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Cromarty (; , ) is a town, civil parish and former royal burgh in Ross and Cromarty, in the Highland area of Scotland. Situated at the tip of the Black Isle on the southern shore of the mouth of Cromarty Firth, it is seaward from Invergordon on the opposite coast. In the 2001 census, it had a population of 719.
Cromarty is a sea port, and its economy was closely linked to the sea for most of its history. Fishing was the major industry, with salmon stations around the surrounding coast, and boats going out to catch herring. Other trade was also by boat: Cromarty's connections to surrounding towns were largely by ferry, while Cromarty boats exported locally-grown hemp fibre, and brought goods such as coal. The Cromarty Firth is an outstanding natural harbour, and was an important British naval base during the First World War and the Second World War. HMS Natal blew up close by on 30 December 1915 with a substantial loss of life. On the 26th of January 1940, HMS (Previously RMS) Durham Castle, while being towed to Scapa Flow, hit a mine laid by U-Boat U-57 11 nautical miles to the east of the town. Cromarty gives its name to one of the sea areas of the British Shipping Forecast.
Cromarty Castle was the seat of the Urquharts, who were the hereditary sheriffs of Cromarty. The town was a royal burgh, and the ferry to Nigg was on the royal pilgrimage route north to Tain. In 1513 James IV of Scotland went on a pilgrimage//www.tainmuseum.org.uk/article.php?id=51 and stayed in Cromarty Castle for 1 night. Until 1890, it served as the county town of Cromartyshire.
The site of the town's mediaeval burgh dating to at least the 12th century was identified by local archaeologists after winter storms in 2012 eroded sections of the shoreline. A community archaeology project, which began in 2013, is investigated the remains of roads and buildings at the site on the eastern edge of the present town.
Cromarty was the birthplace of Sir Thomas Urquhart, the polymath Royalist most famous as the first translator of Rabelais into English.
In the nineteenth century, Cromarty was the birthplace and home of Hugh Miller, a geologist, writer, journalist and participant in the Disruptions in the Church of Scotland. Among his works was a collection of local folklore, such as the legend, dating from around 1740, that a Cromarty man named John Reid was granted three wishes from a mermaid, and that he used one of the wishes to marry a woman named Helen Stuart.
The predominant local stone is the Old Red Sandstone about which Hugh Miller wrote. Many fossils can also be found in the rocks along the coast.
Following the Act of Union in 1707, the British parliamentary constituency of Cromartyshire was created, replacing the former Parliament of Scotland shire constituency. also called Cromartyshire. Paired as an alternating constituency with neighbouring Nairnshire, the freeholders of Cromartyshire elected one Member of Parliament to one Parliament, while those of Nairnshire elected a Member to the next. In 1832 the town of Cromarty was separated from the county, and became a parliamentary burgh, combined with Dingwall, Dornoch, Kirkwall, Tain and Wick in the Northern Burghs constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Known also as Wick Burghs, the constituency was a district of burghs. It was represented by one Member of Parliament. In 1918, the constituency was abolished and the Cromarty component was merged into the county constituency of Ross and Cromarty. Following a boundary change in 1983, the sitting MP, Hamish Gray (Conservative and Unionist Party) was defeated by Charles Kennedy (SDP, later Liberal then Liberal Democrats), who would go on to lead the Liberal Democrats, and who represented Cromarty until 2015, as the MP for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (1983–1997), Ross, Skye and Inverness West (1997–2005) and then Ross, Skye and Lochaber.(2005-2015) Cromarty was represented by Ian Blackford from 2015 until 2024 when Ross, Skye and Lochaber was abolished. Cromarty then became part of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.
Local Authority
Cromarty is within the Highland council area, the successor to the Highland region which superseded the local government county of Ross and Cromarty in 1975. Since the local elections in 2017, its councillors, for the Black Isle ward, have been Craig Fraser (SNP), Gordon Adam (Liberal Democrats) and Jennifer Barclay (Independent).
Community Council
The Cromarty and District Community Council consists of seven members, elected for four-year terms. Three of these members are elected annually to serve as chairman, Secretary and Treasurer. Its coat of arms, granted in 1988, are based on the arms of Urquhart of Cromarty, with a Mural crown placed in the middle of the boars’ heads, signifying a town, and the motto is that of the Urquharts. The official blazon is: Or, three boars' heads erased Gules, armed and langued Azure, in the centre of the shield a mural coronet of the Second. Above the Shield is placed a mural coronet suitable to a statutory Community Council, videlicet:- a circlet richly chased from which are issuant four thistle leaves (one and two halves visible) and four pine cones (two visible) Or, and in an Escrol below the Shield this Motto "Meane Well, Speak Weil, and Doe Weil".
To the east of the burgh is Cromarty House, built by George Ross in 1772 on the site of the former Cromarty Castle, which he demolished. Ross also built several other notable buildings in Cromarty: a seven-bay brewery, at the time the biggest in the Highlands, of which two bays remain (now used as a residential arts and training centre); Cromarty Courthouse, now a museum; a hemp factory, converted into housing in the 1970s; the harbour, designed by John Smeaton; and a new chapel just outside the town to hold services in Scottish Gaelic for the many Gaelic-speaking workers who moved to Cromarty in the period, later used by Polish soldiers during the Second World War.
While the Gaelic chapel is now ruined, its graveyard is still active as Cromarty's cemetery, and the town's war memorial and a monument to Hugh Miller are situated next to it. Other buildings of note in Cromarty include the Stevenson Lighthouse, built in 1846, and the East Kirk, an important example of a medieval kirk in the Scottish vernacular, restored in the 2000s by the Scottish Redundant Churches Trust.
In recent years, as elsewhere in Scotland, coastal rowing has become a major activity, and there are three skiffs based in Cromarty, which take part in competitions across Scotland. The Cromarty Community Rowing Club also hosts its own regatta in the summer.
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