Place:Reay, Caithness, Scotland

Watchers
NameReay
TypeParish, Village
Coordinates58.55°N 3.8°W
Located inCaithness, Scotland     ( - 1975)
Also located inHighland Region, Scotland     (1975 - 1996)
Highland (council area), Scotland     (1996 - )
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Reay (Scottish Gaelic: Ràth) is a village which has grown around Sandside Bay on the north coast of the Highland council area of Scotland. It is within the historic Parish of Reay and the traditional county of Caithness.

The village is on the A836 road some 12 miles (19 km) west of the town of Thurso and 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Dounreay.

Along with Thurso, the village grew dramatically in the mid-20th century with the development of the experimental nuclear power facility at Dounreay, where technologies such as fast breeder reactors were developed.

Contents

History

The parish of Reay was originally partly in the county of Caithness and partly in the county of Sutherland. However in 1891 the parish boundaries changed so that the portion of the parish of Reay that was in Sutherland was disjoined and became part of the parish of Farr in Sutherland.

Sandside House on the edge of the village is a mansion house with extensive grounds dating from 1751. It was previously owned by Thomas Pilkington, who founded Reay Village Golf Club.

The parish has an area of 187.3 sq. km (72.3 sq. miles). As well as the villages of Reay and Dounreay, it also includes the settlements of Achreamie, Bridge of Forss, Broubster, Buldoo (Reay), Crosskirk Bay, Lybster (Reay), Skiall and Shebster.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Reay.


Notes for the Highland Council Area and the Western Isles Council Area

The local archives are held by The Highland Archive Service which is based in Inverness with branches in Stornoway, Fort William and Caithness. It is "responsible for locating, preserving and making accessible archives relating to all aspects of the history of the geographical area of the Highlands."

Family history societies and historical associations covering the Highland Council Area and the Western Isles Council Area are:

These associations publish their aims on their websites as well as a list of publications. In many cases the publications are also available through the Scottish Genealogy Society (see below).

  • The FreeCen Project--Scotland has a searchable (not browsable) transcription for each of the counties in the area. Nairnshire and Caithness have the 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 complete. Inverness-shire and Ross and Cromarty have 1841 complete with some work on 1851 and Sutherland has not completed 1841.

Transcriptions of Gravestone Inscriptions

  • The Scottish Genealogy Society provides a series of monumental inscriptions either in print in booklet form or on CD for each of the counties in the area (Caithness, Inverness-shire, Nairnshire, Ross and Cromarty, and Sutherland). Some of the booklets cover only one graveyard, others cover a group. Prices vary. In many cases the coverage is of pre-1855 stones only--this is because gravestone inscriptions are often used by family historians as death registration equivalents in the era of the Old Parish Registers (when deaths were not universally recorded).
  • The Fearn Peninsula Graveyards Project has a paid website which allows browsing in ten graveyards in Easter Ross. They charge £2.50 for 24 hours of usage with unlimited searches.
  • An index of monumental inscriptions from Caithness compiled by D J Ryrie might prove to be a useful start for searching gravestones in that county. GENUKI states "All (?) of the monumental inscriptions (MIs) in Caithness have been collected and are in print currently from Books From Scotland amongst other places." The Scottish Genealogy Society also has a list of their holdings.
  • Sutherland cemeteries are covered in Pre-1855 tombstone inscriptions in Sutherland burial grounds by A S Cowper & I Ross, published at Edinburgh in 1989 by the Scottish Genealogy Society.
  • There are no specific notes for gravestone transcriptions for either Inverness-shire or Nairnshire in GENUKI. However, the Scottish Genealogy Society lists booklets for both counties.

Sources for Emigration Records

  • Hebrides People have a database containing lists of people who emigrated to North America from a number of parishes in the Western Isles.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Reay. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.