Town in Scottish Highlands, Scotland
Wick
Wick has the world's shortest street, 2.06 metres with one front door, and was once Europe's herring capital.
Key information
- County
- Scottish Highlands
- Nation
- Scotland
- Population
- about 7,300 (2011 Census)
- Known for
- Ebenezer Place, the world's shortest street; the 19th-century herring boom; Old Pulteney whisky
- What locals are called
- Wickers
- Famous people
- Alexander Bain, Thomas Telford (designer of Pulteneytown), Robert Louis Stevenson (visitor)
- Football clubs
- Wick Academy (the Scorries)
About Wick
The street with one front door
Ebenezer Place in Wick measures just 2.06 metres (6 ft 9 in) from end to end. It has a single address, No. 1, which is the side entrance of a hotel, and in 2006 Guinness World Records certified it as the shortest street in the world. It's an everyday corner of town with a tiny, proud sign. Visitors turn up to pose beside it, and the street is probably the best-known thing Wick has, which is saying something for a town with this much going on.
The town that salted half the sea
In the mid-19th century, Wick was one of the great herring ports of Europe. More than 1,000 boats could crowd into the harbour in a season, and the quays smelled of fish, salt and tar. The work was done by the herring girls. Women came from across the Highlands and islands, following the fleet, to gut, salt and pack the catch into barrels at astonishing speed. The barrels were then shipped across the North Sea to the Baltic and beyond. Wick Heritage Museum keeps the story alive with boats, barrels and a remarkable collection of old photographs of the fishing years.
Telford's planned town across the river
Pulteneytown, on the south side of the River Wick, was built from 1808 by the British Fisheries Society to house the herring workers. Its grid of streets was laid out by the great engineer Thomas Telford, and it was named after Sir William Pulteney, the society's governor. Telford also designed the harbour. A later, ambitious breakwater by the Stevenson family of lighthouse engineers was battered by storms in the 1870s and has gone down as one of Scotland's best-known engineering defeats by the sea. Robert Louis Stevenson himself came to Wick in 1868 as a young man learning the family trade of harbour engineering.
A whisky town that once voted itself dry
Pulteney Distillery was founded in 1826 and is still going. Old Pulteney is often called the Maritime Malt, a nod to the salty harbour air and the fishing fleet that once filled the bay below. There's a twist. Wick voted itself dry in 1922 and stayed that way until 1947, even with a distillery in town. On the plate, the town's traditions are fishy ones. Herring, smoked or pickled, is the old staple, with fresh catches from the Caithness coast alongside.
Norse bay, Norse castles, a very old Wick
The name comes from the Norse vík, a bay, a reminder that Vikings sailed these coasts and that Caithness was once under Norse rule. Just south of town stands the Castle of Old Wick, a ruined tower on a sea cliff known locally as the Old Man of Wick. Nearby, the dramatic ruin of Castle Sinclair Girnigoe sits on the clifftop, and Noss Head lighthouse watches over the bay. Wick became a royal burgh in the 16th century and is the traditional county town of Caithness.
Clocks, football and the Scorries
Alexander Bain, a Caithness clockmaker who trained in Wick, patented the electric clock in 1841, one of the great Victorian inventions to come out of the far north. On the sporting front, Wick Academy, nicknamed the Scorries, play in the Highland League at Harmsworth Park, making them one of the most northerly senior football clubs on the British mainland. Locals call themselves Wickers, and the town is the gateway to the far north-east tip of Britain, close to John O'Groats.