Whisky & Beer & Seasonal Good Cheer!

At this time of the year one’s thought turn mainly to...alcohol.

   Shockingly, there is – to my knowledge – only one major distillery in Angus still commercially producing whisky at the moment.  Brechin’s Glencadam Distillery (owned by the London based Angus Dundee who also own the Tomintoul distillery) was founded by George Cooper in 1825 and currently produces a single malt variety; though past issues have included the pertinently named Taranty malt.  Water for the whisky is sourced from springs at the Moorans and whisky expert Michael Jackson summarises the 15-year old Glencadam as ‘a little shy but sweet and satisfying’.

   A close neighbour of Glencadam was the North Port Distillery (founded in 1820, mothballed in 1983, officially closed in 1985, substantially demolished in 1994).  A more elusive lost brand and distillery was Glenesk, whose ever-changing names and even different output (sometimes grain, sometimes malt) make it difficult to pin down.  Based at Hillside, Montrose, this distillery closed its doors in 1985.  Founded by the magnificently named English wine merchant firm Septimus Parsonage (in partnership with James Isles of Dundee) in 1897 within a converted flax mill, it was initially named Highland Esk.  It became North Esk in 1899 upon acquisition by J E Caille Heddle.  After World War I the distillers was re-named North Esk Maltings, and then became simply Montrose.  By 1964 it was producing malt whisky under the moniker Hillside, changing its name finally to Glenesk in 1980.  The distillery was dismantled in 1996.  Some, rare bottles from this distillery are doing the rounds for figures fluctuation between the low hundreds and four figures.

   Dundee’s active association with whisky bottling ended in the 1990s when the Stewarts Cream of the Barley plant on the Kingsway closed down.  Alexander Stewart, trading from the Glengarry Inn in Castle Street, started blending in 1825.  The brand still continues and remains Northern Ireland’s favourite blended Scotch whisky.  Other Dundee companies which had a share of the early whisky business included the Seagate based James Robertson and Son Ltd (which owned Coleburn distillery on Speyside) and its neighbour James Watson and Co, founded in 1815, which owned four northern distilleries.  The Seagate was also home to George Willsher & Co, based in premises named Black Bull House.  Their principal brand was therefore named Black Bull whisky, and it survives today, albeit the product of a company based in Huntly.
(Lovers of whisky, incidentally, might want to drop into the Glenesk Hotel in Edzell,which has over a thousand whiskies for sale, something of a record.)

   Another spirits merchants in the city was George Morton Ltd, who traded not only whisky and brandy, but also imported rum, most noticeably the famous OVD (Old Vatted Demerara), first imported from Guyana in 1838 to Morton’s in Dock Street.  Now owned by William Grant & Sons Ltd, the Dundee connection with the spirit is, alas, long gone.  Such enterprise as surrounds production of spirits locally is now very minimal and, perhaps surprisingly, is not purely whisky centred. The Gin Bothy at Peel Farm, Lintrathen, produces fruit infused gin, while the Arbikie Distillery in Inverkeilor produces gin, vodka and whisky (though the production of the latter has not yet produced bottles for the market as yet - hurry up, please!). Another proud local producer is Ogilvy Spirits, based in the Sidlaw Hills, which specialised in potato vodka. 

Historic Illicit Whisky Production and Some Smuggling Lore

   Like the producers of peat reek whisky in the Angus glens, I have dabbled in this subject in the past (and will do again), as the lure and romance of whisky making and smuggling is too much to resist.  But the reality of Angus whisky production does not appear to be as venerable as one might suppose. In The Flower People, Duncan Fraser depicts the sudden illicit business of distilling peat reek whisky coming to Glen Isla as demand for the product and knowledge about its production came into the area in the 18th century.  There is the memory at Delnamer of  an exciseman finding whisky hidden in a sheep bught here.  Another exciseman hoped to follow up this discovery and came here with a gang of soldiers.  Though they searched, further whisky was not found.  The soldiers let their horses eat the scant grain in a store here and an outbuilding was set ablaze.  The locals wrote a furious letter to the authorities, stating that the sergeant of Dragoons had threatened them with a drawn sword after their complaint and say no more about their corn or he would satisfy himself with their blood.  'If the fiscal of the county doth not put a stop such barbarous practices,' their letter ended,'Blood for Blood must be allowed.'

