Port Henderson : Past & Present
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PORT HENDERSON : PAST & PRESENT The story of a former fishing village & crofting township Introduction This booklet, written as part of Scotland's Rural Past Project, contains as much information about Port Henderson's past and present as we have been able to discover. Port Henderson, a former fishing village and crofting township, is part of the Gairloch Estates and cannot be looked at in isolation. Therefore it is set in its historical and geographical context within this West Coast are of Ross-shire. The booklet contains information about Port Henderson's location in the local area, the use of Gaelic and other name derivations for various features within the landscape, the village within the fishing industry, the township within the crofting community, schooling over the years and life for residents and visitors during the 20th and 21st centuries. Some of the data used in this project has been taken from work undertaken by Roy Wentworth. Roy was a local historian and the first curator of Gairloch’s Heritage Museum. He undertook a great deal of research about Gairloch and district, taking information from local residents and from books, articles and maps. His particular interest was Gaelic name derivations. Where a Gaelic name comes from the OS Reference Name Books for the 1st. edition OS map, 1871 - 1877, this is indicated by the initials OSR and the initials OPR stand for Old Parochial Registers. Other information has been supplied by local residents, from Ian Fraser, former lecturer at Edinburgh University, and gleaned from the Port Henderson censuses and estate records, books and articles. I have also reproduced some of the more general information about the earlier life and times of crofting townships which was first written in the booklet Lonemore : Big Damp Meadow. Acknowledgements Grateful thanks go to the residents of Port Henderson, both past and present and too numerous to name individually, who have so freely given their time to lend photographs and to supply oral and written information. Without their help this booklet would have been far less interesting. Mairi Wyatt, a pupil at Gairloch High School and a resident of Port Henderson, gave the project twelve hours of time as part of her Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. She was invaluable in gathering together some of the census statistics. And last but in no way least, my gratitude goes to Anne MacInnes who masterminded the whole project and kept me nearly as busy as herself (More photographs and documents have been placed in the Gairloch Heritage Museum for local reference). Dorothy Malone 2 CONTENTS Page 4 1) Description, locality and name derivation 9 Some natural features of the area 11 2) Some history 12 Local superstitions and tales 16 3) Fishing in Port Henderson Salmon fishing 17 Herring fishing 18 Cod fishing 20 Lobsters & crabs Fishing boats 24 Other boats Fishermen of Port Henderson 26 Yachts and yachting 26 4) Official records The 'Old Statistical Account' 27 The 'New Statistical Account' The Napier Commission 28 Representation to Sir Kenneth Mackenzie 29 The Port Henderson Cases of 1888 31 5) Port Henderson - the Fishing Village Before the fishing village The fishing village 40 Port Henderson S.S.P.C.K School 42 6) Port Henderson - the Crofting Township 50 Schooling : Opinan Public School 64 7) Port Henderson in the 20th and 21st centuries 65 A place to live 69 Port Henderson and the two World Wars 96 A place to work 99 8) Port Henderson today 100 Appendix 3 1) Description, locality and name derivation Port Henderson is a township on the south coast of Loch Gairloch and is part of the land owned by the MacKenzies, the lairds of Gairloch, now of Flowerdale House and Conan House, Conon Bridge. To its south are the crofting townships of Opinan and South Erradale and to its east is the very small settlement of Badantionail (‘clump of the gathering’ OSR) and the larger village of Badachro (‘lump of the cattle fold’ OSR) which in its early years was a fishing community and a farming area, with two large farms, Aird Farm and Badachro Farm. Like other crofting townships in the Gairloch area Port Henderson is divided into two sections, the in-bye land, the croft area within the township boundary, and the common grazing area where crofters have the right to graze livestock. (See later for more information - pages 96/97). The name Port Henderson doesn’t appear on any of the old maps. The first time it was written on a map was on the Gairloch Estate Plan of 1844 but the 1841 census also denoted the village as ‘Porthenderson’ with a population of 132 (also see below for the OPRs for Gairloch). In Gaelic the Carr Point name translates to Portigill or Portaigil and may be derived from Port a