Balmerino 

The Old Pier

 

The pier was once a busy terminal for flax, grain and people. Some of the farms on the north shore of the Tay were obliged to send their grain for milling to the Balmerino Mills on penalty of forfeiting their tennancies. In the Middle Ages the pier was a busy transit point when travel by boat was far easier and faster than making your way over the rough roads on land. As well as sailing ships from across the country, pilgrims and goods came from overseas too and the small ports at Powgavie and Port Allen (at Errol) plied people and trade by rowing boats. It was termed a pier (rather then a quay which is solidly built without water flowing under it) because an arched bridge in the structure allowed water to sluice through at high tide and de-silt the harbour.

 

By the 18th century the pier was owned by the Custom House in Dundee and became the main departure point on the south side of the Tay for shipping wheat and barley to the Forth and Clyde canal. It's first purpose was to send lime from fife to the hills behind Dundee. the Boat of Balmerino, a small packet mailboat, sailed to Dundee every Friday in the early 1800s, carrying passengers and merchandise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little is left of the pier now but you can still see the wooden stantions that boats tied onto. One night during the Second World War a German Stukka bomber mistook the light on the end of the pier for a boat and dropped a stick of bombs which narrowly missed. The explosion only caused minor damage. The pilot was probably anxious to get rid of his bombs before returning to base and had missed Dundee and the rail bridge which enforced a strict blackout. A boy playing in a boat at the pier a few years after the war pulled out one of these bombs from the mud. He said that it was unexploded and that he dropped it back in to the river in fright...perhaps it is still there? Although it survived the Luftwaffe, the pier was washed away in a storm in the 1970s.

 

The pier was L shaped with an unusual culvert through the elbow of the L. This used the force of the tide to prevent silting in the small harbour area to the east.

 

In the early 1800's a packet, or small passage boat, sailed between Balmerino and Dundee every Friday, and in 1890 the "Bonnie Dundee" was built in Montrose for James Tare of Dundee. It was 57 ft long and carried 157 passengers and so began excursions to Balmerino and Brideg of Earn. After 14 years of piloting his boat, James Tare was found to have no pilot's licence. He was fined ten and sixpence and made to employ a qualified pilot. who ran the boat aground. the ship had to be rescued by James Tare himself, who was hurriedly issued with a pilot's licence. In 1905 it was replaced by the Advance: 72 ft long and carrying 366 passengers. Pleasure trips continued until Mr Tare retired in 1912. Another ship familiar to Balmerino was the Forfarshire, one of the regular "Fifies" - the regular ferries sailing between Dundee and Newport.