Achnacraig to Badbea
Joseph Grant was a crofter of three acres and a fisherman,
born in Achnacraig near Ousdale about 1815. His father Robert was said to be a tenant farmer and a tailor. His mother was named Margaret. The family were
living in Achnacraig (aka Auchencraig) at the time of the 1841 Scotland census. They had moved to Badbea by the next
census in 1851. It is almost certain that the Grants suffered eviction at the
whim of the Laird, Donald Horne, along with the other Achnacraig families that he
kicked out.
Alexander Gunn states:
D.
Horne was to turn out two thriving villages on his estate, containing twelve
families each, and who paid a rental of from £7 to £10, and possessed on an
average ten head of cattle. One of these villages, Auchencraig, had a creek for
fishing connected with it, where I have seen 14 boats engaged for seven weeks
in the season at the herring fishing and landed and cured thousands of barrels
of herring, and who carried on a considerable trade with the Moray Firth for
the various commodities used in the herring trade. There were hundreds of
pounds spent from time to time on the port for curing and harbour
accommodation. Alas, where is it today?
Source: Alex Gunn, Northern Ensign, 28 June 1892, Land Reforms in
Caithness
Following eviction to Badbea life was extremely difficult for
everyone, with insufficient land to bring in a living and
nearly impossible housing and seasonal weather conditions.
According to Alex Gunn:
There was some trifling work to be
got occasionally on the estate, but the rate of wages was very low. One
shilling per day was the rate for the best worker till within the last 25 years
or so. It was no uncommon thing for a person to have to travel two or three
miles to his work and only be paid 1s. There was no such thing as weekly or
fortnightly pays - not even monthly - not even payment once in six months.
Twelve months was the shortest time, and frequently two years elapsed before a
penny could be got. If any young man had the courage to go and work beyond the
bounds of the estate, where he would be better remunerated and regularly paid,
his parents would suffer for it by being turned out of their house and lot at
the next term. There was a system of tyranny and oppression practiced long ago
by lairds that could scarcely be believed in our times.
Source: Alex Gunn, Rambling Recollections of Berriedale, Article II
No Date
Fisherman
 |
| Badbea Census 1851 |
While providing for his now widowed mother and unmarried
sister, Joseph Grant did the only thing he could do to bring in extra money to
live on. He went fishing. Often the fish in the Moray Firth were plentiful but
the hazards of the unpredictable and often severe weather, changeable currents,
and lack of safety equipment frequently resulted in drowning for local
fishermen.
Joseph married Hannah
 |
| Badbea Census 1861 |
In 1851 Joseph Grant married Hannah Bannerman from Loth, a
village on the other side of the Ord, the precarious pass between Sutherland
and Caithness. Soon there were new mouths to be fed. The 1861 census shows
Robina 8, John 6, William 4, Joseph 4, and Donald 11 months. By 1871 there was
also daughter Margaret. Six children to be somehow fed clothed and the older children got to school
- a long walk each day to Berriedale School.
 |
| Fisher Laddies, Newhaven David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. |
Living on the Edge
 |
| Cliffs of The Ord the treacherous pass between Navidale and Ousdale |
The dangers of living near the cliffs at Badbea are well
documented. It is said that Angus Sutherland the weaver whose house was near
the edge of the cliff tethered his children to keep them from falling off the
edge or being blown away.
Alex Gunn gives a different version:
The young folks, in my time, could
run along the face of these dangerous rocks like rabbits. The traffic to and
fro from the shore, both summer and winter, by those engaged at the fishing was
very considerable, and those giddy tracks, which did duty for roads, were used
in the darkest nights with as little concern as if they were turnpike roads.
Sometimes an unfortunate cow or stirk slipped their feet when they ventured too
far to get a mouthful of the sweet grass which grew luxuriantly on the cliffs,
and, of course, were dashed to pieces on the rocks below, to the great grief
and loss of the owner, who could ill afford to lose one of his herd.