geal, the ‘white port’. However, Ainslie’s Map of 1790 and Campbell’s Map of 1790 show the name ‘Capuchar’ in the position of Port Henderson. New Marine Chart of 1794 and Heather’s Marine Chart of 1804 have ‘Coupachar’ whilst the Admiralty Chart of 1849 - 51 has ‘Carr Pt (Point)’ and ‘P. Anderson’. In Gaelic ‘Carr Point’ is Sròin a’ Char/Sròn na Carra (the point of the projecting rock) and this can be seen as a prominent headland, consisting of flat rock slabs projecting into the sea where the coastline turns east into Loch Gairloch, with a rounded knoll behind. By the time the Admiralty Chart for the area was drawn up the Port Henderson crofting township had been established and the map shows this in relation to the main road and includes some indications of the croft boundaries. The name Ainslie's Map of 1790 ‘Anderson’ might have been a misrepresentation of the word ‘Henderson’. (See p. 18 and p. 103 for further suggestions re the village's name). 4 The name Port Henderson is also said to translate into ‘Gate Gully’ from Portigil. W. J. Watson gives the definition ‘port gully’ using the Norse gil (ravine) but Ian Fraser (see below) is not entirely happy with this. It is known that there was a Norse presence in the coastal areas of Wester Ross although it has been difficult to quantify this because of lack of archaeological evidence but the study of local place names has indicated the possible Admiralty Chart of 1841 - 51 distribution of Norse settlements. One of these names is ‘vik’ (bay). Ian Fraser has written a chapter on Scandinavian place names and their connection with north-west settlements in Ross-shire (see Peoples & Settlement in North-West Ross, edited by Baldwin, 1994). For a bay to have been successful it required the availability of sheltered water, access to sea routes, some protection from winds from the west and the north-west, a reasonable depth of water and somewhere for beaching boats. Once a good harbour was found then permanent settlements could evolve. Arable land needed to be available for grain growing, hay making and grazing. Timber for boat building was another requirement as was the availability of fresh water. Vik names in Wester Ross often used the form ‘aig’ (an overlap with the Gaelic). (In the Gairloch area there are Tournaig and Shieldaig, for example, as well as Melvaig, although this settlement doesn’t meet all the above criteria.) One Gaelic spelling of Port Henderson is Portaigil (see page 4) and it could be queried whether this was linked with Norse. Its position is fairly sheltered and protected. It is on a known sea route and there was arable land and fresh water, although none of the streams was large. Also there were some wooded areas. This is solely conjecture although there is also the unsubstantiated history of the Viking dun (see page 11). However, Ian Fraser believes that the formation of the fishing village of Port Henderson was a trigger for a new ‘English’ name and that the Gaelic Portigil may have been used because of a possible port giving access for small boats which already existed in that position. In all probability there was an earlier settlement at Port Henderson, though maybe not earlier than 1808, because of the reference to ‘Portscounan South Aridale’ in the OPR for Gairloch. (On August 16th 1808 a son, Alex, was registered with parents Murdoch and Isabella Fraser. Murdoch was a tenant at Portscounan. This could indicate that there was at least one dwelling house with a separate place name. Portscounan might be a corruption of Port a’ Sgùmán a peninsular in the later Port Henderson). (As already mentioned South Erradale is a coastal township to the south). Later OPRs showed the name with spellings such as Port Henderson, Porthenderson and Porthendersone. According to the OS Reference Name Books Port Henderson was described as ‘a hamlet composed chiefly of crofters’ houses situated on the south shore of Gairloch near the extreme southwest point. The property of Sir Kenneth R. Mackenzie, Bart.’ Hamlets in Scotland were originally called ‘clachans’ and these developed into villages or townships as the years went by. 5 In Peoples and Settlements in North West Ross edited by John Baldwin, Caird explains in a chapter entitled The Making of the Gairloch Crofting Landscape that ‘During Sir Hector Mackenzie, the fourth Baronet's tenure, the first sheep farm in Gairloch parish was created before 1810 on the Seaforth Letterewe estate, and others followed ......In 1815, portions of the lands of South Erradale and Ardrisaig were cut off from these farms and let to 22 tenants to form a fishing village at Port Henderson, which later became a crofting township.’ Ardrisaig is marked on Roy’s Military Survey Map of Scotland (1747 - 55) and is shown as a small clustered settlement directly opposite Dry Island/Badachro.