Kirkside Bothy & the "Toorie Hoose"
(plus some memories)

This is the salmon fisher's bothy at Kirkside and the old "Toorie Hoose" which was built in 1847 by George Thomas Straton on the top of the cliff. Back in the '80s the "Toorie" was pulled down one night to be replaced by a bungalow. There are still some question about why a "listed building" like this was demolished, I am led to believe, without proper permission.

I was brought up at the Toorie Hoose and spent my first eight years there. My grandfather Walter Beattie worked for the Tay Salmon Fishing Co Ltd at the salmon fisher's bothy at Kirkside just below the toorie. Along with other things he cleaned and packed the fish then sent them off on the train for the markets in London. His son, my uncle Walter or big Watt, was the skipper at the bothy and his son, young Walter, and daughter Stella were the only other kids in the area for me to play with. Unfortunately when my grandfather died in 1949 we had to leave the Toorie and move up into the village of St. Cyrus, as it was a tied house that went with the job. I have many vivid memories of my time there and of course, as it was only a couple of miles away, I often used to go back there during the summer holidays to go out in the boat or just spend time there with the fishers.

When I was young I remember going out in the salmon fisher's coble with them. I loved it, watching them at work rowing the boat, six of them with an oar each. It took some strength to pull these oars especially when the sea was rough and a fair wind blowing. If I remember right there were eight or ten big bag nets in the sea for each boat and there were four boats along the beach at St. Cyrus in those days. They were fished twice a day except Saturday, only once, and Sunday when the fishers got a rest.

There were a couple of "wee cobles" tied up in the slunks and we, my cousin Walter and myself, and sometimes our friends, were allowed to use them when the tide was in. We had great fun rowing about in the slunks sometimes trying to see how close we could get to the ducks and swans that used to come into the slunks to feed. I remember having to get down into the bottom of the boat on several occasions when the swans got angry and used to fly low over the boat dive bombing us.

Another thing I used to do was "help" my grandfather to clean the fish then pack them in boxes with ice ready for the journey to London by train. Then I would go to Dubton station in the lorry with Jock Spink, the driver. I feel sorry for the modern day children who because of all the Health & Safety regulations can't do the things we were able to do. They miss out on so many things and I know that we learned a lot from these experiences and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves doing them.

When the tide was out the slunks, being tidal, almost dried out except for parts of the old river course. Back then there were some quite deep pools left mainly at the bends of the channel. I know as I fell into one, when I was four years old, and was helped out by my dog Bonso. I can remember him jumping in after me as I somersaulted in the water, he probably thought I was just playing and wanted to join in. I can remember grabbing his tail and him pulling me back to the bank and then me clambering out dripping wet and cold. I got dried out and warmed up in front of the fire in the bothy by auld Eleck Duncan, one of my favourite fishers.

There are lots of fond memories from those days down at the bothy playing around and watching and helping the fishers, not that we were all that much help, probably more of a hindrance. But they never complained and always asked me to come along and muck in with whatever they were doing. I learned to mend nets, taught by my grandfather at the fire side in the evenings, clean and pack the fish. I used to help pull the fisher's waders off when they got back to the bothy, can you imagine the smell when they came off having been on their feet for a whole day (and no deodorants in those days). Other wee jobbies were to help make the tea and spread their pieces, get water from the well or cut up the "bogie roll" for their pipes, I can still remember the smell because it overcame the sweaty feet that permeated through the whole bothy.

Back then as there was no TV and not a lot on the wireless (as radios were called then) all the fishers had their little party pieces they did to entertain themselves in the evenings. Of course the same applied to the farmers etc which is where all the bothy ballads originate from. Well I am told as my grandfather was a big strong man his party piece was to write his name on the bothy wall with a 56lb weight hanging from his little finger. No mean feat that but then there were no mechanical aids back then and everything was done by muscle power so the fishers, who mostly worked on the farms when the fishing ended, were strong men.

My grandfather was a bit of an artist when he was younger and liked to paint pictures of fishing boats. I have one here of a trawler that he painted a long time ago. Back in 2003, I think it was, we took my mother to Rock Hall to have a look at the house and bothie. When we got there we discovered that it had been bought by a family who were in the process of renovating it to be used as a family home and B&B. When I told them my mother had been brought up there they invited us in to have a look at what they were doing. During the tour they showed a painting they had discovered when they had stripped the wall of a bedroom. He had painted it on the plaster wall and over the years it had been covered up by other people who lived there. I have just had an email from the present owners telling me that the area of plaster with the painting had been cut out of the wall and in at the moment stored in an old fish box (how appropriate) awaiting slight repairs as some of the plaster has broken off. They are going to send me a photo of it when it is repaired and hopefully I might get to actually see it again sometime. If I can get a decent photo I will post it on here.

You can have a look at some other pictures associated with Kirkside in the old days, the Toorie as it was back in approx 1943 and the slunks when the tide still filled them with water and the bridge was needed to get across to the sea. There are also pictures of the fishers at work mending nets and out at sea in their coble. Just click here, or follow the link above, to see them.

St Cyrus National Nature Reserve and Visitor Centre

Behind the dunes is an area of old salt marsh, known locally as ‘the Slunks’. Back about 1879 the river changed course and left this a flat area that was once the North Esk river estuary. As the tide came in seawater regularly filled the abandoned river channel and them it dried up at low tide leaving some quite large pools, some as much as several feet deep as mentioned above.

There was an old bridge, getting very unstable when I was a child, which the fishers had built many years ago. This was so they could get over the slunks to and from the boats with their nets and the fish they caught. That bridge was replaced by a new one in 1985. It was built by the Gurka soldiers as a summer exercise and was a big improvement on the old fisher's one. But then the fisher's bridge had been in constant use for decades, and built without the use on modern materials and technology - no mean feat. The photo above shows the slunks as it is now, all dried up, and the bridge that the Gurkas built.

It was about the late 1980's that the mouth of the slunks was blocked off during a bad storm by blown sand and the river again slightly changing course. Since then the sea very seldom enters the slunks, only at very high tides, and the last time there was water in them was back in 2001.

This whole area has been a Nature Reserve since 1962 and in managed by the Scottish Natural Heritage. It has many flowers, insects, birds and animals that are very rare up in this part on the country. This is mainly due to the sheltered conditions here which give the area its own microclimate. There is a very interesting article about the Reserve here, have a look at it and perhaps pay it a visit if you are in the area sometime.

The reserve's museum is housed in the old Johnston's bothy and store which was originally built as a lifeboat station in the late 1860's. In those days the Montrose lifeboat covered the area of Luan Bay, Montrose harbour and bay as far as the North Esk river, which at that time was north of the bothy as the river had not altered course then. This was a range of about ten miles. Kirkside was a dangerous and isolated locality and many vessels that drifted ashore were left stranded because of the time taken for the Montrose lifeboat crew to carry the smaller lifeboat or surf-boat over land to the scene. As a result it was decided that a new lifeboat station would be built beside the Kirkside fishing station on the north banks of the North Esk river. This was manned by a new 10-oared boat called the "Resolute" but I understand that through various reasons it was never put into active use and the station was closed in the mid 1880's.