   The Rev Andrew Burns, incumbent of Glen Isla 1806-1823, used to note when the authorities arrived at the opposite his manse and would wander the glen, using biblical language to warn the people to hide their whisky:  'The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!'  The whisky was of course conveyed south surreptitiously at night, not in barrels - which would have been too bulky and conspicuous - but in smaller, makeshift vessels, such as animals' bladders.  Fraser states:

Until about 1830 the whisky-making was the glen's chief industry and then it was suppressed by the Government.  Even a local minister admitted a few years later  that at first this was 'bewailed as a great parish calamity', for most of his congregation had depended on it for their livelihood. [The Flower People, p. 88]

   To the east, the same author reports that the people of Glen Esk also proved amenable to this industry.   'There was no depopulation in Glenesk, all the time its whisky-making lasted.  Over the hills in Glenisla there was none either.  But when the stills were closed Glenisla lost almost half its inhabitants.' [Glen of the Rowan Tree, p. 27.]  For forty years here and in the side glens whisky was illegally made.  Again, the church in the area seemed to see it as a harmless, perhaps even an essential, occupation.   A key ally was the Episcopal minister Peter Jolly, of Lethnot and Glen Esk, had his manse at Stylemou, on the track known as the Whisky Road.  This was almost within 'sniffing distance' on the still on Rowan Hill.  Fraser advises that the ruins of one mountain whisky bothy can be seen high up Glen Effock, beside a burn.  Most of the production from this site ended up in Forfar.  One of the larger operations was hidden among the hills in Glenlee, between Craig Buck and Craig Terran.

    Further tales of smuggling will be related in future posts.

   People in these eastern Angus glens were notably superstitious.  Duncan Fraser notes that, at Burnside, near Arsallary:

in bygone days they used to keep the peat fire burning day and night - for two hundred and fifty years until the 1930s - to prevent ill luck befalling them.  And the odd thing is that near the foot of the glen was another house where they carefully put the fire out each night for the same sensible reason. [Glen of the Rowan Tree, p. 31.]

The Beers and Breweries of Old Angus

   Brewing and selling of beer had an older heritage and a longer life than whisky distilling in the county.  But it was no less under the eye of the authorities.  The records of the Privy Council, for instance, in December 1627, cautioned John Gray, burgess of Dundee, under 500 merks, not to sell any English beer at a higher rate than £6 the tune.  Other Dundonians simultaneously warned were Patrick Baxter, James Small, Patrick Kinloch, James Bowar, and Robert Stirling.  

   Piggott's Commercial Directory for 1825-6 names only two commercial breweries in the burgh - the Pleasance Brewing Company and Thomas Miller, Perth Road.  Arbroath, by contrast, had five named brewers - James Anderson, Robert Gilchrist, John Knight, Robert Lindsay & Son, George Sheriff.  Forfar also had five named brewers - Patrick Barry, Skene, Blair & Co, Thomas Morris, William Potter, Alexander Stark.  Montrose also boasted five - John Alexander, William Black, Henry Farquharson, James Potter, William Ross & Co  (Other brewers listed for Angus included three in Brechin: Alexander & Co, George Reid, David Scott; plus Alex Brown of East Haven and Alex Dean of Broughty Ferry.)

   Currently, Dundee's brewing business is undergoing a bit of a blooming renaissance, and about time too.  There are two wonderful beer making enterprises in the city:  The Law Brewing Co. and 71 Brewing.  We wish both these businesses well (along with the micro-brewery Mor Brewing, based in nearby Kellas).  Barring brave, independent beers like the Hawkhill- Ballys venture in the 1980s, there has not been a major brewing operation in Dundee since the demise of Ballingall's, founded near the Lochee Road in 1750 as the Pleasance Brewing Co. and taking over by the Ballingall family a century later.  It survived another century plus before being bought out by Drybroughs and assisted into extinction in 1968. (A Scottish photographer named Oliver Pilcher bought the rights to the brand name Ballingall's in recent years, with the intention to resurrect the brewery, but as yet it remains moribund.)  The heroic Alfred Barnard visited Ballingall's in the late 19th century as part of his monumental odyssey around the breweries of Great Britain and Ireland.

