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Publication Account
Date 1995
Event ID 1016690
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016690
The long village street winds down to the harbour with a terrace of fishermen's cottages (c 1830) following the curve of the road. The harbour, built in 1831, is enclosed with rubble breakwaters made of local flagstone. It has a good example of a stilling basin; the waves run into an outer basin with a shelving slipway on which they break, while water in the main basin is not affected. By the harbour stands a fine warehouse also built in 1831,fronting onto a quay made with the local flags set vertically. The lower floor consists of six stone-vaulted cellars, with two floors above each of two large rooms, and attics. There are small square air vents just below the slate roof. This would have been used for storing salt, barrels, nets and so on, and for storing fish prior to shipping it out. Just north of the warehouse is an icehouse backed into the slope of the cliff, with a stone gabled front. It has an antechamber which acted as a kind of air lock to help keep warm air out of the icehouse proper, which takes the form of a stone-vaulted chamber covered with turf for insulation. In the roof at the back is the door through which ice was tipped in from carts every winter. Ice was packed into the boxes with the fish as soon as they were landed. A few fishing boats still use this harbour. In Keiss village, on the south side of the road to the harbour, there is a parliamentary church (ND 348610) and its two-storey manse (ND 346612), now a private house called Scaraben, both built in 1826.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).
