This skerry, on the northern side of Sanna Bay - but pictured here from Portuairk - is named on OS maps as
Sgeir Horsgate, a name which is the source of some irritation to local people who have always called it
Corresgeir.
Bald, on his 1806 map of the Ardnamurchan peninsula, named it correctly - he called Sanna 'Saune', and showed that it had but one building - but by the time the first OS surveyors arrived....
....in 1872, it had changed its name to
Sgeir Horsgate.
The reason for this change has been a bit of a mystery but it may now be possible to solve it. Scotland's Places has recently published on line the 'Name Books' kept by the OS surveyors in which they recorded the source of, and evidence for the names they used on their maps. Sadly, like so many of these documents kept by the Scottish Government but originally paid for by the British people, each page viewed has to be paid for.
A link to local name books is here.
It has always been called Coiresgeir in my life time and was referred to in nautical charts by that name ,visitors arrive here and suddenly they invent their own names which I put down to sheer ignorance some of the names they come up with one would think we were living in the Caribbean !! wonder what they will rename Bo Sron Garbh
ReplyDeleteI wonder what happened to Lochan na Bo Glaise. It was there on the 1872 map. Is it where you walk to the beach now from the car park at Sanna - there's a flat area with a burn and you walk on a narrow path around the edge. Maybe it was deliberately drained away?
ReplyDeletemy kids named it submarine rock! From Portuairk, depending on the tide, they thought it looked the conning tower of a sub!
ReplyDeleteI believe the west, and north coast of Scotland is rising, as the east coast of England drops.A shallow lochan could silt up and become dry over a period of 200 years, This is only an unqualified observation.
ReplyDeleteIf Billy is right, that would explain why the water seems to come further up my legs now when I have a paddle at Southend!
ReplyDeletePeter C
Indeed, Bill is correct; The process of post-glacial rebound sees a tilt axis from Humber to Pembroke where northern Scotland is rising at 1mm per year and southern England is sinking at 0.5mm per year.
ReplyDelete