The British Fisheries Society (1786–1893): Herring Towns for the Highlands

established claims rest on the society's records, held by the National Records of Scotland and the North Highland Archive at Wick, and on published studies, including a 1952 Edinburgh University thesis and Jean Dunlop's The British Fisheries Society 1786–1893 (1978). shared claims involve interpretation or conflicting dates. traditional claims are widely repeated but not documented.

Telford's part in the society is documented in its records and summarised by Julian Glover, in his biography Man of Iron (2017), drawing on Jean Dunlop and on a 2007 paper by Daniel Maudlin and Robert Mylne on the society's planned villages. Glover's judgements on the quality of the towns' design are his own.

Weak points: founding dates for Lochbay and Pulteneytown vary between sources, because laying out, building and settling took years. Ullapool is often said to have been designed by Telford. The original plan was drawn by David Aitken, and Telford refined it.

Herring instead of empire

established The society grew out of a wave of interest in "internal colonisation" after the American War of Independence. Its supporters pointed to Dutch wealth built on herring, which the promoter John Knox said was worth more "than the mines of Mexico and Peru". George Dempster asked: "What is Canada, St Johns or the Bahamas that they should be supported at such an annual expence, while our own coasts are forgotten?" Beaufoy's 1785 inquiry blamed the salt tax, the coal duty and a tangle of regulations for holding the Highland fishery back.

established The society raised about £7,000 in 1786 from more than a hundred subscribers at £50 a share. A further £6,000 or so came in 1789 from sixty-eight Scots in the East Indies, including officers of Highland regiments and Calcutta merchants. Its directors hoped the towns would supply the navy with sailors, stop emigration to America and bring trade to the north-west.

Free towns or crofts?

shared James Anderson, whose survey helped launch the project, wanted large "free towns" with specialised trades and no guild restrictions. Knox imagined each village with its boatbuilder, cooper, net-maker and tanner. Anderson's attacks on the lairds' "feudal despotism" lost him a seat on the board.

shared In 1787 the Earl of Breadalbane asked landowners how much land a settler needed. Most of the twenty-seven replies favoured small plots worked with the spade: half an acre to two acres, with grazing for a cow. In May 1788 the directors resolved that every Ullapool house should have a kail-yard and summer pasture for a cow. Jonsson argues that this made spade husbandry, not full-time fishing, the basis of life in the new town. It was also the cheapest option. Knox had costed a 36-house village at £2,000, but Ullapool absorbed more than £9,000 between 1788 and 1796.

Four settlements, four fates

established Ullapool, on Loch Broom, was laid out from 1788 to a grid plan drawn by David Aitken and refined by Telford. Its church (now Ullapool Museum) is one of the "parliamentary churches" built in the Highlands in the 1820s to a standard plan that Telford's office supplied, not a society building. It was the society's main western settlement, but the herring declined from 1798, and the customs house closed in 1813. The society sold the town in 1849.

established Tobermory, on Mull, was founded on the Duke of Argyll's land in 1788. It became a successful trading port rather than a fishing station.

established Lochbay, at Stein on Skye, was laid out in the 1790s. Its settlers mostly farmed rather than fished, and it was never completed.

established Pulteneytown, at Wick in Caithness, was planned by Telford and named after Sir William Pulteney, who died in 1805. The society began work at Wick in 1803; Telford's detailed plan for the new town dates from 1807. It became one of the great herring ports of the east coast and the society's one real success. The society managed its harbour until 1879.

