17 Comments
Jan 28Liked by Fiona Campbell-Howes

This matter regarding the extent of Loch of Spynie is covered in an article at https://cushnieent.com/articles/LochSpynie.htm

You used this site "The Early Church in the North of Scotland" in your previous post about Pulvrennan and Knockando so I am surprised that you did not see it. The article was written in 1919.

To reference the Website in question I would ask you to use its proper title or its abbreviation ECNS not "on the Cushnie Enterprises website"!

Expand full comment
Jul 3, 2022Liked by Fiona Campbell-Howes

Hello Fiona - a voice from the ghosts of your 6th form history course... also with an interest decades later in early medieval Moray, probably for very similar reasons. Saw your name pop up on the Northern Picts twitter feed.

Alastair and Helen's theories below could both be supported by the argument on page 114 of this https://pubs.bgs.ac.uk/publications.html?pubID=B01928, that the geological remains of shingle ridges and storm beaches around the modern mouth of the Lossie suggest that the Lossie and Loch Spynie were for some time blocked off from the sea east of Lossiemouth and instead were forced to empty to the west into Burghead Bay through the Roseisle/Alves gap. This subsequently silted up into marshland when access to the sea from the eastern end of the Loch opened up again, splitting the loch/estuary into the eastern Loch Spynie and the western Loch Roseisle. This does seem to have some respectable evidential basis beyond simple speculation around the local tradition of Vikings sailing past Kintrae/Roseisle/your old kitchen window (a tradition that the book is still sceptical about I'm afraid).

This would in turn suggest that the Findhorn wouldn't have had to meander anywhere near as far east as you'd imagine to have emptied into "Loch Spynie", it could conceivably have done so somewhere near, say Coltfield or Hempriggs, and could have done so passing north rather than south of Forres, which seems a bit more realistic. If the Lossie and the Findhorn both entered the sea together via Loch Spynie between Kinloss and Roseisle it could also support the theory that Kinloss might be named after its relationship with the Lossie, and explain why the tiny Lossie/Loxa but not the much larger Findhorn seems to have been recorded by Ptolomy. It is hard to see any of this still being the case as late as 1100 though?

Stratigos' recent paper on the subject (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14732971.2021.1930775) seems to disagree, but without directly mentioning or rebutting the 1968 book. His model has Loch Spynie and Loch Roseisle as always essentially separate, as with your map above. His analysis does seem primarily to be based on changing water levels in the context of constant back-projected modern contours though, so might miss the effects of the movements of silt and sand and shingle causing land contours to change, which seems such a well-recorded feature of the area's history, and which the 1968 book with its geological approach seems to focus on more.

(On the other hand Stratigos is a leading academically authoritative wetland paleogeographer and archaeologist and I'm a random bloke on the internet, so who am I to comment?)

Expand full comment
Jul 2, 2022Liked by Fiona Campbell-Howes

Hi Fiona. Very thought provoking as ever! Thanks. Have to say though I can’t see a way that the Findhorn ever flowed east, south of Forres. If it did it would have had to flow uphill not to mention cutting across the Altyre/Mosset burn as well as Kinloss burn. I still favour the Lossie flowing west to Kinloss. I see Helen’s argument below but the ridge from Roseisle to Ardgay could have formed in post medieval times - the soil of the Laich is susceptible to westerly windblow to this day.

Can I also though point out another place name that has always puzzled me: Cassieford on the Forres to Kinloss road. I don’t know the root of the name so the ford bit could be a corruption but nowadays there is no water there to be forded. Certainly before the land bounced back after the ice melted it is thought that the sea reached to Forres with all the land north of there (and Cassieford that sits on the same ridge) was salt marsh at best.

Not sure that helps in any way though.

Keep it up

Expand full comment

Fascinating, thanks Fiona! This whole region is difficult to understand, the movement of sand, the changing water flow, the 17thC drainage, and all subject to periodic massive flooding, to say nothing of slippery placenames.

Trying to get my head around this. The direction water flowed is still possible to assertain from the lay of the land. The Kinloss burn flows westwards down to Findhorn Bay, so it can’t have once flowed eastwards. Also, there is a small rise of land, I hesitate to call it a ridge, which forms the west side of old Spynie Loch, roughly from Roseisle down to Ardgye, so it isn’t likely an eastward flowing stream could go up and over this rise.

But now that you’ve brought up this topic, there is something else suspicious. If we go south a bit from your putative line, then we see the Monaughty burn, and this rises by several burns in the hills to its south which then fall together and yes, this burn flows to the east. Eventually it falls into the Lossie river beside Elgin, then out to Lossiemouth. So the main part of this burn starts in the south near Kinloss, and ends up at Lossiemouth. I wonder if its possible that before the modern township, that Kinloss was just that, the head of the Lossie (burn/river)?

But either way that still doesn’t make any sense of a bridge at Kinloss does it. (I drew a map for you but the comment box won't allow me to post it... )

Expand full comment
Jun 26, 2022Liked by Fiona Campbell-Howes

Super interesting. I know the area from spending holidays there, so this has been fascinating

Expand full comment