Westray, Gill Pier, Herring Curing House View from WSW showing NW front and SW front

Description Westray, Gill Pier, Herring Curing House View from WSW showing NW front and SW front

Date 3/5/1976

Collection Papers of Professor John R Hume, economic and industrial historian, Glasgow, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 459721

Category On-line Digital Images

Scope and Content Herring curing house, Gill Head Pier, Westray, Orkney This building is at the landward end of Gill Head Pier, and was probably built at the same time as the extension of the pier in 1897. It is a three-storey, 10-bay coursed flagstone building, and probably housed cooperage, stores and barracks for gutters. This view shows the building from the end of the pier. The chimneys suggest the use of part of the building to house the girls who travelled in parallel with the herring fleet to gut the fish for curing. As the local village, Pierowall, was and remains small, the travelling gutters could not all be accommodated in lodgings. The scale of the herring trade in the years before the First World War is now difficult to envisage. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

External Reference H76/40/15

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/459721

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap