Workmen at Balnagown Castle, 1880s

This photograph taken by William Smith shows workman carrying out repairs or alterations to the exterior of Balnagown Castle, Kildary, near Tain.  Artisans were employed to build new buildings in the nineteenth-century but their skills were also needed to repair and maintain Scotland’s historic structures. The hand-tools in this photograph suggest that the men were slaters or carpenters, both were skilled trades taught through the nineteenth-century apprenticeship system. The men’s ages appear to range from twenty to forty. The man standing at the highest point, though not the most senior in years, was likely the foreman, his status indicated by his starched white collar. Almost all the workmen wear waistcoats and cloth caps, the standard form of dress for skilled manual workers at the time. Some estates employed their own carpenters and road-menders but large-scale building works were most often contracted out to local companies so it wasn't unusual for ‘Notices to Builders’ to be posted in Scottish newspapers advertising for a single firm or contractor to coordinate the work of all the masons, carpenters and slaters required to complete a specific building.

Balnagown Castle is the historic home of the Clan Ross chieftains located in the Ross and Cromarty region of the Highlands. The building originates from the thirteenth century though by the time these workmen were employed it had been renovated and expanded by several owners.  The rectangular ground plan of the building dates from the 1760s but the Castle was further developed from the mid-nineteenth century. Charles Henry Augustus Frederick Lockhart Ross (1872-1842) was an eccentric character and the inventor of the Ross Rifle.  He was the owner of Balnagown in the 1880s and so the likely commissioner of these workmen.

William Smith (1824-1906), bookseller, newsagent and photographer had premises in Tain’s High Street from the early 1850s to his death in 1906. Smith’s photographs capture the spectrum of Victorian society featuring subjects as varied as portraits of Tain characters, visiting royalty, and images of craftsmen working outdoors or in their workshops. How Smith took this photograph of a very high turret is unknown though it’s possible he positioned his camera on a lower level of scaffolding. The Balnagown workmen display great confidence in the wooden scaffold that was probably fixed by their own hands. Yet, the dangers of working with heavy materials in high and exposed conditions such as this too often led to accidents and fatalities. An 1881 edition of The Dundee Courier and Argus (17 February) recorded how two slaters fell to their deaths whilst working on the new University of Edinburgh buildings.