How could I have overlooked this ancient Scottish town?

Christine emailed me to say: “I’d like to nominate Dornoch, Sutherland. Although it is now more famous for golf and celebrity weddings, it goes back a very long way. The Maid of Norway, granddaughter of Alexander III and Queen of Scots, was due to make landfall at Skelbo on the northern edge of the parish but sadly died in Orkney.

“The cathedral (800 years old this year) was the seat of the Bishops of Caithness, who had moved south from Halkirk after one too many Viking raids. Its founding bishop, Gilbert de Moravia, was the last Scot canonised before the Reformation.

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“There is excavated evidence of human settlement going back more than 4000 years. Troops were garrisoned there in both the War of the Three Kingdoms and the 1745 Jacobite Rising and decisive but little-known battles they were involved in were fought nearby – Carbisdale in 1650 and Littleferry, often ignored in light of the more famous Culloden which took place the following day.

“There are many more things which could be included, such as the last witch being executed there, or 400-plus years of golf, Viking attacks, links with David Dale of New Lanark through the cotton mill at nearby Spinningdale, the notorious emigrant ship The Nancy. The local museum, Historylinks, has lots more information, as do the three editions of the Statistical Account.”

Thanks Christine, and I don’t know why I missed Dornoch as it most certainly meets my criteria for being an ancient town, having been founded before the Reformation and having played a part in our nation’s history.

As with other towns, I am concentrating on the ancient history of Dornoch with a cut-off year of 1900, as I will be revisiting the towns I have covered in a future series on 20th-century Scotland that I am planning for later this year.

As usual I acknowledge my sources and for this column, as Christine suggested, I have again relied on The New Statistical Account (NSA) of Scotland compiled by the Committee for the Society for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy for the Church of Scotland and published by Blackwood in 1845. Again as suggested by Christine, I consulted the excellent work of the Dornoch museum Historylinks.

Let me deal with Christine’s points in chronological order. Dornoch enjoys a position of strategic importance on the north side of the Dornoch Firth. The name comes from the Gaelic for “pebbled place” and with broad flat lands all around, extending north to Embo and its famous sands and south to White Ness on the Firth, it is easy to see why this part of Sutherland was settled by native tribes perhaps as long ago as the late Stone Age.

There was certainly human habitation around Dornoch by the Iron Age, as the remains of a palisade, hearth pits and midden were discovered on a site to the north of the town in 2015. Further finds took place only last year when signs of hut circles were discovered at Camore Woods.

Tradition has it that the first Christian institution in the area was founded by St Finbarr of Ulster and Caithness, an associate of St Columba who is said to have converted many Picts in the area. If so, then he would have visited Dornoch in the sixth or seventh century. Templebar and Cnoc Varr are local place names associated with him.

Like so many other ancient towns in Scotland, Dornoch’s growth and development in the latter half of the first millennium are lost in the mists of time. While it can be surmised that the Dornoch area became a Christian region settled by the Picts, there is little evidence of their occupation of the area, though some artefacts were found during recent archaeological digs.

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There is plenty evidence, however, for the invasion and settlement of Dornoch and its environs by Viking raiders from Norway and Denmark and even closer to home – Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides and Caithness were all Norse conquests at one time or another. Indeed, Sutherland means the “south land” of the ancient Norwegian earldom of Orkney, while names such as Embo and Skibo are of Norse origin.

The Historylinks Museum states on its website: “The first Vikings to settle in south-east Sutherland came from Norway and probably arrived in the area c850 AD by way of Orkney and Caithness. The creation of the Earldom of Orkney by King Harald Harfagri of Norway led to increased Viking activity in Sutherland as the new earls sought to consolidate their hold on the northern mainland of Scotland.

“From the time of the arrival of the Vikings in the middle of the ninth century through to the building of Dornoch Cathedral during the 1220s, south-east Sutherland was the site of numerous raids and skirmishes between the local Pictish tribes and the Norsemen.

‘One Viking warlord may have lingered in Dornoch longer than he intended. The Orkneyinga Saga tells how Sigurd the Powerful ruthlessly tricked his enemy Maelbrighte in 895, killing him and 40 of his men.

“As Sigurd rode home in triumph with Maelbrighte’s head strapped to his saddle, he gashed his leg on the dead man’s tooth. The wound was fatal and Sigurd the Powerful was buried, says the saga ‘in a mound on the bank of the River Oykell’. The location of Sigurd’s grave is still unknown but some experts believe it is in Dornoch parish. The River Oykell flows into the sea through the Dornoch Firth and just at the mouth of the firth lies Cyderhall Farm which, in the 13th century, was known as Syvardhoch – or the ‘howe (burial mound) of Sigurd’.

“Gradually violence gave way to peaceful co-existence as the Vikings began to settle in the area, particularly on the fertile coastal strip of land around the Dornoch Firth, and marry into local families.”

It is to this constant battling with the settlers from Scandinavia that an alternative derivation of Dornoch’s name can be found. The NSA states its name derives “from the Gaelic words DomEich which signify a horse’s foot or hoof, there being a current tradition to this effect.