   Ballingall's had originated as The Pleasance Brewing Company around 1750.  William Ballingall took over the business in 1844 and his son Hugh, a prominent local politician, inherited the firm.  He built the new Park Brewery, across the road from the existing Pleasance Brewery (separated by aptly named Hop Street).  Mr Barnard left a very detailed and technical account of the brewing operation here and seemed very impressed by the buildings and the produce:

   

Ballingall's New Park Brewery, Dundee.

We first sampled the porter and stout (manufactured by the firm for their local trade), which we found quite equal to any we had tasted in Glasgow and Edinburgh; but the firm's reputation is based upon the superior quality of their Scotch pale ales, which are sold all over the North of England and throughout Scotland, depots for supplying the same being established at Newcastle, Liverpool, and other places. The firm's special brand of pale ale, which was exhibited in the Paris Exhibition, is certainly as delicious as any we have tasted. Without being heady it is highly nutritious, bright and sparkling, and tastes well of the hop. Some of the old beers were too strong for a general beverage, and a wine glassful was as much as we dared tackle. It may here be stated that the firm have been awarded medals at the Edinburgh Exhibition of 1886, and the Paris Exhibitions of 1867, 1878 and 1889 (gold and silver). The bottled ales, although of less strength, possess an aromatic flavour, and are most agreeable to the palate...In front of these ancient remains [of the 18th century brewery] there is a plot of ground, through which runs a stream, known from time immemorial as the "Scouring Burn." It formed a part of "The Meadows" referred to by a Dundee historian, as "being drained in the early part of the eighteenth century, and enclosed with stone walls, the grass-land thereon being laid out for the washing and bleaching of the inhabitants, and a road was made through it," which was probably the Lochee Road of the present date. This piece of ground will shortly be covered by the extensive buildings about to be erected by the proprietor, to enlarge the new brewery.

   Dundee's brewing heritage, despite the strange paucity of evidence in the early 19th century, stretches back into medieval times.  The Maltmen were one of the largest incorporated trades in the burgh in the early medieval period.  Dundee's population in the early 17th century may have been around 6,000-8,000, and out of these there were 100 Maltmen.  In the period of 1661 to 1700 there were 240 registered apprentices in the trade in Dundee.  The trade of course flourished because of demand, beer of course being preferable to the frequently disease ridden general water supply.  Following the Reformation the authorities, bolstered by the power of the Kirk, tried to regulate the consumption of alcohol, but it was doubtless a losing battle.  In January 1558 or 1559 the authorities in Dundee ordered a 10 pm curfew and banned 'drinking in any ale house or wine tavern efter ten hours of the nicht, under the pain of forty shillings'.  A few years later 9 pm was the cut off point for 'dancing, drinking, playing or sic vain exercise'.  Brewers' produce was also checked for quality, and in October 1564 the council found that 'the ale brewen be David Spankie's wife be sufficient'.

   Even earlier than this, we can have a peek that lets us know about the availability if not the actual production of spirits locally.  In 1497 King James IV visited the area and the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer record 'to the barbour that brocht aqua vite to the King in Dunde, be the Kingis  command... xxxi s[hillings].'

   The historian Anthony Cooke has uncovered much of the hidden history of drinking dens in Scotland in the 19th century and in particular the prominent part women played in running unlicensed shebeens in the closes and back-alleys of Dundee and other cities.  In 1861, Cooke tells us, four Dundonian women were jailed for keeping illegal shebeens.  Several years later a woman named either Isabella Forbes or Smith was prosecuted for operating a shebeen/brothel in Couttie's Wynd.  

Montrose and the "Newkie Broon" Urban Legend

   Here's a garbled tall tale for you.  Some years ago I was informed (in a pub, by an unreliable source) that the world famous Newcastle Brown Ale - of which I was once keen - was in fact a Scottish product, a secret Angus beer in fact, which was shipped from Montrose to Newcastle, then bottled and labelled as a local product.  The truth appears to be somewhat different.

 

   James Deuchar Ltd were a brewing enterprise based in Monwearmouth in the north-east of England.  By the beginning of the twentieth century they acquired the Lochside Brewery in Montrose, formerly owned by William Ross & Co and other concerns in the Newcastle area. 

Brewing was concentrated in Montrose and the Monkwearmouth brewery was used for storage and bottling. In 1957 brewing ceased in Montrose and was moved to the old Robert Deuchar brewery in Duddingston.  When Newcastle Breweries bought James Deuchar in 1959, production ceased.  Meanwhile the actual premises at Montose, which were founded in 1781, were bought by Macnab Distilleries Ltd, producing the Sandy Macnab brand.  The distillery closed in 1992.  So while there was some connection between Newcastle Brown and Montrose, the truth is more concoluted than the legend.  

