Sandy's Blog
Thief's Row in the Reeds Park
by Casagrandeblog - 20:52 on 21 July 2013
I’m getting really excited about the dig in the Reeds Park which starts next week. I’m hoping that it unearths some new information about Thief’s Row, that lost street which used to run diagonally from below Clunes House up to the Colliesheugh well. The image on the left is extracted from a 1764 survey of the Cromarty estate, and you can see that there are a couple of houses where the allotments are now, plus another one near the Colliesheugh. In fact, a 1744 Householders list shows eleven owners of properties on the Row, including the ‘Laird’s Washing House.’
There were still buildings here till the late 19th century. The image below is from the 1823 estate map and shows around half a dozen houses. 
Even as late as 1871, the Ordnance Survey map has three houses near the shore plus the very substantial Grove Cottage at the far end, which belonged to the Estate. The 1896 OS map, however, shows no buildings at all in the Reeds Park, so they must have been demolished in the 1870s or ‘80s.
By the 19th century, the name ‘Thief’s Row’ had been abandoned, and there are now references to ‘the road to the bleach green and the coal well.’ But I wonder why it was ‘Thief’s Row’ in the first place? Who was the thief? And was there just one, or a nest of them?
The Reeds Park in the 20th century was the shooting range where the Territorials did their rifle practice. The target mechanism at the far end installed in 1910 was state of the art - with a fixed phone line back to the shooting butts. There were two targets, with the ranges marked out in 100 yard steps, up to the 600 yard mark. And before the Victoria Park was laid out in the 19th century, this was also the local football pitch, as the 1910 photo below shows.
So there is a lot of history here, and it will be great if, over the next two weeks, the park tells us some more about Cromarty’s medieval past.
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