Thurso Street names

[Dusty]

Thanks for that Trinkie, I now have a mental picture of these thatched cottages at the edge of the inhabited area of Thurso with their stacks of peat outside, a la Mary Ann's Cottage.

I was told by my father's cousin that she asked her mother (who lived in Wilson Street at the time) if they could move too when my Nana moved from Shore Street to Holborn Avenue and they had the novelty of electric lighting in the house. She replied that she would not go to live in the "Country". So it seems that some of the old timers regarded the Glebe as suburbia!
I also remember my Nana's Bayview Terrace house having the gas mantle fitting in the centre of the ceiling as well as the electric light.

Sorry folks, nostalgia has taken me off topic.

Dusty.

[trinkie]

Dusty - To embellish your mental picture of the area.....

Under the heading Keeping Thurso Clean.......

"The authorities were up against ''deugened'' customers.
In 1880 the Cleansing Committee undertook a minute inspection of the town and when they had completed half of it they handed in a report.
It contained 29 serious complaints, among them the following -

"An open sewer near the top of Janet Street is so disgusting to sight and smell that people avoid passing near it''

''Brabster Street is in a terrible filthy state with two dunghills near the top end''

''The surroundings of the Company's smithy near the Island is a disgrace to the locality.''

''In Wilson's Lane there are very disgusting heaps of manure opposite the doors and windows of tenants, besides a pig kept in the same place.''

''The sheds and slaughterhouse of Mr Donald Sutherland, flesher, cannot well be described. Anything we can say would fall short of the necessary description of these premises. Nothing like it exists in any town in Scotland.''

''The present filthy state of the town far exceeds anything ever seen beforte by or known to us.''


E&OE

Trinkie

[Dusty]

Gollach,

Thanks for the info, I thought I remebered seening the name somewhere.
Would that be the lady responsible for the Hetty Munro Papers?
The Ship's Wheel fascinated me when I was a kid, probably because of the association with the Queen Mother.


Trinkie,

Your description is very graphic and could also be describing an area not too far distant from my current home, so some things have not changed all that much in 120 odd years.
It must have been quite a job for the local authorities to keep the streets clean at that time as I have noticed similar complaints in municipal records for my area as well. The keeping of pigs and chickens, the operation of slaughterhouses and the housing of the dead have all been mentioned as causing a nuisance and having the gutters running with filth.

Thanks both,
Dusty.

[gollach]

Would that be the lady responsible for the Hetty Munro Papers?

Yes, that's her.

[trinkie]

You will find several stories by Hetty Munro here on caithness.org.
Her War Diaries are particularly interesting.
There is also a good item on the Thurso Poorhouse which was near Halkirk. ( Especially interesting if you are into Family History. )
Each article is well worth reading.

[Sporran]

They certainly are, trinkie!

Here are links to some of them, folks.

http://www.caithness.org/caithnessfi...ro_memoirs.htm

http://www.caithness.org/history/art...npoorhouse.htm

http://www.caithness.org/history/art...ittothurso.htm


Perhaps Couper Street and Couper Square in Thurso are named after a woman called Christian Couper, of whom Hetty writes here:

http://www.caithness.org/history/art...tiancouper.htm

[trinkie]

Keeping the Peace on Thurso Streets

From Donald Grant’s book

“….At that time there was much drunkenness and disorderly behaviour in the streets of Thurso on Saturday evenings and in 1867 the Commissioners, in an effort to improve matters, asked masters who paid their employees on a Saturday to change to some other day of the week. Not that drunkenness was confined to Saturdays ! On a Sunday morning of that year a number of young men paraded the streets in a state of intoxication, cursing and swearing and causing disturbance and annoyance. The Commissioners expressed their astonishment that the police took no action, indeed no notice, although a constable was supposed to be on duty at the time. They requested the Committee to staff Thurso with more efficient men than those they had palmed off on them and to put them under the direct control of the Thurso Commissioners. A few weeks later the Sergeant of Police complained of idlers congregating at street corners and obstructing the passers-by. What was he to do about it, he asked. The Commissioners, shocked by such ignorance, told him that if he didn’t know he should ask his superior officer, the Chief Constable . This was further proof of inneffiency and they appealed to Colonel Kinloch for aid in obtaining redress for the trials they had to bear. If a reply was received it was not recorded.
Two years later they again appealed to the Commissioners of Supply and to the Secretary of State, praying that their connection with the county police be dissolved, but to no avail.
In 1872 the Prison Board gave permission for three cells in Thurso Police Office to be licenced to hold prisoners, but only males and for a period not exceeding three days.”

Later ……” In 1876 it was the prevalance of profane swearing on the streets and the practice of some boys of congregating at the gasworks on Sunday afternoons and desecrating the Lord’s Day by swinging on a crane. A little later the Commissioners wrote to the Chief Constable asking him to bring home to the Thurso police the great need for increased vigilence. They complained that parties walking the Esplanade were being interfered with and that groups of idlers were congregating on the seats and at street corners on Sundays, causing disturbance.”

