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The town of Cromarty was established by the early thirteenth century as a Royal Burgh - that is, a settlement with the right to trade. It also had a castle and a sheriff, who exercised authority over the area around the town. In these days it would be something of a "frontier town" of Scots-speaking southerners on the edge of the Gaelic speaking Highlands.
Cromarty appears to have been reasonably prosperous at this time and the Courthouse museum has a large collection of silver coins lost at the burgh fairs. However, along with most of the north, Cromarty's fortunes declined in the fourteenth century.
Sir Thomas Urquhart
There was a revival of trade from around 1600, Cromarty Castle was extended and one of the town's most famous inhabitants was born - the talented and eccentric Sir Thomas Urquhart.
He is best known for his translation of the French writer Rabelais 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' said by some to be "more like Rabelais than Rabelais was himself."
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 In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Cromarty's economy flourished with trade in grain and salt fish. A few houses from this period can still be seen.
It was, however, in the 1770s that the Cromarty you see today was created. The owner of the Cromarty estate, George Ross, had made money in London and invested his fortune in the development of the town.
He built the hand-loom factory which worked hemp imported from St Petersburg, a brewery, the Courthouse, the harbour and, in place of the old castle, Cromarty House.
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 He also introduced lace making and iron working, landscaped Cromarty Hill and encouraged improvements in agriculture, including large scale rearing of pigs.
Following his improvements, most houses in the town were rebuilt.
Cromarty remained prosperous until the 1830s when it declined rapidly - but the fine buildings of its period of prosperity remain making it one of the best preserved historic towns in Scotland. |
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Hugh Miller
The writer Hugh Miller (1802-1856) collected and published the folklore of the town in his book 'Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland' and recorded his experiences as a boy and young man in 'My Schools and Schoolmasters'.
These works, together with Cromarty's buildings and other sources for its history, give a unique insight into the life of a Scottish town.
A website has ben set up to celebrate the bicentennial of Miller's birth at www.hughmiller.org.
Cromarty's economy was sustained in the later nineteenth century by fishing and, in the early twentieth century, by the creation of a naval base in the Cromarty Firth - one of the finest natural harbours in Europe. The fortifications which guarded the entrance to the Firth still stand on the summits of the North and South Sutors.
In the 1970s the exploitation of North Sea oil and improved road links to Inverness once again revived the local economy. Fortunately this coincided with a greater awareness of the value of Cromarty's past and as a result the town is both a well preserved and lively community, protecting its heritage but looking to the future. |
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