Dunnet
| |
|---|---|
 Mary Anne's Cottage Museum, a museum of crofting life, in West Dunnet | |
  Dunnet Location within the Caithness area | |
| OS grid reference | ND221713 |
| Council area | |
| Lieutenancy area | |
| Country | Scotland |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | THURSO |
| Postcode district | KW14 |
| Dialling code | 01847 |
| Police | Scotland |
| Fire | Scottish |
| Ambulance | Scottish |
| UK Parliament | |
| Scottish Parliament | |
Dunnet is a village in Caithness, in the Highland area of Scotland. It is within the Parish of Dunnet. [1]
The village centres on the A836 – B855 road junction. The A836 leads towards John o' Groats in the east and toward Thurso and Tongue in the west. (At the junction however the road's alignment is much more north-south than east-west.) The B855 leads toward Brough and Dunnet Head point in the north.
The Northern Sands Hotel is located on the A836, adjacent to the village church. It is a small hotel with 12 bedrooms, a large dining room, a large car park and 2 bars. It was originally called The Golf Links Hotel, there being a links course between Dunnet and Castletown that fell into disuse during World War II. It was taken over by the RAF during WW2 & used to station pilots from the nearby RAF Castletown fighter station. It is locally owned and in 2017 undertook a major renovation.
The village has a hall, The Britannia Hall, which is run by a committee, and which is used for a variety of activities including a children's nursery, an indoor bowling club, a badminton club and the Post Office, which visits twice a week, on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays. Its main fund raising activity each year for the upkeep of the hall is the Marymas Fair, held in late August on a nearby farm field, it has the usual attractions such as Highland dancing, a display of vintage and classic cars and motorcycles, bonniest baby, home baking, tossing the wheatsheaf, line dancing, face painting, raffles and tug of war.
The House of the Northern Gate (sometimes called Dwarick House) sits in a commanding position on Dunnet Head, overlooking the west side of the village. It was built between 1895 - 1908 by Admiral Alexander Sinclair who also owned Freswick, Keiss & Dunbeath Estates. Admiral Sinclair died in 1945 and the estate was broken up, the last croft to be bought by its tenant was by Mary Ann & James Calder, now a museum. The estate was bought in 1948 by Commander Clair Vyner and his wife Lady Doris Vyner. They used it as a summer residence and ran the local salmon station. Lady Doris was a close friend of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and invited her to stay at the house in 1953. During her stay, she looked east out of one of the upper floor windows and spied the tower of the recently vacated Barrogill Castle, 6 miles (9.7 km) away. Upon enquiring about the castle, a visit was arranged to view it. It was owned by Captain and Mrs Imbert-Terry, an eccentric couple whose family reputedly owned Terry's chocolate factory in York. A deal was struck to buy the rather dilapidated castle and Longoe Mains farm for a reported £6,000. The Queen Mother renamed it the Castle of Mey, its original name.
The House of the Northern Gate was run as a hotel by Bill Dodd from 1967 until 1974 and then owned by a Mr Divanian Gold from 1974 until around 1984/5, a flamboyant Jewish fashion clothes manufacturer from Manchester, who used it as a summer home. He later tried to sell building plots on its land, but the council vetoed the project on grounds of drainage and sewerage difficulties, because the land is flow country or blanket bog.
In 1974 when it came on the market, the rock band Led Zeppelin viewed it several times with a view to making it into a recording studio. A possible reason for this may be that guitarist Jimmy Page already owned Boleskine House, for many years the home of notorious occultist and white witch Aleister Crowley, near Foyers on the south bank of Loch Ness, and was a frequent visitor to Caithness. During this period, scenes from a horror film were recorded using the outside of the house as a backdrop. The house was empty until 1984/5, when a family from Kent bought it and made it into a private residence again. It has 1,800 acres (7.3 km2) of land, 6 lochs and a small beach, the Peedie Sannie ("Small Beach").
Dunnet Church is near the road junction and has documented history dating from 1230.
From 1726 to 1750 the minister was Rev James Oswald who was born and raised in Dunnet and served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1765. [2]
Brotchie's Steading is a ruined croft house just to the west of Dunnet Church. [3] It originally became the focus of archaeological interest because structural members (cruck blades) in one of the rooms were known to have been formed from a pair of whale mandibles, probably from a fin or blue whale. These are presently housed in the Dunnet Bay Visitor Centre.
An excavation by Headland Archaeology was undertaken to examine the role of whale bones as a construction material in Caithness croft houses, but it quickly became apparent that the 19th to 20th century croft houses sit on a much older and extensive archaeological site.