Telford and the society

established How he arrived. Telford's link was his patron and fellow Eskdale man Sir William Pulteney, the society's governor. In April 1790 Pulteney reported that he had asked Telford, then county surveyor of Shropshire, to visit the settlements. Telford went to Lochbay and Ullapool in June 1790 and sent in a report criticising the society's contractor. The society's secretary told Pulteney that Telford's integrity had been established by experience. The post was unpaid.

established Plans on paper. Telford drew a plan for Lochbay with a curved crescent street and terraces, influenced by Bath and by Robert Adam's unfinished planned village at Lowther in Cumbria. Most of it was never built. Over the next two decades he corresponded with the society about a school, a pier, a church and an inn; the inn he designed was built in 1808. Julian Glover, in his biography Man of Iron (2017), notes that this early work as an architect and planner was later overlooked, including by Telford himself.

established The road to the Highland commissions. In July 1801 Nicholas Vansittart at the Treasury wrote to Telford, in his capacity as the society's engineer, asking for a general report on Highland communications. The brief covered fishing stations, harbours, ferries, new towns and a canal from coast to coast. That survey led in 1803 to the commissions for the Caledonian Canal and for Highland roads and bridges, with Telford as engineer to both. The society's unpaid job was the start of three decades of Highland work.

established Pulteneytown's plan. Telford had recommended a large harbour at Wick as early as 1790. His 1807 plan put a new fishing settlement on the south side of the Wick River, with a bridge across it. Instead of the plain grid the society used elsewhere, he drew a central square with angled crescents that Glover thinks echo Sydney Gardens in Bath. Telford sold it to the society as practical, writing that the crescent wall would stop the north wind blowing straight across the flat ground. Curing yards and storehouses were kept apart from the housing. In 1810 and 1811 he enlarged the scheme to a double harbour, which by 1818 supported 822 herring boats.

shared A planned industrial town. Glover calls Pulteneytown one of the world's earliest planned industrial towns and one of Telford's most significant works. That is his judgement; the town's importance as a herring port is not in doubt, but such rankings depend on what counts as a planned industrial town.

Why it struggled

established The society's plans assumed a reliable fishery, and the western herring proved unpredictable. Thomas Pennant had already noted in 1772 that the shoals showed no "invariable attachment to their haunts". War with France from 1793, the shift of the shoals after 1798 and renewed emigration after 1801 all hit the west-coast towns.

shared Adam Smith predicted the trouble. In letters to Beaufoy in 1786–87 he praised the society's "public spirited intentions" but warned that investors would "lose every shilling". He pointed to the high rents and interest charged to fishermen and the risk of mismanagement by distant agents. The 1952 Edinburgh study also blamed remote administration from London and confusion between charity and profit.

shared The society's model was influential. The Edinburgh study argues that its approach to settlement influenced later reformers, including the Crofters Commission.

• About £6,000 of the society's capital was subscribed in 1789 by Scots in India, including Highland regimental officers and Calcutta merchants.
• Ullapool is often said to be a Telford town, but its grid was drawn by David Aitken. Telford refined it. Its later parliamentary church follows a standard plan supplied by his office.
• Telford's first Highland job, for this society, was unpaid. It opened the door to the Caledonian Canal and some 1,200 miles of Highland road.
• Telford claimed that Pulteneytown's crescent was laid out to deflect the north wind down a side street.
• Dempster bet Sir James Riddell that the society would create "at least half a dozen Free Towns".
• The society's last decades were dominated by a dispute over Wick harbour after its breakwater failed in 1873.

• Myth: Telford designed Ullapool. The grid plan was drawn by David Aitken, and Telford refined it.
• Myth: The society's west-coast towns were a success. Ullapool stagnated, Lochbay was never completed, and Tobermory grew as a trading port rather than a fishing town. Only Pulteneytown, on the east coast, became the great herring port the founders hoped for.
• Disputed: when Lochbay and Pulteneytown were founded. Sources vary, because laying out, building and settling took years.
• Myth: Telford was the society's paid, full-time engineer. He was an unpaid engineer, brought in through Sir William Pulteney in 1790.
• Myth: The settlements were purely fishing towns. The society gave each household a kail-yard and a cow's grass, and at Lochbay the settlers mostly farmed rather than fished.
• Disputed: Pulteneytown was one of the world's earliest planned industrial towns. That is Julian Glover's judgement. The town's importance as a herring port is not in doubt, but such rankings depend on what counts as a planned industrial town.