Sources

Barnard, Alfred, The Noted Breweries of Britain and Ireland (4 volumes, London, 1889-1896 [volume 3, 142-67 for Ballingall's.]).
Cooke, Anthony, A History of Drinking:  The Scottish Pub Since 1700 (Edinburgh, 2015).
Cruickshank, Frederick, Navar and Lethnot, The History of a Glen Parish in the North-East of Forfarshire (Brechin, 1899).
Fraser, Duncan, Glen of the Rowan Tree (Montrose, 1973, reprinted 1974).
Fraser, Duncan, The Flower People (Montrose, 1977).
Hume Brown, P. (ed.), The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland (second series, volume 2, Edinburgh, 1900).
Jackson, Michael, Michael Jackson’s Malt Whisky Companion (5^th edn., London, 2004).

https://www.arbikie.com/

https://www.ginbothy.co.uk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glencadam_distillery

http://www.glencadamwhisky.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Port_distillery

Auchmithie

The fishing village of Auchmithie, three miles north of and inextricably linked with Arbroath, remains a living community, albeit vastly changed from its origins as a place which subsisted entirely on one centuries old trade.  The pulse of the place still beats, albeit its character has changed. (Compare it, if you will, with the ghostly desertion of the Fishtown of Usan, to the north.)

   Fishing’s heyday in Auchmithie coincided with its incidental fame as a setting in Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary.  But more lasting fame has been guaranteed the village for being the birthplace of the renowned Arbroath Smokie.  By the time that the wider British public deigned to become interested in the hitherto invisible fisher folk their way of life was likely on the wane.  Yet the descriptions of intrepid Victorian writers are still fascinating for what they reveal of the commentators no less than the ‘natives’.  James Bertram had a keen interest in the conditions of the coastal communities around the entire British Isles.  Here is his impression of Auchmithie from his book The Harvest of the Sea:

One customary feature observed by strangers on entering Auchmithie is, that when met by female children they invariably stoop down, make a very low curtsey, and for this piece of polite condescension they expect a few halfpence will be thrown to them.  If you pass on without noticing them they will not ask for anything, but once throw them a few halfpence and a pocketful will be required to satisfy their importunities...

Are we looking at them, or are they looking at us?

Bertram was impressed by the inhospitable geography of the village as well as its fisher-folk:

Entering the village of Auchmithie from the west, and walking through to the extreme east end, the imagination gets staggered to think how any class of men could have selected such a wild and rugged part of the coast for pursuing the fishing trade... there are in all about seventeen boats’ crews at Auchmithie.  Winding roads with steps lead down the steep brae to the beach...there is no harbour or pier for the boats to land at or receive shelter from, and this the fishermen complain of, as they have to pay £2 a year for the privilege of each boat...Fisher-life may be witnessed here in all its unvarnished simplicity...I have seen the women of Auchmithie “kilt their coats” and rush into the water in order to aid in shoving off the boats, and on the return of the little fleet carry the men ashore on their brawny shoulders with the greatest ease and all the nonchalance imaginable, no matter who might be looking at them.

   In the same author’s The Unappreciated Fisher Folk he writes in broader terms about the society of the coastal community.  The settlement of Auchmithie, Bertram wrote, had hardly changed for many generations when Walter Scott visited in the early 19^th century and still, in Bertram’s own day, provided a unique opportunity to study a particular lifestyle:

It is certainly in Scotland (and in Cornwall as well) that the life and labour of this hardy and industrious class of persons can be studied to the greatest advantage, and in some places even yet their daily round of existence rolls on much as it did a century ago.  In Scotland, the patriarchal system of work is still largely maintained; in many Scottish fishing villages the family fishing boat is as much an institution as a family walnut-tree is in France...In Scotland, the fisher communities seldom receive any accession of new blood...The fisher folk intermarry in their communities, and so preserve those traditions of labour and the observance of those social customs which have become stereotyped among the people who go down to the sea in fishing ships.