“In about 1259, the Danes and Norwegians, having made a descent on this coast, were attacked by William, Thane or Earl of Sutherland, a quarter of a mile to the eastward of this town. Here the Danish general was slain, and his army beaten, and forced to retire to their ships, which were not far distant. The Earl of Sutherland greatly signalized himself upon this occasion and appears, by his personal valour and exertion, to have contributed very much to determine the fate of the day.

“While he singled out the Danish general, and gallantly fought his way onward, the Thane, being by some accident disarmed, seized the leg of a horse which lay on the ground, and with that despatched his adversary.

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“In honour of this exploit, and of the weapon with which it was achieved, this place received the name of Dorneich, or Dornoch, as it is now called. This tradition is countenanced by the horseshoe, which is still retained in the arms of the burgh.”

Entirely fanciful, of course, referring to the Battle of Embo that is now thought to have happened in the 1240s, though the legend of the battling earl is indeed commemorated in Dornoch’s coat of arms. In any case, the name Dornoch was long before written into history in a letter from King David I (r 1124-53) to Earl Rognvald, who was later acclaimed as St Ronald of Orkney, after whom the islands of North and South Ronaldsay are named.

King David (above) asked the earl to respect the monks of Dornoch, indicating that a settlement of Culdees, the ancient Celtic monastic people, was located at the town which was in effect the border between David’s Scotland and the Norwegian kingdom’s lands in Caithness, which was nevertheless recognised as a diocese of Scotland There’s also no doubt about the identity of the man who made Dornoch so important in medieval times. Gilbert of Moravia (Moray) became Bishop of Caithness diocese in 1224 and moved his seat from Halkirk to Dornoch where he began the building of Dornoch Cathedral, the ruins of which still stand.

IT is to Gilbert’s reputation for establishing the cathedral’s chapter of monks that we owe some of the history of the church in Dornoch. It was written of him: “In times of his predecessors there was but a single priest ministering in the cathedral on account of the poverty of the place and of frequent hostilities.

“He desired to extend the worship of God in that church, and resolved to build a cathedral church at his own expense, to dedicate it to the Virgin Mary and in proportion to his limited means to make it conventual.”

Gilbert’s brother Richard was one of the Scottish commanders who was killed at the Battle of Embo and his effigy came to be laid in the Cathedral. Gilbert became one of the leading figures of the church in Scotland and is included in the Catholic calendar of saints, the last Scot before the Reformation to achieve sainthood. He, too, was buried in the cathedral.

It was probably monks from St Andrews sent north to Dornoch in the early 16th century who first began to play a strange new game on the links of the town – golf has been played at Dornoch in one form or another ever since, and the links course of Royal Dornoch is often credited with being one of the finest courses in the world.

Skelbo Castle just to the north of Dornoch is the site of one of the great “what-ifs” of Scottish history. Commissioners from Scotland and England gathered there in 1290 to greet Margaret, Maid of Norway, who was due to be crowned Scotland’s first queen regnant.

Her death triggered the Great Cause about who would succeed her which ultimately led to the Wars of Independence.

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As with so many ancient towns, Dornoch flits in and out of history. Around 1500 the town gained its castle – actually the palace of the Bishop of Caithness. It later passed into the ownership of the Gordon earls of Sutherland and survived the Reformation, which the cathedral barely did after it was burned during one of the many feuds between clans Murray and Mackay. The cathedral of today is a product of 19th-century renovation and is a parish of the Church of Scotland.

In 1628 Dornoch was raised to the status of a royal burgh by King Charles I. It was partly due to this that Dornoch was made county town of Sutherland.

Dornoch featured in both the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46 with two battles fought by troops stationed in the town. In the former, the Battle of Carbisdale in 1650 was fought just to the west of Dornoch and resulted in defeat for the royalist army under the Marquess of Montrose by the Covenanter forces. Montrose was captured later and sent to Edinburgh where he was executed for treason.

Dornoch was then occupied by the Jacobite forces of the Earl of Glencairn and General George Middleton. Their troops left town after causing huge damage and were defeated by Cromwellian forces at Dalnaspidal on July 19, 1654.

The Battle of Littleferry on April 15, 1746, was the second last engagement of the ‘45 Rising. Jacobite troops under the Earl of Cromartie were marching south to join the forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden. They were soundly beaten by local militias loyal to the Hanoverian government.

Historians argue about whether the Cromartie troops would have made much difference to the outcome of the Battle of Culloden which took place the following day. I don’t think they would have made any difference as they would not have reached the battlefield in time.

Looking back it seems extraordinary that it was only 19 years prior to Culloden that Dornoch was the scene of the last execution of a witch in Britain.

Janet Horne was probably suffering from dementia when she and her disabled daughter were accused of witchcraft in 1727. The local sheriff Captain David Ross rushed the women through their trial which heard accusations that Janet used her daughter as a pony and had the Devil shoe her. The daughter escaped but Janet was covered in tar and burned in a barrel.

Christine Boyle mentioned David Dale and Spinningdale Mill but they will be the subject of a future column and I will return to Dornoch in the round-up of the ancient towns’ later history.