North Coast Visitor Centre, Thurso Caithness. Museum, gallery and exhibitions: Pictish Stones, the botanist Robert Dick, the Flow Country, prehistory, crofting; Dounray. Superb local museum ….. and … the Northern Pilgrim’s Way, recreating the Skinnet Stone.
The North Coast Visitor Centre in Thurso opened in 2022, replacing Caithness Horizons which closed in 2019. The old Thurso Town Hall and Carnegie Library have been adapted for their new roles. Much more than a typical visitor centre, the NCVC displays stone carvings of global significance and wide-ranging museum exhibits and galleries, all housed in the centre of Thurso.
The Visitor Centre occupies several floors. The Gallery space (left) on the upper floor, is flooded with natural light. Other rooms held various displays and more permanent exhibits.
When visited in early September 2024, the gallery housed an exhibition by local artists. One of the works, by Juliette Currams, was titled Women not Witches, with the description:
“A reflection on the representation of women who were convicted of witchcraft in the 17th and 18th Century and an acknowledgement that they were just women who were different in some way and were unable to speak for themselves or engage in any kind of fair judicial process. Represented in charcoal and watercolour on paper. Then burnt and broken, as were the women in life, to extract false confessions.”
From the Material Matters exhibition at NCVC: Women not Witches by Juliette Currums
carved stones gallery
Two major Pictish stones [2], both highly weathered, one defaced but still magnificent, are now displayed with several other carved stones in a gallery on the ground floor. They are there for all to see, safe from further damage that over the centuries removed or obscured some of the carving.
Images above: Gallery displaying a range of carved stones, notably the Skinnet Stone and the Ulbster Stone (left) with examples from the Ulbster of the Salmon, the Pictish Beast and the Crescent and V rod. Images below: the Skinnet stone .
Both were found at churches in Caithness. The Ulbster is dated to the 9th century, the Skinnet to the late 9th or 10th century. They had been used in recent centuries as building material or grave slab. Their value was not appreciated and both suffered.
Today, Pictish carved stones are highly valued by historians, artists and carvers, and by people in general who can wonder at their construction and the meaning of the carved symbols. A replica of the Skinnet is being carved by a stone mason for display outdoors on the Northern Pilgrim’s Way (see below).
Robert Dick | botanist
A room in one of the upper floors tells of the life and legacy of the self-taught naturalist Robert Dick [3]. From his base in Thurso, where he worked as a baker, he explored the coast and countryside, noting the geology, the plants, including mosses and ferns, and invertebrates such as molluscs and insects. He collected and classified many specimens.
He discovered fossils of an extinct fish Microbrachius dicki, named after him, which is the earliest vertebrate to reproduce by internal fertilisation (rather than by eggs laid outside the body).
His work was recognised and praised by Hugh Miller and a range of academic scientists, but was little appreciated by local people, at least not before he died on 24 December 1866.
His collections of fossils had to be sold in later life and those of insects and shells are lost. The task of preserving his 3000 herbarium specimens, many now damaged, has begun with funding from museum groups and charitable trusts [4]. Examples are on display at the NCVC.
The exhibition on Robert Dick, including information on his life, the task of restoring and curating his collection, and specimens on display under glass and in cabinets (www.livingfield.c0.uk).
Heritage evolving
Interest and activity in the archaeology, history and nature of Caithness continues to grow, dispelling the perception of some early writers of the place as only a bleak, peaty wilderness.
The land and people around Thurso have been linked for millenia to other parts of Scotland and to a much wider world. Hundreds of years ago the country was traversed by pilgrimmage routes between the Christian centres of Tain to the south and the Orkney to the north. In recent years these routes have been mapped, opened and re-marked by the Northern Pilgrims’ Way Group [5].
The Group has commissioned Dave McGovern of Monikie Rock Art to carve a replica of the Skinnet Stone to be erected on one of the routes [6]. The original was made from sandstone, but no local quarries have survived that could supply similar material. So the slab for the replica was sourced from south of Hadrian’s Wall. Weathering had obscured the detail of the original in parts but careful examination of the stone revealed the shapes of two hippocamps (upper body horse, lower body fish).
Many great developments therefore in and around Thurso – heritage alive.
Author/contact for this page: geoff.squire@hutton.ac.uk or geoff.squire@outlook.com
Sources | Links
[1] North Coast Visitor Centre at Highlife Highland.
[2] Ulbster and Skinnet Stones: information and photographs at the Canmore web site – Ulbster and Skinnet.
[3] Robert Dick botanist, brief notes: Undiscovered Scotland and Electric Scotland. Biography: Smiles, Samuel (1879) Robert Dick, baker, of Thurso, geologist and botanist. Available free online at several sites including Biodiversity Heritage Library, and Internet Archive (search author). And an update in a scientific journal: Saxon, J., Bramman, J., Campbell, N. Some New Material on Robert Dick, Baker of Thurso, Geologist and Botanist. Nature 210, 253 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1038/210253a0.
[4] Funding for the restoration of the Robert Dick Herbarium: Association of Independent Museums, Museums Galleries Scotland and the Gordon Fraser Charitable Trust. More on repair and conservation at this link to the Scottish Conservation Studio (scroll to see work on the Robert Dick collection).
[5] Northern Pilgrims’ Way. The Pictish Arts Society held an online event in October 2024 in which Jane Coll described progress with regenerating the Northern Pilgrims’ Way: www.northernpilgrimsway.co.uk. Book: Jane Coll (2022) In their footsteps – exploring a Northern Pilgrimage Way, Kindle Books (search the web for sellers).
[6] At the same event, Dave McGovern of Monikie Rock Art described constructing a replica of the Skinnet Stone. To follow progress with the carving, try their Instagram and Facebook pages.