   This extreme insularity in a small community obviously brought problems, both inside the isolated village and those who looked on from outside, even in a kindly way. Speculation was that the inhabitants of Auchmithie, and indeed other Scottish fishing villages, were so different from the locals further inland that they must have originally come into the country as a distinct, foreign race. But there is absolutely no proof that this is the case. The strangeness of the fisher folk in all the Angus communities was picked up by the county historian, Alexander Warden, focusing on their reluctance to associate socially with others:


The several communities almost invariable intermarry amongst themselves, and it is a rare occurrence for the son of a fisher to take an alien to the craft to wife, or for a daughter to marry outwith the fraternity.  Indeed so clannish are the fishers of each village that they seldom go even to neighbouring fishing communities for spouses...The affect of so much intermarrying is to degenerate the race, and in most of the fishing villages there are generally a proportion of the inhabitants affected with scrofula or other diseases, and several having a weak intellect.

   This insularity, in terms of marriage, was undoubtedly a fact and not a misconception by others regarding fishing communities.  The anonymous contributor to Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal, who visited Auchmithie in the autumn of 1843, was of course inspired in his journey by Walter Scott.  He was rightly impressed during a boat trip around some of the nearby coastal caves, but less so with the actual conditions in Auchmithie, both in terms of the physical state of the place, but also the inhabitants:

I took a survey of the village, and am forced to own that such places are most endurable in novels.  Imagine a narrow street of low and irregular cottages, the whole way, excepting a very narrow crooked passage, being occupied by groups of men and women engaged in preparing fishing lines with bait, the latter being in the most revolting state of filthiness and dishabille, while heaps of fish offal, and the refuse of the nets, lie tainting the air in all directions.  The people of the village are quite isolated from general society, and their tribe-like history is attested by their being only four names or so amongst them.  But one instance is remembered of an intermarriage with the neighbouring rustic people taking place, and in that case the female, who was the daughter of a fisherman, was cut by the whole fraternity, and regarded as a lost person, though the disadvantage seems to have chiefly been on the other side, as this poor woman was totally unfitted by her previous habits, and by her ignorance of house-keeping, for acting as a plough-man’s wife.  The whole economy of this village impresses one of a surviving example of society at the hunting stage, the first in advance from pure savagery.  And of this the broadest and most unmistakable feature is the slave-like condition of the women.  These poor creatures have to gather and carry bait, dress the lines, carry their husbands on their backs out to the boats, and back again when they return; and finally, to them falls the duty of transporting heavy back-burdens of fish to the neighbouring towns, in order to convert it to money. Under such circumstances the softness of the feminine constitution, bodily and mental, is extinguished at an early age, and they become as hardy, ungainly, and muscular as the men.

   It was true that there were very few names in the settlement:  the predominant families were Smith, Swankie, Cargill, and Spink. (In the Aberdeen Journal in December 1859, it was reported that 123 out of Auchmithie’s total population of 375 were surnamed Cargill.)  The Chamber’s correspondent noted the difference between Auchmithie and the nearby, smaller community of the coastguard station:  ‘...where all is neatness and propriety, the children clean and fully dressed, and gardens are cultivated in front of every house.  But the most of these strangers are English, and that amply accounts for the difference.’

  

  

Walter Scott 

   The fisher town of Auchmithie was given to Arbroath Abbey by King William, the abbey’s founder in the late 12^th century, and after the reformation the lands of Ethie, including the bvillage, passed to a series of lay owners, and eventually the Northesk Carnegie family.  The first record of the village is in 1434.  In the nature of things, no-one was much interested in Auchmithie or indeed any other fishing village in the British Isles until the modern era.  Walter Scott published his novel The Antiquary in 1816, and it was his own favourite as well as one of his most acclaimed work.  Set in the late 18th century, Auchmithie features as Musselcrag in the book, while Arbroath is Fairport.  Allegedly Scott wanted to set another novel in the area, but this never transpired.  The Antiquary is only partially set in our area.  The incidents surrounding the Mucklebackit family in the novel, and particularly the description of one of their number, has been much praised.

Movement of Fishermen to Arbroath

   The virtual bondage of the inhabitants of Auchmithie was challenged by some of the inhabitants who burnt their houses down in the late 17^th century.  Nearby Arbroath managed to entice some fisherman, most from the Cargill family, to move there in 1705.   But the Earl of Northesk successfully legally challenged the movement of his fishermen to Arbroath and the Lord Advocate, Sir James Stewart, backed his authority to keep his vassals where they were.

