Balmerino 

The Fishing Bothy

 

A but and ben fishing bothy can still be seen here built into the fabric of a later development. Several salmon boats operated from here and supplied fish - mostly salmon but also sprats in season- to the processing plant at Nether Kirkton. Bothies such as this one operated the length of the river as far as the Friarton Bridge at Perth. There were bothies or more basic fishing stations operating about every mile. Many of the ruins still remain as well as the boulders on the shore that were the base for winches used to haul boats and nets ashore.

 

Most bothes had at least two crews which consisted of local men and very often crews from Harris in the Outer Hebrides. Factors from local estates travelled there to buy tweed (which they would trade as merchants) and to engage crews of experienced fishermen who were looking for work - usually for times that fitted between planting and harvest on the croft and other opportunities on the herring fleets. Harris Gaelic was often heard spoken around Balmerino and the shops and tea rooms of Kirkton until late in the 1950's.

 

The salmon catches were very large but the infrastructure for selling was poor. There were ice houses at Birkhill and at Nether Kirkton and fish were packed in ice and sent by train as far as London. So plentiful and cheap was the catch that local farmhands had terms in their contracts stipulating that they would not be served salmon - seen as a cheap, peasant meat- more than twice a week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image by Elizabeth Lawson