Seahorse
Grumpy auld mod.
With a couple of hours to spare after my visit to the nearby coastguard cottages at Rattray Head, I thought I'd pop on over to visit Seatown. I was last here when I were just a nipper, so probably 30 odd years ago. There was still the remains of roofs back then, but otherwise the only thing that has changed is the addition of a couple of caravans. More about those later. 
There was a harbour of sorts in this area, until a huge storm in the 1720's closed it off by blocking it in with sand. A ship laden with slate was trapped in the harbour, never to sail the open sea again. And so was born the Loch of Strathbeg.
That was the end of fishing here, until Rattray Estates built a new village, Seatown of Rattray, in 1795. By 1803, there were a few fishermen and sundry other locals. It gained a reputation as being a harsh and unforgiving place to scrape a living, and unofficially became known as Botany, so named after the recently founded penal colony in Botany Bay, in Australia.
After 100 or so years, folks had had enough, and so it was abandoned in the early to mid 1900's. Only to have someone move back in the late 20th century.
The village, seen from Rattray coastguard cottages...
A bit closer...
Water would have been hard to come by. But needs must...
First cottage. And rather more recent additions. I'll get to those in a moment..
These things get everywhere...
What a lot of bottles. WHisky bottles, mostly...
Good grief!!!
I'm beginning to sense a pattern here. And the fumes have knocked me over...
Steptoe and Son, eat yer heart out...
"Modern" accommodations...
It's not the dogs I'm worried about. Botulism, bubonic plague, and any other number of nasty infections spring readily to mind...
Inside the "workshop"...
You need to bear in mind, the main source of power appears to have been an almost endless supply of car batteries...
And possibly a wind turbine at some point...
Unbelievably sad that a human being used to live here...
Ah, right. The dogs to beware of. I just got really depressed with this. He had pics of his canine buddies all around the walls.
Goes some way to date the occupation...
But the milk carton seems to indicate he lived here for at least 10 years...
Right, that just got too depressing. And smelly. On we go. On to the other cottages...
How clever! A pillbox built into the ruin.
As an aside, I took a wee wander down to the beach, passing this on the way...
I don't normally move stuff. But in this case, I was curious to see what the name was on the bottle. John Campbell. Now I need to know what was in it. And from what era...
And finally. Does anybody have any idea what the heck this might be?????
There was a harbour of sorts in this area, until a huge storm in the 1720's closed it off by blocking it in with sand. A ship laden with slate was trapped in the harbour, never to sail the open sea again. And so was born the Loch of Strathbeg.
That was the end of fishing here, until Rattray Estates built a new village, Seatown of Rattray, in 1795. By 1803, there were a few fishermen and sundry other locals. It gained a reputation as being a harsh and unforgiving place to scrape a living, and unofficially became known as Botany, so named after the recently founded penal colony in Botany Bay, in Australia.
After 100 or so years, folks had had enough, and so it was abandoned in the early to mid 1900's. Only to have someone move back in the late 20th century.
The village, seen from Rattray coastguard cottages...
A bit closer...
Water would have been hard to come by. But needs must...
First cottage. And rather more recent additions. I'll get to those in a moment..
These things get everywhere...
What a lot of bottles. WHisky bottles, mostly...
Good grief!!!
I'm beginning to sense a pattern here. And the fumes have knocked me over...
Steptoe and Son, eat yer heart out...
"Modern" accommodations...
It's not the dogs I'm worried about. Botulism, bubonic plague, and any other number of nasty infections spring readily to mind...
Inside the "workshop"...
You need to bear in mind, the main source of power appears to have been an almost endless supply of car batteries...
And possibly a wind turbine at some point...
Unbelievably sad that a human being used to live here...
Ah, right. The dogs to beware of. I just got really depressed with this. He had pics of his canine buddies all around the walls.
Goes some way to date the occupation...
But the milk carton seems to indicate he lived here for at least 10 years...
Right, that just got too depressing. And smelly. On we go. On to the other cottages...
How clever! A pillbox built into the ruin.
As an aside, I took a wee wander down to the beach, passing this on the way...
I don't normally move stuff. But in this case, I was curious to see what the name was on the bottle. John Campbell. Now I need to know what was in it. And from what era...
And finally. Does anybody have any idea what the heck this might be?????
