Oysters gaelic : Eisirean
Oystercatcher gaelic Gille Brigdhe / Trilleachan
Beinn Trilleachan: hill of the sandpiper, oystercatcher or turnstone
“There are a few beds of oysters in Loch Creran, and the shores all around produce an abundance of other shellfish of every description, which is used unsparingly as food by the common people, particularly during the summer season” (Statistical Accounts, 1841).1
CR18 Oyster and Mussel Fishings 1845-1962
Country code GB
Repository code 234
Repository National Records of Scotland
Reference CR18/33
Title Oyster and Mussel Fishings: Argyll
Dates 1866-1885
Access status Open
Location Off site
Description Barcaldine, Loch Creran: Oyster Fishings
Level File
Departmental cipher S/4816/Pt 12
William Anderson Smith was an oyster farmer living at Rhugarbh in the 1880s
1881 Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland
On Oyster Culture in Scotland
By W. Anderson Smith, Oysterculturist, Ledaig, Argyllshire.
https://www.electricscotland.com/agriculture/page55.htm
1886 Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland
On Developing the Oyster Fisheries of Scotland
By William Watt, 27 North Albert Street, Aberdeen.
https://www.electricscotland.com/agriculture/page69.htm
CR18 Oyster and Mussel Fishings 1845-1962
Country code GB
Repository code 234
Repository National Records of Scotland
Reference CR18/29
Title Oyster and Mussel Fishings: Argyll
Dates 1888-1959
Access status Open
Location Off site
Description Barcaldine Castle, Letterwalton, Loch Creran: Oyster and Mussel Fishings
Level File
Departmental cipher S/48123
CR18 Oyster and Mussel Fishings 1845-1962
Country code GB
Repository code 234
Repository National Records of Scotland
Reference CR18/34
Title Oyster and Mussel Fishings: Argyll
Dates 1887-1935
Access status Open
Location Off site
Description Barcaldine, Loch Creran: Oyster Fishings
Level File
Departmental cipher S/4816/Pt 24
CR18 Oyster and Mussel Fishings 1845-1962
Country code GB
Repository code 234
Repository National Records of Scotland
Reference CR18/35
Title Oyster and Mussel Fishings: Argyll
Dates 1920-1950
Access status Open
Location Off site
Description Letterwalton, Loch Creran: Oyster and Mussel Fishings
Level File
Departmental cipher S/48175
Native oysters have disappeared from the loch, for reasons that are uncertain. This is not a recent occurrence, as Reverend J Sutherland (1891) recorded: “Oysters are not now so plentiful as they were on my first acquaintance with the loch. The deterioration in my opinion was chiefly owing to the fact that a man came here and dredged the oysters without restraint”. Native oysters and common mussels are now the property of the Crown. A permit from The Crown Estate is required if these species are to be collected from the wild. [https://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/sites/default/files/planning-and-environment/Loch%20Creran%20Guide.pdf]
The widow McColl made an application for poor relief to the Parochial Board of ARdchattan in December 1851. Her application was turned down on the grounds that she earned "a good subsistence" gathering and selling oysters from Loch Creran. "within ten days two families in this parish paid 16 shillings for oysters delivered of her" In 1851 this was a large sum of money.[https://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/sites/default/files/planning-and-environment/Loch%20Creran%20Guide.pdf]
CR18 Oyster and Mussel Fishings 1845-1962
Country code GB
Repository code 234
Repository National Records of Scotland
Reference CR18/31
Title Oyster and Mussel Fishings: Argyll
Dates 1920-1955
Access status Open
Location Off site
Description West Barcaldine, Loch Creran or Shian: Oyster and Mussel Fishings
Level File
Departmental cipher S/48146
in the modern era, there have been oyster beds in Loch Creran for a number of decades, run by Peter Wormell since 1990, and since the [[[*www.caledonianoyster.co.uk The Caledonian Oyster Co Ltd], there have been 3 oysters farms on the loch.
There are also oysters farmed off the shores of Lochnell estate
The Harvest of the Sea
Chapter XI - Natural History of the Oyster
https://electricscotland.com/lifestyle/sea/chapter11.htm
Old World Scotland Chapter V. Scots Vivers
The virtues of the oyster were early recognised. He figured along with buckies, limpets, partans, crabs, and other shell-fish at the royal banquet at Stirling in 1594, on the occasion of the baptism of Prince Henry; but not till long afterwards did he become a fashionable luxury. Thus "glaikit fools ower rife o' cash" were pampering their wames wi' fulsome trash," while Fergusson, with the poet's discernment, was inditing odes to him—
"The halesomest and nicest gear
O' fish or flesh,"
and was prescribing him as one of the chief of medicines for mind or body
"Come prie, frail man, for gin thou'rt sick,
The oyster is a rare cathartic
As ever doctor patient gart lick
To cure his ails;
Whether you hae the head or heart ache
It aye prevails."
It were hard to tell for how many ages the cry of "Caller oo" has been skirled through Edinburgh, but it is safe to say that the most ancient houses in High Street are younger than those which echoed back the first "agreeable wild notes" of the "great mother'' of the noble Newhaven succession. In the eighteenth century supping in oyster cellars was a fashionable diversion of Edinburgh; and Major Top- ham, in his "Letters from Edinburgh" (1776), remarks that the oyster cellar, named by its votaries the "Temple," seemed "to give more real pleasure to the company who visit it than either Ranelagh or the Pantheon." At such entertainments the presence of ladies was not merely allowable, but almost essential. Oyster suppers would not appear to have yet become an institution in English towns, and the Major naïvely confesses that after partaking of the fare he sat "waiting in expectation of a repast that was never to make its appearance" till all else was forgotten in the excellence of the brandy punch and the charming conversation of the ladies, "who," he remarks, "to do them justice, are much more entertaining than their neighbours in England," and discovered a great deal of vivacity and fondness of repartee."7
AF62 Fisheries files (main series) 1816-1986
Country code GB
Repository code 234
Repository National Records of Scotland
Reference AF62/1319
Title Loch Creran Oyster, Mussel Fisheries
Dates 1934
Access status Open
Location Off site
Level File
Closed until 01/01/1965
Departmental cipher 1544
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