An Afternoon in Lossiemouth

So here we are at Aroma for a nice lunch.   This is a good cafe on the outskirts of Lossie on the headland by Covesea Lighthouse. 

Completed in 1846, the Lighthouse was manned until 1984 when automation meant that the keepers were no longer required as the switching on and off of the lamp could be done remotely from the Northern Lighthouse Board headquarters in Edinburgh. With the advent of new technology, the addition of a North Cardinal Buoy next to the Halliman Skerries allowed the lamp to be switched off in 2012.
Access to the Lighthouse was always at the discretion of the Lighthouse Keepers, and as such there was never total public access to the tower. With the support of the local community there was a desire to get this wonderful building into public hands. The Lossiemouth Business Association helped form the Covesea Lighthouse Community Company Ltd, which was established to buy the property, always with the intention of getting it open to the public for the first time. With the support of government funding the Lighthouse was bought in 2013. Since then there has been a lot of work done to allow progress towards public opening.It is shut today and D says that in fact it rarely opens. So watch this space. 

Lossiemouth was originally the port belonging for Elgin but became an important fishing town. Although there has been over a 1,000 years of settlement in the area, the present day town was formed over the past 250 years and consists of four separate communities that eventually merged into one. 

Although the Romans never conquered the peoples of the North of Scotland, they made several journeys to the Moray Firth coast. Settlement in Lossiemouth has a long history. St Gervadius, a Celtic hermit inhabited a cave overlooking the entrance to the sea loch, Loch Spynie. In his time, the River Lossie entered the loch further to the south, near Inchbroom. The rocky promontory is recorded in the Chartulary of Moray as Holyman's Head and it is said that Gervadius (St Gerardine as he became known in later times) would walk around the headland with a flaming torch to warn ships away from the dangerous rocks. Even today the Halliman Skerries retain the reference to St Gervadius. He died in 934 AD and his cave became a place of pilgrimage right up to the 16th Century. The cave was eventually quarried out.

In medieval times the port was probably well downstream from the fishing station at Spynie. It seems likely, therefore to look upon Lossie as not merely a fishing station but as a trading port that the Elgin Burgesses used.  The port and fishery were also mentioned in 1551.

The loch and the river became separated around 1600. A succession of storms built banks of sand and boulders that eventually closed off the sea entrance.

In 1685, the Elgin burgh council called upon a German engineer, Peter Brauss, to look at the viability of providing a harbour at the mouth of the River Lossie; he decided that a harbour could be established. The first efforts looked to have failed but by 1764, the new jetty had been built at a cost of £1200.

At the time that the new river mouth harbour was being constructed, so too was a more planned development, called Branderburgh, laid out in streets running parallel and at right angles to each other. An open square with a cross separated the first settlement from the new. The fishers occupied the houses at the Seatown and the builders, craftsmen and merchants in the new Lossiemouth. Later, the Spynie canal was cut to drain Loch Spynie, see last blog post.  This would present a physical barrier to the two communities and entered the River Lossie in this area.

The Morayshire Railway was officially opened at ceremonies in Elgin and Branderburgh on 10 August 1852, the steam engines having been delivered to Lossie by sea. It was the first railway north of Aberdeen and initially travelled only the 5½ miles between Lossie and Elgin but later extended south to Craigellachie.

The railway and harbour became very important to the economy of both Lossie and Moray. It was the Morayshire Railway that persuaded Col Brander, of Pitgaveny, to build the bridge from the Seatown to the east beach to encourage more day tripping in the summer months.  It persists to this day. itEdiHere is a map depicting the railways in the good old days. 

Looking back to Lossie from the harbour area.

Intrepid surfers!