David F. Devereux and John Pickin
Tongland Fish House and the Tongland Salmon Fishery
Post-mediaeval archaeology, Recent, Fisheries
TDGNHAS Series III, 89 (2015), 35(4.65 MB)
Abstract
A Building Record of the Fish House at Tongland was made by the authors in November 2013, prior to the re-development of the building. This revealed the nature of the midnineteenth century structure and reflected its use in relation to the seasonal salmon fishery at the nearby Doachs of Tongland on the River Dee. There is also anecdotal evidence for its operation, which included the dispatch of salmon to distant markets. The fishery closed in the 1930s with the development of the Galloway Hydro-Electric Scheme, but a range of documentary evidence indicates that this was a valuable (and sometimes controversial) fishery, operated as an economic unit from 1642 and probably much earlier. Quite possibly the canons of nearby Tongland Abbey exploited this natural resource from the early thirteenth century, although there is no surviving physical or documentary evidence for this.