The Conon and Peffery Estuaries – Stave River

Around AD 800 people from the settled areas of Scandinavia began to look for new homes across the North Sea. We know them as the Vikings. For the next 300 years they were active in this area, first as raiders, then as settlers and traders.

They seem to have been attracted here by the natural timbers of the Conon Valley. In the Dingwall charters, the estuary of the Conon appears as ‘the Waters of Stava’ and Polstavaig. The place-name Stava owes its derivation to Old Norse staf(r)-a, stave river. Staves are the trunks of pine trees employed in medieval Norway as pillars for large timber buildings, particularly stave-kirks. So it seems that the Norsemen exploited our timber by felling, trimming and floating it down the Conon River.

The first arrivals would have been in warships (Longskips), which could be hauled up on any shore. Later, they would have used different ships, built for cargo (Knarr), which needed a basic harbour.

Our Harbour; The Shore of Dingwall

Whilst open boats could navigate the tidal Peffery to landing places closer to the town, the Shore of Dingwall on the north bank at the mouth of the River Conon served throughout the centuries as the landing place for considerably larger vessels.

Both the Peffery and the Shore of Dingwall continued in those roles until Dingwall Canal was developed in 1817 to allow sizeable shipping direct access to the town from the Conon Estuary.

John McVinish was pilot here, for many years guiding vessels over the sandbanks, and the Mackenzie family nicknamed ‘The Ferries’ ran a ferry across to Alcaig during at least two centuries from late 1700s to mid 1900s.

And standing in the centre is Jim Ritchie's sculpture celebrating the Mod held here in 1991.

The Natural Heritage

A walk along the canal, then the park and along the shore, perhaps crossing over James's Bridge that replaced the Army footbridge in 2019, gives you views of many plants, animals and birds: otters playing along the banks, heron fishing, mallard breeding, moorhens wading. Out to the shore to see redshanks and dunlin running along the sands, listen for the curlew, watch the cormorants perching on the posts that used to guide the pilot boat into the harbour; and there are the gulls (black-back, herring, common), mergansers, terns, and other seabirds. The occasional dive of a fishing osprey with its six-foot wingspan. The squeaking of long-tailed tits, the chirps of sparrows, dunnock, finches; the wheeoo of the widgeon. In season the swans and geese, pink-footed, Barnacle, Canadian.