Further on …..”The records about the turn of the century –(1800 1900) are full of complaints, of ‘depredations in the suburbs seldom visited by the police’ of the
behaviour on the streets on Sunday evenings, of damage to seats along the Victoria Walk, the Esplanade, the Riverside, of carters racing along the streets and round corners, of young persons out at unreasonable hours, of workmen and boys running barrows and bakers carrying bread on the pavements, of broken street lamps, of football in the streets and of boys and idlers overcrowding the railway station at the time of arrival or trains.”

E&OE

[bky]

so not a lot has changed in all those years

[Sporran]

From "Thurso Then And Now" by Falconer Waters and Donald Grant:

SIR JOHN SQUARE

"Sir John Square was earlier known as MacDonald Square, an open piece of ground presented to the town by Sir Tollemache Sinclair in 1879. It was to be laid out as an enclosed terraced garden. The name was changed in 1893 to commemorate Sir Tollemache's grandfather, Sir John Sinclair, one of Thurso's most illustrious sons. He made an outstanding contribution to the improvement of agriculture in Caithness and introduced Cheviot sheep to the county. He founded the Board of Agriculture and was its first President. But probably he is best known for his work in producing the first 'Statistical Account of Scotland'. His statue stands in the middle of the Square."


Also, according to Donald Grant's book "Old Thurso", Sir George's Street was known as Caithness Street until 1893. This is the street across from Sir John Square, that runs down to the Thurso Bridge. The Town Council sought to rename it Sir Tollemache Street, but Sir Tollemache said he would prefer to have it named after his father, Sir George.

[trinkie]

Thank you Sporran - the book Thurso then and Now - is it still in print? It sounds rather interesting.

I'm not so up on my Thurso streets.
Can you tell me is there a Sir George street and a George street in Thurso ? If so - are they named after the same George ?

Trinkie

[gollach]

Sir George Street is the street from the war memorial to the road bridge. (It is also the street that Skinandis is on.)

George Street is the street behind the ERI building (old West Public School). It ends on Olrig Street at the top of the steps to the Esplanade.

[Sporran]

Thank you Sporran - the book Thurso then and Now - is it still in print? It sounds rather interesting.

I'm not so up on my Thurso streets.
Can you tell me is there a Sir George street and a George street in Thurso ? If so - are they named after the same George ?

Trinkie

I think the book is out of print now, but I could be wrong. Like "Old Thurso", it was printed and published by John Humphries at Caithness Books, 1 Bank Street, Thurso. This was in 1972, and I'm not sure if the publishing business still exists, or not.

George Street is exactly where gollach describes, but apparently it didn't exist in 1872, as it is not on the map of that date.

http://www.nls.uk/maps/early/towns.cfm?id=1923

Parallel running Duncan Street is there, but not Castle Street where the old West Public School was built. When I was growing up in Thurso, I always assumed that George Street was named after one of our King Georges, as in so many British towns and cities.

In 1798, Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster built Thurso's New Town to the south and west of the Old Town with wide streets laid out on a regular grid. Today much of the original pattern of both old and new towns exists. (This is the same Sir John whose statue stands in the Square named after him). Janet Street, next to Thurso Bridge and River, was one of the earliest parts of the New Town to be developed. It received its name from Lady Janet, Sir John's mother.

[Sporran]

More from "Thurso Then And Now", compiled by Falconer Waters, text by Donald Grant:

"In 1879 a proposal to build a public convenience on the east side of Janet Street, opposite the house of a very prominent citizen, ended in a Court of Session case and as a result the street remained pure and unsullied. Today an official car park extends along that same side of the street and it has met with no opposition. It has proved to be a more acceptable convenience to the public.

In 1894 Sir Tollemache Sinclair presented to the town the narrow strip of land between Janet Street and the river, with the condition that the town should spend at least 300 pounds in laying it out as an attractive park. The townsfolk raised the money by subscriptions and the usual bazaars, trees and shrubs were gifted and the town became the proud possessor of the Mall, one of its most attractive assets."

[Lavenderblue2]

Another interesting snippet, also from Donald Grant's book 'Old Thurso'.

In 1844 the Commissioners engaged Alexander Bain to paint, for the first time, the names of the streets at the corners from the bridge to the Breahead via Caithness Street, Traill Street, Rotterdam Street, High Street and Shore Street. By the time Bain’s account of £1-7-5½ came up for payment most of the names had flaked off and the streets were nameless again. When the Commissioners refused to pay, Bain offered to do the job again, whereupon he was paid 10/- to account. This time the painting was satisfactory. At the same time the proprietors of the premises along that route were ordered to furnish their buildings with rones, pipes and spouts, in an effort to preserve the roads and pavements.