CHS Annual Report for 2016/17

Talks

It was another season of wide-ranging talks for both members and visitors. I think the highlight had to be the unveiling of “Rosemarkie Man” in our February talk. We are very appreciative that the Rosemarkie Caves Project and North of Scotland Archaeology Society chose us as the venue for this important revelation. Our other talks covered time periods nearer to our own:

• we looked at Georgian town planning, across the Highlands and Islands
• had a glimpse of Victorian life in Dingwall, through the personal diary entries of a young lady of the time
• we considered the Great War of 1914-18, in particular the role of Scots of the 4th Highland (Mountain) Brigade who fought in the Causasus
• we were privileged to hear a report of Cromarty Primary School during the period 1913-46, which we billed as “Eric’s last talk”. Eric Malcolm had studied the log books of Cromarty Higher Grade Public School during the years that his father was the headmaster and it was one of his final wishes that Sandy Thomson presented his research to the Society
• our Christmas meeting featured our “home-grown” entertainment where we showed an array of cups and awards from Cromarty’s community and shared the tales behind them

I’ve obviously omitted tonight’s talk in this review, but it’s again good to have a presentation from Paul Monk the Curator of our local Courthouse Museum.

How lucky we are that some of our members are happy to talk about their interests. Please let us know if you have undertaken any local history research that you would like to share — it doesn’t have to take the form of a full lecture and we can be flexible in the way we present it.

We are always on the lookout for interesting and appropriate talks for our meetings and have started some preliminary discussions with the UHI Centre for History in order to find out whether there could be opportunities for students to either come and present their work or even work with us on research projects of mutual benefit.

Website

Have you noticed the new design for our website this year? Roger Young has put a great deal of time into making it more uniform in appearance and we thank him for all his efforts in keeping the site regularly updated and responding to messages to the site.

Committee

Our committee puts a lot of thought and effort into devising a full programme and making each meeting an interesting and enjoyable occasion. Thanks are extended to all committee members for their hard work and commitment. I’d also like to express special appreciation to John McNaught — for the really creative and distinctive posters he comes up with every month that have become our trademark!

Courthouse Museum

As you probably all know the CHS acts as a Friends Group to the museum and we annually give a donation to assist with its operation — this year our contribution will be £200. This money will be used to purchase an item for the collection from the Treasure Trove Unit of the National Museum of Scotland.

Audience

Finally thanks to you — our members and visitors who attend our meetings — we certainly seem to maintain our numbers these days and we hope you all continue to support our society.

Mary Bowers
20 April 2017