Exploring Wick

I’ve always bypassed Wick when I’ve travelled up and down to the far north of Scotland. No particular reason other than that it’s a way off the main A9 route and I’ve always had other places I’ve wanted to visit. This time I was determined to stick to the coastal road and visit some of the places which have found fame since some clever marketing person coined the idea of the North Coast 500 route a few years ago. I’m looking at you Whaligoe Steps.

As I was going to be driving right through Wick it would have been too much of a missed opportunity not to stop and explore for a few hours.

I found a large free car park by the river and wandered back through the town centre and shopping area. So far, not so good. This is the original old part of Wick, but you wouldn’t have guessed it. Though there were plenty of shops, it all looked a bit unloved and rundown. That changed once I crossed the bridge however.

A couple of information boards informed me of some of the history and one had a map for a heritage trail around the ‘new’ part of Wick. Yes, I know the words ‘heritage’ and ‘new’ don’t usually go together, but bear with me. I took a photo of the map with my phone and then used this to follow the trail. Here’s what I found.

The bridge I’d just crossed is known as Telford’s Bridge. It was originally built in 1807, but the one we see today is from 1875.

Thomas Telford (1757-1835) is someone whose name crops up a lot if you explore the British Isles. He was an engineer and architect who designed numerous roads, bridges, canals, harbours … Basically he was one of the founding fathers of the country’s modern infrastructure.

In 1790 the British Fisheries Society tasked him with investigating all the coastal harbours in the north of Scotland with the aim of finding the one most suitable to be developed as a flagship harbour for the burgeoning herring industry.

Can you guess where I’m going with this? Yep, he chose Wick. This meant not only was a new harbour needed, but also everything else that was necessary to turn Wick into a fisheries’ hub: housing, stores, coopering (barrel-making) yards, and so on.

What resulted was the first industrial planned town. Yes, the first industrial planned town was not in Manchester where I live and which is home to the industrial revolution. Nor was it any of the famous planned towns built by philanthropic industrialists like Titus Salt’s Saltaire or George Cadbury’s Bournville. No, the first industrial planned town was in Wick in the far north of Scotland.

I have to admit this blew my mind just a tiny bit.

The new settlement was built on the side of the bridge where I was now standing and was named Pulteneytown after Sir William Pulteney (1729-1805), Governor of the British Fisheries Society and reputedly the richest man in Great Britain at the time.

The settlement is a town of two halves. Lower Pulteneytown was designed with the streets in a grid pattern. The buildings were arranged around courtyards which were used as places for activities such as curing fish and making barrels. People mostly lived upstairs whilst the ground floors of the buildings were used for businesses. As you might imagine, Lower Pulteneytown was the less prestigious part of town and where the ‘workers’ lived.

Upper Pulteneytown on the other hand, was set higher up the hill giving good views of the harbour. The houses were larger and only really for residential use. This is where the wealthier people lived.

After genning up on the history I turned and stood with my back to the River Wick. Across from me was Mackay’s Hotel. It was built as a Temperance Hotel in 1883 though I assume it sells alcohol today. I didn’t go inside to check because it was the outside that made it interesting.

The building is on the corner of two streets. Rather than having the two sides of the building meet in a point like most buildings, the corner has been sliced off leading it to have an extra (albeit tiny) side. Sort of like the Flatiron Building in New York, just a lot smaller.

So what? you may  be wondering.

Well, when the building was completed the owner was told he had to have a name on the short side of it. He complied with this and a few years later, in 1887, this short side was recognised as a street in its own right. Ebenezer Place, at 2.06m long, is now in the Guinness Book of Records for being the shortest street in … wait for it … the WORLD!!

Yes, this little town in the far north of Scotland not only has the first planned industrial town, but also the shortest street in the world.

My mind was a little bit more blown.

Leaving the world’s smallest street I followed the river a short way before heading into the grid of streets that makes up Lower Pulteneytown.

Many of the streets are named after important people from the British Fisheries Society, though Telford has one named after him too.

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Telford Street is quite interesting to walk down because in 2004 many of the flagstones were inscribed with words and sayings in the Caithnessian dialect and copper works depicting images with a seagoing theme were placed on some of the buildings.

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Up next is Bank Street which also has a couple of points of interest. At one end is the Memorial Garden built in remembrance of the first civilian bombing in World War II. I assumed this was the first civilian bombing in Wick, but no (why was I even surprised by this point?), it wasn’t just the first civilian bombing in Wick. On the 1st of July 1940, the first daylight bombing raid took place over Britain. It’s aim was to wipe out the aerodrome that was in, have a guess, Wick.

So this small town in the far north of Scotland got a place in history as the first place in Britain to undergo a civilian bombing raid in WWII.

Can you imagine what was happening to my mind?

Sadly fifteen people, eight of them children, lost their lives that day, hence the memorial garden. Three people who died in a second raid the following October are also remembered here.

Besides the memorial garden, Bank Street is also home to the Wick Heritage Museum. I popped in expecting to have a quick look around a small collection of local artefacts and maybe learn a bit more history.

The museum turned out to be not just one, but several houses in the row. One of the curators gave me a mini guided tour so I could get an overview, then left me to my own devices. It was actually quite overwhelming. There was just so much to see on so many different topics. The nature of the building was quite maze-like and I’d think I’d seen everything and then discover a whole new section.

There were replicas of rooms and workshops; wedding dresses; toys; medals; boats; old typewriters; stuffed animal heads; the light from a lighthouse. It was the kind of place that really needed multiple visits to do it justice; it was just too much to take in on one visit.

Need I mention my mind at this point?

