Publication Account
Date 1995
Event ID 1016662
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016662
Ullapool stands on a flat, triangular spit of land jutting out into Loch Broom, and affords an excellent anchorage. It was chosen by the British Fisheries Society for one of three planned fishing villages, together with Tobermory on Mull and Lochbay on Skye, and construction started in 1788. Before this, remarkably enough, Stornoway on Lewis was the only village and customs house in the whole 1,000 miles of western coastline from the Clyde round to Duncansby Head. The advantages of the site included plenty of land fit for houses and gardens, a good anchorage, a lime quarry, and the fact that herrings regularly frequented Loch Broom. There were already curing stations for red herring operating on Isle Martin and Tanera further out in the Loch, which would help to employ the settlers and process the fish until new curing businesses were established.
Houses were to be erected by the settlers themselves, but the Society built amenity structures such as a warehouse of three-storeys and cellar, a pier and an inn. In 1790 various difficulties including trouble with the pier led to Thomas Telford being called in as 'Surveyor of Buildings', a post he held until his death in 1834. Though Ullapool was already laid out before he began work, he is known to have surveyed a herring house, a shed for drying nets with boatbuilders', coopers' and smiths' shops behind, and a storehouse for salt and casks.
Ullapool was spacious and not all of its grid of streets filled up, but many of the buildings in the streets along the shore and near the pier date to the early years of the settlement. Among the many simple but attractive harled houses is The Old Bank House in Argyle Street, with a fanlight and pillared portico to its door. By 1814 there were 72 houses, 35 slated and the rest thatched with turf, fern roots and heather; and a curing-house which had cured 5,000 barrels of herring the previous year. On the corner of Quay Street and Shore Street the building now called the Captain's Cabin, which houses the small Ullapool Museum, is a late 18th-century warehouse of three-storeys with an outside stair to the first floor. The Caledonian MacBrayne office in West Shore Street is another former warehouse, possibly built to Telford's design about 1800, though the long stair-window in the east gable is modern.
Ullapool attracted sufficient population to warrant a parliamentary church and manse, built in 1829 to plans by Telford. The church in Argyle Street has a gallery and much of its original fittings; it. now houses the Ullapool Museum and its interior can been seen. The manse in West Shore Street is now Ornsay House, a private house harled with painted margins and some alterations to the front door. Ullapool fared badly in the later 19th century when the herring failed and the inhabitants had in sufficient land to maintain themselves by farming alone. However this century has seen a revival of its early prosperity due to a variety of circumstances. Though the railway never reached Ullapool, refrigeration and improved roads have nade a great difference to its viability; it has again become a port for the herring and mackerel fleets, even if only as a transit point. The pier has been extended and the old fish houses reused. Tourism is important to the local economy, and Ullapool is now the terminal for the car ferry to Stornoway on Lewis.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).