Source: Alex Gunn, Rambling Recollections of Berriedale, Article II
No DateGrief of John's Death
 |
| Sea birds nesting on cliffs just north of Badbea |
Sea birds came in large numbers and nested on the vertical cliffs
all along the Caithness coast. Collecting eggs for food has probably been
practiced on these cliffs for hundreds of years. One summer’s morning, Tuesday
June 5, 1866 sometime between 11 and 11.30 am, John Grant, the eldest son of
Joseph and Hannah, nearly twelve years old, was looking for bird’s eggs on the
face of a cliff near Achnacraig. He may have been sure-footed but this was one
of the highest and meanest of cliffs and John was venturing too near. Suddenly,
missing his footing John slipped and fell more than 300 feet to the rocks
below. John died instantaneously. One newspaper report said he ‘was dashed to
pieces’. Who found him missing is not known. The recovery of John would have
been a difficult and heart breaking mission whether down the cliff-face, or via
boat and the sea. We can imagine mother Hannah grief-stricken, waiting at the top
of the cliff for her dear boy, probably clinging to some hope that he would be
still alive. Hannah would have tenderly taken John into the ben end of her
stone house and laid him on a bed. No doctor was called to certify the death.
There was nothing a doctor could have done. Family and friends from the close-knit Badbea community
would have come and stayed to talk and read the scriptures with the family. The
children would have sat still and shocked, mourning their dead brother. His
death would never leave them. In preparing his son for burial Joseph signed John's death certificate. What a heart breaking tragedy for this family who had no
choice but to remain living in this perilous place.
John’s accidental death was widely reported in the
newspapers.
 |
| John O Groat Journal 14 June 1866 |
 |
| Glasgow Herald 14 June 1866 |
 |
| Death of John Grant |
Note: John’s death certificate also suggests the possibility
that he could have been looking for rabbits, another popular pastime with the
local lads.
According to the locality of the cliffs given by the various records these cliffs showing Ousdale and Achnacraig are the very cliffs that John would have fallen over. Ousdale farm is in the background.
Grog Grief!
The next year the Grant family
were again in the news. It is an interesting thing that people who had an
untimely death or broke the law are the ones who are the most likely to have a
newspaper record for us to find. Mid-winter December 1867 at the popular
Dunbeath market the Grants got into a spot of bother with the police and Exciseman and got
taken to court.
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| John O Groat Journal 19 Dec 1867 |
Selling Drink Without A Licence. - A curious case of this
kind came up at the last Justice of Peace Court. A complaint by Mr Mitchell,
Procurator-Fiscal under the Public Houses Act, was brought before the Justices,
setting forth that Joseph Grant and Hannah Grant, his wife, had been guilty of
bartering or selling spirits at the Dunbeath market without having a licence in
that behalf. From the evidence led, it appeared that the parties had had a tent
at the market, for the purposes of selling spirits, and when asked by the
police for their certificate, a line from Mr Mackay, Innkeeper, Helmsdale, was
produced by the woman, setting forth that she was Mr Mackay’s servant. The
policeman asked her if the profits were Mr Mackay’s and she said they were not,
that they were for her own behalf. Some of the measures were Mr Mackay’s and
the spirits were bought from him. On the second day of the market a board with
Mr Mackay’s name was put up over the tent for a sign. One of the policeman
deponed that he knew that the woman lived in Caithness, at Badbea, with her
husband, and was not in Mr Mackay’s service as a domestic. Mr Nimmo, who
appeared for the defence, craved an adjournment till court the next day, when
he would be able to bring Mr Mackay as a witness for the defence. The Justices
agreed to adjourn the case accordingly.
The topic of whisky making in the
Highlands is one for another time but suffice to say making whisky was part of
the fibre of every day existence for Scots. There were a number of
parliamentary interventions to impose taxes and controls on whisky but these
only served to make ‘smuggling’ or illicit distilling and selling of whisky a matter for almost the entire country. Excisemen were appointed to
collect whisky taxes and catch ‘smugglers’. In reality, magistrates often
imposed moderate fines and reaped their own rewards in kind. Like everyone
else, the residents of Badbea had their own browsts and sold whisky, that being
one of the few ways they could get cash to meet the rent demands of the Laird.