My favourite part was an exhibition of photographs by three generations of the Johnston family. The black and white images were taken between 1863 and 1975 and depict all aspects of Wick life. They have been blown up to huge sizes without losing any of their quality. They are so clear and crisp it seemed almost impossible that many of them could have been taken over 150 years ago.

There goes that mind blowing again.

Although it is permitted to take photos in the museum they ask that you don’t take photos of the photos. There are a few outside on a wall near the memorial garden however, and so I took a few shots of those so I can give you a taster of what they’re like.

Next on my walk were the Black Stairs. These don’t look that special but they were painted by LS Lowry in 1936. Lowry grew up in Salford and lived in various places around the Greater Manchester area. For a time he lived in Mottram, not too far from me. Although best known for his ‘matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs’  images of life in mill towns he did paint other places and in other styles. I was in a random art gallery not so long ago and found a painting he’d done of the Moravian Settlement which is minutes from my house

I hadn’t known he’d been to Wick, but apparently he used to holiday in the North of Scotland in the 1930s. His painting of the Black Stairs sold at auction a few years ago for nearly a million quid!

Not many people visit the town where I live (as opposed to the city itself). Not many people visit Wick. If you’d asked me if I was the only person to have ever been to both places I’d have answered with a very confident ‘most probably’. However, here was a famous artist who has visited both.

Mind blowing time again.

Leaving Lower Pulteneytown, the Heritage Trail led me to the harbour. Telford’s harbour was completed and open for business in 1881. As I wandered round all that seemed to be going on was the handling of a delivery of massive windmill parts for a new wind farm.

During the boom years of the herring trade it all would have been very different. As I’ve seen in pictures from the heydays of herring fishing everywhere up and down the coast from Shetland to Suffolk, the harbour would have been crowded with boats and the quay filled with women gutting and curing the fish. I tried to imagine the noise, the sounds, the smells, but my life is far too removed to be able to really feel what it must have been like.

I walked further out along the coast. There’s a swimming pool cut in the rocks that fills with seawater somewhere along here, but I didn’t know how far it was and turned back without finding it. The pool is known as the ‘Trinkie‘ (a Scottish word for trench) and was created in part of an old quarry about eighty years ago.

As I walked back towards town I headed up into Upper Pulteneytown. Harbour Terrace links the two parts of Pulteneytown and was where Robert Louis Stevenson stayed when he was in Wick working with his father, Thomas Stevenson, on designing a breakwater.

I already knew how much the Stevenson family were associated with northern Scotland (they built most of the lighthouses) and so finding out that the author of Treasure Island had stayed here didn’t do any further damage to my mind.

Upper Pulteneytown has much bigger houses, some of which are set around the area’s focal point, Argyle Square. This might have been the posh part of town, but it was still a fishing town and so the square was used for drying fishing nets. These days it’s planted with trees and is rather a pleasant space. 

One thing I noticed as I walked around both parts of Pulteneytown was how there were really nice, well-maintained houses and buildings and alongside them were properties with boarded windows and in need of a paint-job.

I assumed this was the sign of a general lack of funding and well-paid jobs in the area. The town, being as out-of-the-way as it is, probably doesn’t get too much passing trade or business from tourists either. As some buildings had windows actually bricked up or had boards that looked as if they were a permanent feature I guessed this lack of money wasn’t a new problem. Wick’s loss of wealth can be dated back to the decline of the herring trade in the early twentieth century.

That many buildings are well looked after, however, shows that this small town still has pride and is trying to make the most of itself.

I was coming to the end of my walk by now and just had a couple more things to see.

Pulteneytown Academy School was built in 1838. It’s no longer a school though it’s still kept its old Victorian school look. These days it is used as Wick’s main performance venue and is know as The Assembly Rooms.

Close by is Carnegie Public Library, opened in 1898. Its founder, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, financed 3,000 public libraries throughout Britain, Ireland and the US in the late 1800s. A way to tell if a library is a Carnegie Library is to look for the family motto, ‘Let there be light‘, above the door.

My walk was done and all I had to do now was return to Telford’s Bridge and the car park. I had one final treat left in store however.

Next to the library, in what looks like an ordinary house, is a coffee shop. A man was outside taking things inside and looked like he was closing up. I stopped to chat and he told me I could still have a coffee. I went into what was probably a drawing room, but is now a combination of coffee shop and office and met the owner who made me an espresso.

The Caithness Coffee Company isn’t your usual kind of coffee shop. Although there’s a table to sit at whilst you drink your coffee, it’s more of a retail/wholesale outlet for the beans they source from around the world and roast themselves.

The owner, Simon, is a real coffee enthusiast and so you know you’re going to get a decent cup. As a bit of a coffee connoisseur myself (I used to manage coffee shops in Hong Kong) I love it when I find somewhere that is small, independent and passionate about coffee. That’s when I usually drink espresso – so I can enjoy the coffee in its pure and unadulterated form. And it’s the best way for me to decide if the coffee really is good. 

My verdict on this coffee?

It’s worth detouring off the A9 for.

My day exploring Wick surprised me in many ways. Although the modern (but actually old and original) part of town left me dispassionate, there were so many surprises once I crossed the bridge.

There’s still more I’d like to do here. I want to revisit the heritage centre and walk through the door of the hotel on the world’s shortest street. I want to find the rock pool and pay a visit to the Pulteney Distillery (of course there’s a distillery – it’s Scotland). And of course I want another espresso from my new favourite coffee shop.

Have you been to Wick? Have you ever been somewhere that has really surprised you? Share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments below.

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• Shopping and Eating in Lerwick – exploring Shetland’s capital

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