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Around Alness  - page two.

From Alness the Fyrish Hills above Novar can be seen to the West, and on the top of Cnoc Fyrish, 1478 feet above sea level, can be seen the monument, which is an imitation of the gates of Nehapataum in India. This monument was, in every sense, the crowning glory of Novar estate and was built at the expense of Sir Hector Munro, late in the 1792 to provide work and income for men unemployed at the time. Millions of trees were planted including the first Larch trees ever seen in the district. There are another three structures on and around Fyrish, although they are more follies rather than monuments. They were originally painted white and apparently the plan was to link them all by a wall, but this, obviously, did not happen.

As Hugh Munro of Teaninich brought modernisation to the parish of Alness, Alexander Matheson and Dyson Perrins did the same for Bridgend parish as successive owners of Ardross estate. Matheson, having made his fortune in the far east with Matheson and Co with interests in tea, banking and, some say, the opium trade. His uncle, James Matheson along with William Jardine founded Jardine, Matheson & Co in 1832. Alexander Matheson bought 60,000 acres of Ardross estate in 1845 for £90,000.

The abuses of land ownership are well documented but Matheson was the first landlord to give printed leases to his tenants and was the first in Ross-shire to reduce rents. Over his time of tenure, Matheson outlayed some £230,000 on improvements to land enclosures, tree planting, steadings and drainage.he was also instrumental in bringing the railway north of Inverness in 1860.

Matheson died in 1886 to be succeeded by his son Kenneth. Money troubles led him to sell Ardross in 1899 to be bought by Charles Dyson Perrins (of Lea and Perrins fame). Dyson Perrins was a particular benefactor to Alness. The most obvious being the Perrins Centre. This was opened in 1904 as 'The Ardross/Alness Club'; a club for 'local menfolk' It is understood to have cost over £3,000. Within its confine were library, reading and billiard rooms. A year on and it had over 180 members.

Alness Golf Course was donated to the village by Perrins on July 13th 1904. This original course was a links course on Dalmore flats. At high tide three of the greens were under water...The present 18 hole course just to the north of Alness was leased from Ardross Estates in 1922. In addition to all this Mrs Perrins turned on the electricity supply for the village in 1824. Both Matheson and Perrins were avid tree planters and Ardross has one of the best collections of conifers in Britain.

At Newmore lived a family called Macintosh. One of whom, Charles Macintosh (1766 - 1843) became a chemist. While trying to find uses for waste products from gasworks, he developed in 1823 a method for waterproofing cloth. Originally he intended his 'India Rubber Cloth' to be used for making tents, however it resulted in the manufacture of the raincoat, or macintosh. Just think, without Charles Macintosh, there would be no Columbo...

In 1854, David Forsyth was born in Alness. Not a household name but avid chess players may have heard of his invention; the Forsyth Notation. This is one of a number of systems used for recording on paper the positions of chess pieces, such as can be seen in newspapers today.