Clyne Heritage Society

Robert Foden - local historian, Kirkwall.
A talk about the troop train that rattled through Brora on its journey from London to Thurso during World Wars 1 & 2.

Simon Green - Historic Environment Scotland
An illustrated talk to prompt a conversation about the buildings of BRORA & BEYOND. Can you help the BUILDINGS AT RISK REGISTER promote the regeneration and restoration of the historic buildings of Sutherland?
Simon Green is an architectural historian in Historic Environment Scotland's Survey & Recording Team. He manages the Buildings at Risk Register and is passionate about Scotland’s buildings. Over the last 30 years he has published and lectured widely on numerous aspects of the historic environment.

James Maxwell, Managing Director of Maxwell & Co, Architects, Inverness
Having appointed Maxwell & Co as architects for the Society's Old Clyne School redevelopment project, James Maxwell will be revealing the proposed design and explaining the thinking and rationale behind it. This multi-million pound flagship project will be an iconic addition to the resources of Brora and will form an impressive landmark at the northern gateway to the village, when the Society will operate it as its community heritage hub.

Dr Nick Lindsay - Chairman.
What we have done and what we shall do. As the Society turns 21 years old, Nick Lindsay will tell the history of the Society, from when it was created as a brainchild of Hamish Bruce, who became the first Chairman, and Willie Gunn, now both sadly passed away. At the first public meeting in January 1998, the 18 attendees decided that the new heritage entity should be called Clyne Heritage Society, to reflect the parish-wide heritage and 26 members joined in that first year. They would be astonished to learn that membership has risen annually to an incredible 214 since then.
The current Chairman will reminisce about how the Society has grown and then speculate on what it will do in the future, including its major ongoing project, the multi-million pound Old Clyne School redevelopment, which will be an iconic addition to the resources of Brora and will form an impressive landmark at the northern gateway to the village, when the Society will operate it as its community heritage hub.

Dr Tom Greenshields - military historian and author.
Dr Greenshields, who is coming specially for the talk from London, is a Military Historian & Author, who has written several books on Scottish WW1 military history. Perhaps the best and most interesting speaker to address the Society, he took early retirement from MOD in 2008 in order to devote himself to his twin interests of military historical research and living history.
With a PhD on the settlement of Armenian refugees in Syria and Lebanon after the First World War, he set up and runs the living history group “The Gordon Highlanders 1914-1918” and has just published a major study of the Highland Soldier in the Great War titled ‘Those Bloody Kilts: The Highland Soldier in the Great War’.

Dr Anne Tindley - Senior Lecturer in History, Newcastle University.
A welcome return from Dr Tindley who will tell of land reclamations and aristocratic decline in Sutherland, from c.1869 - 1884.
Dr Tindley’s research interests revolve around the interrogation of the aristocratic and landed classes, landed estates and their management from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, in the Scottish, Irish, British and imperial contexts. Her first book examined western Europe’s largest landed estate in the later nineteenth century – the Sutherland estate – tracking its evolving priorities, powers and drivers under a framework of ‘decline and fall.’