Wick and the Whaligoe Steps: The Herring Coast

In the 19th century Wick was one of the great herring ports: by the 1840s more than 1,000 herring boats used the harbour. Pulteneytown, on the south side of the river, was founded in 1808 by the British Fisheries Society to take people cleared from the Highlands who came to the coast for work. South of the town the Castle of Old Wick, the Old Man of Wick, stands on the coast; tradition credits it to Harald Maddadson, Earl of Caithness and Orkney, in the 1100s, but the tower that survives probably dates from the 14th century. Further south are the Whaligoe Steps, a stairway down a cliff to a natural harbour where fisherwomen carried the herring up in creels — 365 steps by the usual count, 330 by another.