Sandy's Blog
The Cromarty Shoemakers
by Casagrandeblog - 09:01 on 05 August 2013
One of my favourite photos on the Cromarty Archive is of Mr. Fraser’s shoe shop in Church Street. You can see it on the right. This photo was taken around 1920, when we know there were all sorts of local shops along Church Street, High Street and Bank Street.
The reason I like this photo is because it reminds us that Cromarty used to be famous for its shoemakers. When David Alston was Curator at the Courthouse Museum, 
he took the time to go though the Cromarty census of 1841, noting down all the listed occupations of Cromarty men and women. Taking the men first, it won’t surprise you to find that there were 25 fishers plus 3 salmon fishers. You would expect this to be the most common occupation perhaps? Well, believe it or not, there were 28 shoemakers!
I’m assuming that they were all working at their trade here in Cromarty - they weren’t commuting to Shoes-R-Us in Fortrose. So maybe there were quite a few shops like Mr. Fraser’s, and maybe Cromarty folk spent a lot of money on new shoes. Either that, or Cromarty supplied the whole of the Black Isle with their footwear.
If you’re interested, the next most common male occupations were - hemp weaver (21), sacking worker (17), farm labourer (14), tailor (13), hawker/traveller (12), hemp heckler (11), mariner (11), cooper (11), spirit dealer (10) and army (10).
As for the women, there were 65 female servants, 55 hemp spinners, 8 seamstresses, 7 dressmakers, 6 teachers, 5 washing women and 4 toy sellers. Not really an Equal Opportunity town then, but it does tell us how important the Hemp Factory must have been. I make that 104 employees of both sexes - 112 if the seamstresses were also employed there.
But to go back to those shoemakers. We call our headlands the Sutors - a word I have never found anywhere else. The old Scots word for a shoemaker is a Souter, so it’s tempting to think that we named our headlands after our favourite occupation. Tempting, but probably wrong. There’s a Gaelic word Sutair, meaning a tanner, and the Gaelic name for the headlands is apparently na Sudraichean, or the Tanneries. It’s a foul-smelling job, curing animal hides, so tanneries were usually located downwind of settlements. Given our prevailing south-westerlies, it would make sense for tanning to take place on the headlands.
Add your comment
