Balloch Village

Culloden Brick & Tile Company

Appeal for information.

I am researching The Culloden Brick & Tile Company, a business that existed from 1847 to 1891, at Lower Cullernie, some 4 miles East of Inverness, and half a mile from Balloch village. The business was set up by Arthur Forbes of Culloden to make fired clay drainage tiles, roof tiles, bricks, chimney pots (cans) and similar items, from a clay deposit at the site. The drainage tiles were used throughout the Highlands, even as far away as Orkney. The bricks are said to have been used on extensions at Culloden House, and for buildings in Inverness such as the Caledonian Bank (now Bank of Scotland) next to Woolworth’s on Inverness High Street. Farm buildings at Corntown, Conon Bridge were roofed with the company’s pantiles. When Cromarty Pottery was re-roofed in 2002, the pantiles used were from Corntown. I am told that many houses in Avoch and surrounding area have roofs and chimney pots made by the company.

The company is said to have had the first railway in Inverness in 1850 - albeit a horse railway - connecting the works to a pier at Alturlie. Unfortunately I can find no evidence that the railway was ever built, but if anyone knows otherwise, please tell me !

The business had a number of tenants or operators. The first was a partnership between a Kennedy MacNab and a Daniel Campbell. Kennedy McNab may have been the secretary of the Inverness Building Association in 1850. Daniel Campbell, probably born in Kirk Oswald in Ayr, worked for many years at the Duke of Portland‘s Brick & Tile works at Ayr, and married a Margaret Fraser on 1st November 1849 in Inverness. The MacNab Campbell partnership was dissolved in 1852. The business was then run by Daniel Campbell until he became bankrupt in 1859/60. A William Brodie took over in 1860. He is said to have had other brick and tile making interests in East and Mid-Lothian and Banffshire. Brodie ran the business until 1874. The site lay idle for a year before a father and son partnership of John Hendrie and Alex Cowan Hendrie took over and ran the business until 1879 - I understand they too went bankrupt. A William Ross (Junior), tile manufacturer, operated the business from 1880 until 1887, when the tenancy of the site became shared between him and a William Ross of Breckish . The machinery at the site then came into the ownership of a William Ross, farmer of Seafield of Raigmore. This position continued until 1891, when the company seems to have stopped trading. In 1894, William Ross (Junior) sued the Forbes Trustees over the valuation of machinery at the works.

The Ordnance Survey map of 1871 shows the site with 3 drying sheds, 3 kilns (coal fired), a weighing machine and a chimney - presumably for the 15 Horse Power steam engine for the works machinery. The site is described as “unwrought” in the 1891/92 Valuation Roll, and not listed after 1899. The 1903 Ordnance Survey map shows the site as rough ground.

There is some information about the business in Inverness Reference Library, but there is still a lot to be learned about this interesting example of Inverness‘s early industrial history.

If anyone has any photographs or drawings of the site, the machinery and/or the workforce, I would love to see them, and would be very grateful for the opportunity to copy them. If there are any descendants of any of the people who either ran the business or who worked for the company, with family stories or better still, accounts or records from the company, I would be grateful for access to them. I guess the Forbes family papers and/or Culloden Estate papers for the period 1845 to 1891 may be most fruitful sources of information, but I don’t know where these are (or if they exist). Any information that helped me find them would be most welcome.”