Archaeology Notes

Event ID 660940

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/660940

NH56SE 19 59964 63589

(Location cited as NH 599 636). Granary, Foulis Point, 18th century. A large three-storey, six-bay harled building with an external open stair giving access to the upper floor. Nearby is a block of single-storey cottages, and on the beach in front of the granary are the decaying keels [frames] of at least four wooden vessels. Termed 'Old Rent House' and said to have been used to store estate rents, paid in kind, for shipment.

J G Dunbar 1966; J R Hume 1977.

A disused 18th century granary or Rent House. Three stories harled, with an external open stair giving access to the upper floors. Built around 1740 as an estate storehouse, or girnel, for the Munros of Foulis. Around this time, rents were mostly paid in kind, as were a proportion of estate workers wages. Oats and barley would have been stored here, and thence shipped out to Fort George where they would be sold to the army, or to Inverness. The Rent House was the scene of a riot in 1796, when the townspeople of Dingwall marched on it at a time of food shortage in order to prevent the export of grain they believed to be held there. The crowd eventually dispersed without serious incident.

The Rent House remained in use as a storehouse for goods moving in or out of the estate by sea well into the 20th century.

J Close-Brooks 1986

Though it stands just outwith the Cromarty Firth SSSI, Foulis Point Rent House is of importance to the history of this part of the Cromarty Firth: also it is likely that some associated structures (such as boat moorings) may well lie along the shore, and within the SSSI.

J Wordsworth, SSSIs, Scottish Natural Heritage, 1993.

Granary / storehouse / girnal; roofed on the 1st edition OS 6-inch map (Ross and Cromarty, sheet lxxvii; 1880) - stable condition.

CFA/MORA Coastal Assessment Survey 1998.