Old Photograph North High Street Portsoy Scotland

Old photograph of North High Street in Portsoy, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Portsoy is located on the Moray Firth Coast of North East Scotland, 50 miles North West of Aberdeen and 65 miles East of Inverness. From the 16th century until 1975, Portsoy was in the civil and religious parish of Fordyce. The old Harbour dates to the 17th century and is the oldest on the Moray Firth. The new harbour was built in 1825 for the growing herring fishing. Jimmy MacBeath, born 1894, died 1972, the wandering singer, was born in Portsoy and is buried there. He was a bachelor all his life and learned many songs in the bothies, or farm huts where the male farm workers lived. He was to be a traveller for much of his life; in 1908 he took his first long walk, from Inverness to Perth, Perthshire. In the First World War he joined the Gordon Highlanders and fought in Flanders. Later he served in the Medical Corps during the Anglo-Irish War. In the 1920s he was demobbed. Working as a kitchen porter, begging and at seasonal fruit picking, he set about tramping the roads of Scotland, England, the Channel Islands, and even Nova Scotia, Canada. In the streets, pubs, hiring fairs and markets he earned money by singing. Jimmy Paterson, trombonist with Dexy's Midnight Runners, was born and raised in Portsoy.



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

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