In the above report the Grants
were not too bothered by the attentions of the police one day and returned to
the market the next to continue selling their spirits with the connivance of
the Helmsdale Innkeeper. I have not been able to access the final outcome of
this case but it seems very likely that Mr Nimmo, Mr Mackay and the Justices of
the Peace were all sympathetic to letting the Grants off lightly.
We'll
mak our maut, and we'll brew our drink,
We'll laugh, sing, and rejoice, man,
And mony braw thanks to the meikle black deil,
That danc'd awa wi' th' Exciseman.
The Deil's Awa Wi' The Exciseman - Robert Burns 1792
Census 1871
The 1871 Census for Badbea shows
Joseph as a crofter and Hannah his wife with family William, Joseph, Donald and
Margaret living at home. Robina has left home. I have not traced her further
movements.
The Grief of the Storm
 |
| Fishing Season at Wick on a calm day |
28 January 1875 and once more the
newspapers carried a story about the Grants of Badbea.
 |
| The Bradford Observer, Thursday, January 28, 1875 |
Further reports regarding the
storm of Saturday represent it as having been the severest north-westerly gale
on the Caithness coast for at least a generation. At the fishing village of
Badbea the sea rose to a great height, threatening the destruction of the
boats, in attempting to save one of which a fisherman, named Joseph Grant, aged
sixty, was struck by the sea and washed away: Two men along with him had a
narrow escape, and could do nothing to save him.
Joseph’s death certificate states
that when he was engaged hauling a small boat in a storm he was washed away by a
wave. Judging by the death certificate, William seems to have been one of the
two men mentioned who had a lucky escape. What a shocking experience for
William to see his father washed away and only just escaping himself.
 |
| Black Sunday Wick |
More Grief - Margaret's Death
There was a strong tradition that the
sons of fishermen follow in their father’s footsteps but unsurprisingly the sons of Joseph Grant did not.
There was not enough to live on at
the tiny Badbea croft for the family growing up and rent still to be paid. One commentator gives some figures for the rent Joseph Grant was paying but does not give the source of these figures. Apparently this croft land was not made available for any other tenants but was taken into the land grazed by the Ausdale farm. Joseph Grant had lived at Badbea for about 30 years and Hannah not much less.
Shortly after the death of Joseph,
Hannah gave up the croft, left Badbea and took the family to live in Edinburgh. How plucky
of her. But again this move was not
without a terrible cost. The perils of
crowded city living where serious diseases easily spread were real. Margaret
caught Typhoid Fever. On Saturday night,
27 October 1877 at 9.30 p.m. 15 year old Margaret died.
 |
| Source: Badbea in Retrospect John O Groat Journal 22 July, 1977 |
Census 1881
The 1881 census shows things stabilising
and looking better for the Grants. They are living in St Cuthberts,
Edinburgh. Hannah, shown as a widow and
Formerly a Farmer’s Wife has her sons, all unmarried, with her. Happily the
boys have got work. William is now a Police Constable, Joseph a Mason and
Donald a Joiner. In true Caithness style they are all shown as Gaelic speakers.
Census 1891
The 1891 census, Hannah aged 68,
has moved to St Andrews, Edinburgh with her son Donald. He is still single and
is working as a shop fitter and joiner. Donald states he is an employer and the
house has six rooms each with a window so his circumstances look quite comfortable
for himself and his mother Hannah. They are both shown as Gaelic and English
speakers.
Hannah would always have carried
invisible weights with her from the heartbreaking accidental death of John her
first born son, her husband Joseph being swept out to sea in a storm, his body
never found and Margaret her youngest daughter dying of Typhoid in Edinburgh.
Hannah died in Edinburgh in 1894. The cause of death is given as Chronic Bronchitus, Age and Debility. Hannah was only 64 but must have aged with all the troubles that had beset her. It seems likely that either Robina, Joseph or Donald was looking after Hannah. Policeman William had moved to Galashiels in the Scottish Borders but was present with his mother when she died so must have been called to her bedside by one or more of his siblings. William who had witnessed his father Joseph's death, would have been present to bury his brother John and his sister Margaret also did the right thing for his mother Hannah when her time came. That speaks of family solidarity despite all.
Joseph Grant and his family will always be remembered
on the Badbea Monument.
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