Old Travel Blog Photograph Road To Spinningdale Sutherland Scotland

Old travel Blog photograph of a cyclist on the road to Spinningdale, Sutherland, Scotland. Spinningdale is possibly named from the Norse for round valley, and is a hamlet on the north shore of Dornoch Firth in eastern Sutherland, Scottish Highlands. James Robertson Justice, British actor, lived in a cottage in Spinningdale for 16 years from 1954 until 1970. Born on 15 June 1907, he was the son of an Aberdeen born geologist and named after his father, James Robertson Justice who was born James Norval Harald Justice in Lee, a suburb of Lewisham in South London, England, in 1907. Educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, Justice studied science at University College London, but left after a year and became a geology student at the University of Bonn, where he again left after just a year. He spoke many languages, including Spanish, French, Greek, Danish, Russian, German, Italian, Dutch and Gaelic. Feeling strongly about his Scottish ancestry, he once claimed to have been born in 1905 under a whisky distillery on the Isle of Skye; many sources listed his birthplace as Wigtown, Wigtownshire, now in Dumfries and Galloway. Justice took up acting after joining the Players' Theatre in London. He was the demanding surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt in the Doctor series of films of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Doctor in the House in 1954, playing a role for which he is possibly best remembered. In his films he was sometimes credited as Seumas Mòr na Feusag, Scottish Gaelic, translation: Big James with the Beard. Not long after completing his work for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968, Justice suffered a severe stroke, which signalled the beginning of the end for his career. He suffered a further series of strokes, which left him unable to work, and he died penniless in 1975. His ashes were buried in a north Scotland moor near his former residence in the Highland village of Spinningdale.



All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

View the most recent Tour Scotland photographs.