Heart of the Community: Buckie Fishing Heritage Centre Ltd keep going from strength to strength
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FROM modest beginnings which saw founder members pitch in a tenner each to get it going, Buckie and District Fishing Heritage Centre Ltd has gone on to far greater things.
As well as attracting visitors from far and wide to their Cluny Place site, the volunteer team are a respected authority on various aspects of local heritage.
In the 36 years since the group was formed, the centre is home to unique displays reflecting the area's proud maritime past as well as acting as a repository for over 8000 photos from Buckie and the surrounding area.
Heart of the Community – a new feature looking to put the spotlight on the great efforts of local groups in towns and villages across Moray and Aberdeenshire – caught up heritage centre founder member and librarian Ron Stewart to find out more.
Q. How many volunteers have you got at the centre now?
A. We lost some volunteers during the pandemic, including a number who sadly passed away, but more folk have stepped forward and we're up to our full complement of 52.
Q. The centre has seen a lot of changes over the 36 years of its existence, hasn't it?
A. Yes, very much so. Our first meeting was back in 1986 in my house when we all put in a tenner each to get the group going. At first we had a small room in Buckie library but that soon became too small and we leased the caretaker's cottage on Cluny Place.
The biggest and most important change for us was was getting a lottery grant which allowed us to built the extension onto the cottage. This has had a huge impact on the amount of items we can put on display.
Technology, especially computers, has also made a big difference in terms of the photos we can make accessible to the public. When we started out we had about 100 photos, now we've got over 8000. Almost every week someone will come in with photos to add to our collection.
Q. How important is it we preserve our heritage from days gone by?
A. Our future is in the past, to a great extent. If we don't preserve our heritage for posterity probably no-one else will.
We will lose it and it will be gone forever. We're always keen to get former fishermen, for example, in to share their memories. Many of these guys don't think they've anything of interest but the opposite is true.
Skippers' memories, stuff from the war, all of that is priceless, there're some amazing stories out there.
Many of the artefacts we have in the centre, for example models of boats, are unique and priceless.
One of the best things we ever did was start publishing our own books on various aspects of local history, such as the boatyards. In all we've done 20 to date. The money from the sales of the first book funded the next one and so on. The books we've done have sold all over the world.
Q. The heritage centre remains close to the local community, doesn't it?
A. I think it's fair to say we've got a good name for what we've done here over the years. People have always been willing to help us and support us.
We've also developed good relationships with other organisations. Lots of libraries will lend us photos, for example, and we have an exchange system in place with the heritage groups at Lossie and Nairn.
Q. How hard did the pandemic hit the heritage centre?
Like most places we had to adopt a different way of working to meet the Covid regulations. We managed to open for part of the season last year, from August to November and despite everything still managed to get around 500 visitors.
Lockdown meant we couldn't hold our usual fundraising coffee mornings. However, the support we had from local people has been amazing. Our members continued to pay their fees even though we weren't open.
Buckie folk were so generous to us in many ways. This included £1288 from Strathlene Golf Club. The ladies section chose as as their nominated charity in the summer of 2021.
We've been very lucky in so many ways, not just financially but in terms of attracting volunteers.
Funnily enough we ended up selling more books during lockdown than we did when we were open. We were sending these all over the world.
Q. Now things are opening up more, how does the future look for Buckie and District Fishing Heritage Centre Ltd?
A. Obviously, we're hoping to get get more or less back to normal this year and it's already been busy.
We've got a number of things lined up for later in the year, we'll be saying more about that nearer the time. Our chairman, Jim Farquhar, has done an article on the former Herd & McKenzie boatyard for a book being organised by the Lord Lieutenant of Banffshire, Andrew Simpson, called Banffshire Memories.
We need to continue doing what we've been doing since we started – getting folk to sit down and share their knowledge and memories before it's lost forever.
I'd say the future is looking rosy for the centre.
