History of Lossiemouth

The modern town of Lossiemouth is a fusion of several old villages and modern developments and currently has a population of around 7,000.  The history of these old villages are below:

Stotfield

The first village in the vicinity of the mouth of the River Lossie was probably at Stotfield - located a mile or so to the north-west of the river mouth across the Coulard Hill.  A fishing community was established here by the 1600s.  The oldest surviving family from Stotfield are the Edwards (formerly Edward) family - reputed to be descended from a Welsh sailor who settled there following either a shipwreck on the beach or from a boat calling at the river mouth with goods.  By 1800 the village had grown into a thriving fishing community, with boats being put to sea at the natural harbour of Stotfield Hythe at the eastern end of the Stotfield Sands (now popularly known as Lossiemouth West Beach).  The families who had joined the Edwards by that time included the Mitchells (reputedly descended from a shipwrecked Spanish sailor called "Michel"), the McLeods (rumoured to be of Jacobite descent), the Youngs, the Crocketts, the Mains, and the Baikies.  Fishing from Stotfield was brought to an abrupt and tragic halt on Christmas Day, 1806, when the entire fishing fleet were lost in a hurricane, leaving their families destitute ("The Stotfield Disaster").  The young boys from the village grew up to learn fishing from the men in the Seatown of Lossie, and no more boats were to fish from the Hythe.  Stotfield gradually declined as a fishing community, and the traditional fishing cottages were soon to be outnumbered and dwarfed by large holiday homes built during the 19th Century.

Lossiemouth (Old Village)

Following the heavy silting over the centuries at the Lossie's original mouth at Spynie, the businessmen of Elgin decided to develop a port at the river's new mouth at the south-eastern base of the Coulard Hill around 1700.  A large planned village grew out from the rivermouth harbour to house and service the port workers.  Later, when the rivermouth harbour fell into disuse due to the new harbour at Branderburgh, this development came to be associated with farm workers and was referred to as the "Country Town" by the fisherfolk.

Seatown of Lossie

The new port at the rivermouth attracted fisherfolk and a small community of fishermen became established on a piece of land where the Spynie Canal met the River Lossie by the late 1700s.  The oldest surviving families are the Stewarts (possibly from Aberdeen area) and the Souters (originally from Johnshaven).  At the time of the Stotfield Disaster, the fishermen of Seatown must have either not been at sea, or were much closer to the shore when the hurricane blew up as no lives were lost there.  Following the disaster Seatown grew in size due to the growth in fishing and were joined in the first instance by the orphaned boys of Stotfield.  Later men came from along the Moray Firth to build houses in the Seatown - the first being Kinnaird from Findhorn.  The Seatown was known locally as "Dogwall" (and its inhabitants, "Doggers") due to the fishing custom there of breeding and killing dogs to use their skins as buoys for their nets.  A total of 51 small fishing cottages were built at Seatown, covering all available land.

Branderburgh

The harbour at the rivermouth was always seen as difficult to get into and the local landowner Brander of Pitgavney had a vision of building a harbour into the rocky headland of Stotfield Point - which lay on the shoreline between Stotfield and Seatown.  The harbour was developed in the 1830s and attracted many fishermen from both the Banffshire and Nairnshire areas - accelerating the areas growth in population along with the fishing boom.  Many houses were built in a grid pattern out from the new harbour and this village came to be known as "Branderburgh" in honour of the local landowner.  By the end of the 19th Century, the villages located in the vicinity of the rivermouth came to be collectively known as "Inverlossie" or just plain "Lossie", and were increasingly viewed as being a single unit or town.  The town was eventually turned into a single police burgh known as the "Burgh of Lossiemouth & Branderburgh".  Modern development continued to fuse the old villages together and the town eventually came to be simply known as "Lossiemouth" for official purposes - or even more simply, "Lossie", to all the locals.