his port at Kingston with no charges and was most likely an attempt to get back at The Bishop. The port and fishery was mentioned again in 1551.

The loch and the river became separated c.1600. A succession of storms built banks of sand and boulders that eventually closed off the sea entrance. To avoid flooding it is documented that, in 1609, Bishop Alexander Douglas took steps to exclude the River Lossie from the loch.

Modern Lossiemouth has its origins in five separate communities that in time grew into one. These were Stotfield, Kinneddar, Seatown, Lossiemouth and Branderburgh; the most ancient of these are Stotfield and Kinneddar.

Stotfield

The early maps, some dating back to the early 16th century, clearly show Stotfield (some maps, name the settlement as Stotfold or Stodfauld). The name Stotfold means in Old English, 'horse fold'. The fact that the name is a form of English and not derived from Pictish or Gaelic names suggests that incomers settled the area. King David I introduced settlers from other parts of the kingdom as a way of reducing the powers of the lords who had ruled large territories as independent provinces. Indeed, King David put down a rebellion by the Mormaer of Moray in 1130 and it is possible that Stotfield dated from shortly after this event. The English speaking inhabitants of the Lothians would most likely to have been the chosen settlers. It is notable that the tribe inhabiting the Lothians were Angles (part of the Kingdom of Northumbria).

In the Middle Ages, Stotfield was primarily a farm hamlet with small scale fishing being carried out. The fishing gradually became more important and the population specialised into farm workers and fishermen. Subsistence was hard but at least it was relatively easy, in this case, for farm and sea food to be bartered.

The Stotfield Fishing Disaster

The Stotfield fishing disaster struck on Christmas Day 1806. The severity of this tragedy had a monumental effect upon the Stotfield community when every single able bodied male in the village perished in a huge storm. The folk memory of it is still retained among the fishermen of Lossiemouth. The details of this disaster are described in a separate article.

Kinneddar

Nearby is Kinneddar which has now also been absorbed into the town. Early references to the area refer to it as Kenedor. An early Christian settlement dating to the 10th Century has been attributed to it. St Gervadius (Gerardine) may have been part of this community establishing his cell in the cave to the northeast.

However maps dating from the early 1500's clearly show this farming community as King Edward. It is unlikely, though, that this community took its name from King Edward I of England, The Hammer of the Scots, although Edward travelled twice to this area to demonstrate his grip over the country. He is known to have stayed in Elgin for four days in late July 1296 and it was during this sojourn into Scotland that he removed the Stone of Scone (Stone of Destiny) from Scone Palace and had it placed in a wooden chair at Westminster Abbey. He again stayed in Elgin for two days in September 1303 and then camped at Kinloss Abbey from the 13th of September till the 4th of October.

A succession of old maps show this ferm toun’s name changing over the centuries from King Edward to Kinneddar. The most likely explanation is that the early cartographers took the local pronunciation of Kinneddar as King Edward and recorded it as such. Kinneddar village was still sizeable in the early 19th century but dwindled away with the building of the new Lossiemouth, just to the east.

Seatown

The present Seatown was established at the end of the 17th Century when the old port at Spynie became landlocked. A succession of storms had built up large shingle banks to block the outlet of Loch Spynie to the sea. The merchants of Elgin decided that a new harbour that could berth larger trading vessels at the river mouth was required. The fishermen didn't use the new pier however but continued to sail their boats up to the beach at the Seatown. Seatown is called The Toonie by its inhabitants and sometimes referred to as the Dogwall. This was a reference to dog-skins that were dried here before being turned into floats for nets.

Lossiemouth


In 1685, the Elgin burgh council called upon a German engineer, Peter Brauss, to look at the viability of providing a harbour at the mouth of the Lossie; he decided that a harbour could be established. The first efforts at the beginning of the 18th Century looked to have failed but by 1764, the new jetty had been built at a cost of £1200.

At the time that the new river mouth harbour was being constructed, so too was a more planned development laid out in streets running parallel and right angles to each other. An open square with a cross separated the first settlement from the new. The fishers occupied the houses at the Seatown and the builders, craftsmen and merchants in the new Lossiemouth.

Branderburgh

By the early 1800s, the river harbour was busy but its long-term future was unsustainable and meant that a new solution was sought. In 1834, a Stotfield and Lossiemouth Harbour Company was formed to look into building a new harbour at Stotfield Point. That same year, The Inverness Courier carried the following:

"A paragraph is quoted from an Elgin paper under the heading "unexampled economy worthy of imitation." The two senior bailies of the burgh went on behalf of the town to Lossiemouth to meet the gentlemen appointed to stake off the ground for a proposed new harbour. The worthy Magistrates walked the whole distance, five miles out and five miles home, and only spent one shilling! This expenditure consisted of sixpence for whisky and the other sixpence to the waiter."

