What's New

Third Quarter 2010

Armorial Stone Carving

This beautiful armorial stone of Sir Robert Gordon of Embo is currently on display for a few months at Historylinks Museum giving a rare opportunity for public viewing.

The original stone from Embo house, dated 1677, shows the initials of Sir Robert Gordon and his wife Dame Jean Leslie. It also shows heraldic symbols of both the Gordon and Leslie families.

At the end of June the museum embarked on a project to carve a replica of an armorial 'Marriage Stone'.

Stone mason, Joanne Coombs, of Dornoch, who has been commissioned by Historylinks Museum, has made good progress and hopes to finish carving the new stone at the end of her second 3-day session ending 12th August. All are welcome to come and see this in progress at the museum.

To launch the project primary five pupils from Dornoch Primary School were invited to come along to the museum on Monday 21st July to see Joanne at work and to learn more about the local coats of arms found in this part of Sutherland. They then made their own Coats of Arms and these will be on display in Dornoch Cathedral later in July

Field Walking

On the 30th April Primary Six pupils from Dornoch Primary School took part in a field walking exercise arranged by Jacquie Aitken, Historylinks Outreach Officer. Walking in lines across a field on the edge of Dornoch the children picked up over 1000 finds ranging from Medieval to 20th century pottery, animal bone, slate roof tiles, glass and metal objects. Two workshops followed at the school and the children were able to clean their finds and then draw the one which most caught their imagination. An exhibition will follow later in the year.

History of the World

We now have 8 objects on the BBC History of the World site. The latest addition, the Embo ticket box, can be viewed at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/ZbgAZaGwTFmnL1jJHnjoPA

Image Library - Burgh of Dornoch Council Papers

The Image Library now has over 8,800 images, an increase of 800 since March 2010. This increase is largely as a result of a small team of volunteers capturing and uploading images of the extensive musuem collection of council papers of the Burgh of Dornoch (catalogue 2004.316). The collection can be browsed on the image library and is most easily accessed using the 'groups' tag at the top of the homepage, then 'Documents Collection'. Within the documents collection there is a sub group concerning Income Tax 1914-1915 and the first picture page (8675) of this group provides fascinating detail of Estimated National Expenditure 1914-1915:

Unfortunately, due to the file size, it is not possible to provide portable document format (pdf) access from the image library to all documents in the council collection. In the event that any document is of particular interest, a pdf file can be provide at modest charge.

Last updated: 4 July, 2010

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