   There was a possibly apocryphal story, recorded by William Fraser (and later by local historian Alexander Fraser), that the fisher people of Auchmithie lived in worse than mortal fear of their feudal superiors.  Rather than be confined in the vast and dismal dungeons of nearby Red Castle if they seriously transgressed, they begged the Carnegie lord to cast them into the sea off the cliffs of Red Head.  Despite the recent vassalage (or possibly because of impending freedom of movement), the English traveller and cleric James Hall found excited crowds of villagers thronging to meet him in the early part of the century – but only because they mistook him for a much anticipated cobbler.  He ungallantly commented that the women’s feet were habitually bigger than the men’s.

    Following a change in law in 1799, fisher families were allegedly free from the old bondage system and could, in theory, go where they pleased.  The author of Arbroath: Past and Present stated that migration from Auchmithie to Arbroath began in earnest in 1829-1830, and before that period there were only around 6 fishing boats in Arbroath. The settlers lived in the Fit o the Toon in Arbroath. Another source states there were only three fishing vessels active in Arbroath in 1826 (double the number there were in 1772). There were, in 1880, still 40 boats working in Auchmithie (a number confirmed by the author of Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal, who noted between 30 and 40 boats in 1843), but only 10 were active by 1929.  Even the provision of a proper harbour in the last decade of the 19^th century failed to halt the decline.

The Mystical Smokie

   No-one can agree on the origins of the Arbroath Smokie, other than the fact that it originated in Auchmithie.  The same fallacy that regards the inhabitants as Auchmithie as undoubted immigrants, albeit possibly medieval ones, says that the smoked haddock here is a relation of similarly smoked Scandinavian fish.  Other names for Smokies have included The Lucken, Closed Fish or Pinwiddies.

The classic method for Smokie preparation is described by Bertram (The Harvest of the Sea, p. 346):

They use a barrel without top or bottom as a substitute for a curing house.  The barrel being inserted a little distance in the ground, an old kail pot or kettle, filled with sawdust, is placed at the bottom, and the inside in then filled with as many fish as can conveniently be hung in it. The sawdust is then set fire to, and a piece of canvas thrown over the top of the barrel:  by this means the females of Auchmithie smoke their haddocks in a round state, and very excellent they are when the fish are caught in season.

   Apart from the dodgy Scandinavian origin myth, the most widely believed tale about the beginning of the Smokie states that it began accidentally when a cottage containing drying haddocks burnt down and the smoked fish were found in the ruins of the building, as a kind of compensatory culinary miracle next day. The actual date when the commercial smoking of fish here began can't be determined with accuracy; possibly it existed for a considerable period among individual families for their own consumption. Here's what the Rev. James Keadrick wrote in 1813:

...though some individuals smoke haddocks, codlings, &c. for their private use, there is no establishment for curing fishes in this manner for general sale.  The practice of curing fishes by smoke was adopted in Aberdeenshire only a few years ago, and it has operated as a powerful stimulant to the fisheries, because it renders the fishers certain of being able to dispose of any quantity they can take.

Sources

‘A Day Amongst the Scenery of “The Antiquary”’, Chambers Edinburgh Journal, No. 617, 25 November, 1843, 357-8.

Bertram, James, G., The Harvest of the Sea (London, 1885), 344-6.

Bertram, James, G., The Unappreciated Fisher Folk (London, 1883), 2-3.

Fraser, William, History of the Carnegies, Earls of Southesk, and of their Kindred (volume 1, Edinburgh, 1867), lxxxii.

Hall, Rev. James, Travels in Scotland By an Unusual Route (volume 1, London, 1807), 283-6.

Hay, George, History of Arbroath to the Present Time (Arbroath, 1876), 376.

Keadrick, Rev. James, General View of the Agriculture of Angus, or Forfarshire (Edinburgh, 1812), 98.

McBain,J. M.,  Arbroath:  Past and Present  (Arbroath, 1887), 71-78.

McBain, J. M.,  Eminent Arbroathians (Arbroath, 1897), 37-38.

Nadel-Klein, Fishing for Heritage, Modernity and Loss Along the Scottish Coast (Oxford, 2003), 27, 29, 47, 58, 60, 82.

Neish, J. S., In the By-Ways of Life (Dundee, 1881), 55-58.

Warden, Alexander, Angus, or Forfarshire (volume 1, Dundee, 1880), 109-12.

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