The construction of the new harbour was carried out between 1837 and 1839 but initially in a relatively small form. The beginning of the building process was marked by a ceremony and reported in the Inverness Courier as follows,

"The ceremony of laying the foundation stone of the inner basin of the new harbour at Stotfield Point, Lossiemouth, took place on the 15th inst [June]. The stone was laid by Lieut. Colonel James Brander of Pitgaveny, the proprietor of the site, with the assistance of the Trinity Lodge of Freemasons, and in presence of the Chairman and shareholders of the Harbour Company, and representatives of the burgh of Elgin."

This was the beginning of the final phase of building that was to become Branderburgh. However, by 1852 when the railway line from Elgin was opened, the basin had been enlarged further and deepened to 16 feet at spring tides. This encouraged many fishing families from up and down the coast to move to the town. The harbour as well as having a large herring fleet by now, also shared the available space with trading ships. This prompted the now renamed Elgin and Lossiemouth Harbour Company to build a new second basin at a cost of £18,000. This basin was intended solely for fishing boats and opened in 1860.

The Morayshire Railway - click to enlarge

The Morayshire Railway was officially opened at ceremonies in Elgin and Lossie on 10 August 1852, the steam engines having been delivered to Lossie by sea. It was the first railway north of Aberdeen and initially travelled only the 5½ miles between Lossie and Elgin but later extended south to Craigellachie. The Lossie – Elgin section had three stops – the Rifle Range Halt, Greens of Drainie and Linksfield. The Great North of Scotland Railway took over the working of the line in 1863 and became very important to the economy of both Lossie and Moray.

Branderburgh, with its characteristic wide streets, continued to push its boundaries westward and by the early 1900s finally joined with Stotfield. A substantial amount of sandstone was quarried from the east side of the town to accommodate this rapid house building project. When Lossiemouth and Branderburgh became a police burgh in 1890, the town became mainly known as Lossiemouth, or more commonly – Lossie. Over time, the fleet developed and changed from sailboats, then to steam drifters and finally to motor engined seine net boats.

Fishing Boats

Main article at Scottish east coast fishery

The boats used at Stotfield, Seatown and finally Branderburgh were the same as those found across the entire Scottish east coast fishery. Chronologically, these were the two masted luggers, the Skaffies,Fifies and Zulus; then the powered Steam Drifters and Seine Netters.

  • The Skaffie appeared at the beginning of the 19th Century. These boats were initially small so that they could be easily beached but later versions were heavier when large harbours became prevalent. Their stems were rounded and had raked sterns.
  • The Fifie was the predominant fishing boat on the east coast from the 1850s until the mid 1880s. The Fifies main features were the vertical stem and stern. Fifies built from 1860 onwards were all decked and from 1870s onwards the bigger boats were built with carvel planking, i.e. the planks were laid edge to edge instead of the overlapping clinker style of previous boats. Some boats were built up to about 70 feet in length and were very fast.
  • The Zulu took its name from the Zulu war that was raging in South Africa at the time. Lossiemouth fisherman William 'Dad' Campbell was the first to introduce this form of fishing boat. His boat, the Nonsuch, had the characteristic vertical stem and steeply raking stern. The Zulu Boats rapidly became very popular in Lossiemouth and then along the whole of the east coast. Because these boats were ultimately very big and fast, they could reach the fishing grounds quickly and return with the catch equally fast.
  • The Steam Drifters, so called because just like the Fifies and Zulus, they used drift nets. They were large boats, usually 80-90 feet in length with a beam of around 20 feet. Steam drifters had many advantages. They were usually about 20ft longer than the sailing vessels so they could carry more nets and catch more fish. This was important because the market was growing quickly at the beginning of the 20th century. They could travel faster and further and with greater freedom from weather, wind and tide. Because less time was spent travelling to and from the fishing grounds, more time could be spent fishing. However they did have disadvantages. They were expensive to build and run and as the herring fishery declined they became too expensive to operate.
  • The Seine Netters initially were converted Fifies and Zulus. From 1906, petrol and paraffin engines began to be installed, initially for auxiliary power. However, as more powerful engines became available, sails (apart from the mizzen sail) were dispensed with. Danish seine net boats were landing huge quantities of plaice and other white fish at English east coast ports. Lossiemouth fishermen noted this and a few decided to use the seine net. It was obvious that this would be successful, but they were still hampered by the design and cost of the majority steam boats. John Campbell, nephew of William Campbell who designed the first Zulu boat, saw that a new design was needed to accommodate the large amounts of white fish that could be caught. His boat, the Marigold, did very well and over a short period the entire fleet (the first in Scotland) converted to the seine net.
The golf course (two 18 hole courses) - click to enlarge
The marina occupying the Old Harbour - click to enlarge
Ocean Gleaner(Returning after a refit) - click to enlarge
East Beach(From Prospect Terrace) - click to enlarge
Lossiemouth Harbour(East basin) - click to enlarge
Stotfield - click to enlarge
First harbour at the mouth of R. Lossie - click to enlarge
Seatown and canal


The Branderburgh Harbours at Lossie - click to enlarge



Notable Lossie-ites

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