Trial trenching has shown that the bank upon which Brotchie's Steading sits is largely man-made and part of an extensive settlement mound that possibly includes a ruined broch. The earliest deposits excavated were from an occupation surface and material from this provided a date in the range 390-170 BC. At the north end of the site, a thick layer of stone rubble associated with a clay and stone-lined pit and two red deer antler picks was identified. Radiocarbon dating showed these to be from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. The overlying strata supported by a sequence of radiocarbon dates and dateable finds indicate that the site was also a focus of human activity in the 5th, 13th and 15th centuries up until the early 20th century. While the full extent of the site is currently unknown, the knoll upon which Dunnet Church now sits would appear to form a part of a major archaeological site that has seen almost continuous, or at least regular, occupation for over two millennia. [4]
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
Thurso is a town and former burgh on the north coast of the Highland council area of Scotland. Situated in the historical County of Caithness, it is the northernmost town on the island of Great Britain. From a latitudinal standpoint, Thurso is located further north than the southernmost point of Norway and in addition lies more than 500 miles (800 km) north of London.
Caithness is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland.
Durness is a village and civil parish in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. It lies on the north coast of the country in the traditional county of Sutherland, around 120 miles north of Inverness. The area is remote, and the parish is huge and sparsely populated, covering an area from east of Loch Eriboll to Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point of the Scottish mainland.
Dunnet Head is a headland in Highland, on the north coast of Scotland. Dunnet Head includes the most northerly point of both mainland Scotland and the island of Great Britain.
Lairg is a village and parish in Sutherland, Scotland. It has a population of 891 and is at the south-eastern end of Loch Shin.
Castletown is a village on the north coast of the Highland council area of Scotland, situated near Dunnet Bay. It is within the civil parish of Olrig, where it is the main settlement, and within the historic county of Caithness. The A836 links the village with Thurso and Tongue in the west and with John o' Groats in the east. The B876-A99 links the village with Wick in the southeast. Contrary to the common misconception, the name Castletown is a misnomer as there is no castle within the village limits.
Bonar Bridge is a village on the north bank of the Kyle of Sutherland to the west and the Dornoch Firth to the east in the Parish of Creich in the Highland council area of Scotland.
Comrie is a village and parish in the southern Highlands of Scotland, towards the western end of the Strathearn district of Perth and Kinross, 7 mi (11 km) west of Crieff.
Kenmore is a small village in Perthshire, in the Highlands of Scotland, located where Loch Tay drains into the River Tay.
Golspie is a village and parish in Sutherland, Highland, Scotland, which lies on the North Sea coast in the shadow of Ben Bhraggie. It has a population of around 1,350.
Skarfskerry is a settlement located in the far northern county Caithness on a small peninsula northeast of Thurso off the A836 in Scotland. It is the most northerly settlement in Great Britain. The name comes from the Old Norse for "cormorants' rock". Historically, it belonged to the Parish of Dunnet, along with Brough.
Stromeferry is a village, located on the south shore of the west coast sea loch, Loch Carron, in western Ross-shire, Scottish Highlands and is in the Scottish council area of Highland. Its name reflects its former role as the location of one of the many coastal ferry services which existed prior to the expansion of the road network in the 20th century.
Strathnaver or Strath Naver is the fertile strath of the River Naver, a famous salmon river that flows from Loch Naver to the north coast of Scotland. The term has a broader use as the name of an ancient province also known as the Mackay Country, once controlled by the Clan Mackay and extending over most of northwest Sutherland.
Lochearnhead is a village in Perthshire on the A84 Stirling to Crianlarich road at the foot of Glen Ogle, 14 miles north of the Highland Boundary Fault. It is situated at the western end of Loch Earn where the A85 road from Crieff meets the A84.
Broubster is a village in Highland, Scotland. Near Broubster, there is a Bronze Age megalithic arrangement. Ten stones remain of an original set of approximately 36. The arrangement is similar to a larger arrangement at Achavanich.
Headland Archaeology Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of the RSK Group. Headland provides archaeological services and heritage advice to the construction industry.
Brough /brɒx/ is a small village in Caithness on the far north coast of mainland Scotland. It is the most northerly village of mainland Great Britain. It is 10 miles east of Thurso, 20 miles north-west of Wick, 200 miles north of Edinburgh, and 500 miles north of London. It is on the southern shore of the Pentland Firth, the sea channel between Caithness and the Orkney Islands, notorious for strong tidal currents and exceptionally violent sea conditions. Brough is located on the B855 single-track road, 2.5 miles south east of Dunnet Head Lighthouse, the most northerly lighthouse and point on mainland Britain. The neighbouring village of Dunnet and the wide sandy beaches of Dunnet Bay lie 1.6 miles to the south. Brough is within the civil parish of Dunnet. John o' Groats, the north-easterly point of the mainland, lies 10 miles to the east.
The North Highland Way is a proposed 150 miles (240 km) hiking, cycling and horse riding trail in Scotland. Currently without official signage, it is navigable by GPS, linking Duncansby Head on the North East coast to Cape Wrath in the North West of Scotland's coast. The North Highland Way connects the Cape Wrath Trail in the west with the Moray Firth trail in the east. The North Coast 500 is a driving route, which follows a similar line to the North Highland Way.
St. John's Loch is a loch in the civil parish of Dunnet, in Caithness, Highland, Scotland. Loch Heilen and St. John's Loch are the two largest lochs in the parish. It is about two-thirds mile inland in a north-easterly direction from Dunnet Bay on the north coast of Scotland.
