snorbens_caleyman

My Mum is from Nairn, and well remembers the airfield at Brackla. Towards the end of the war, they were flying planes directly from the factory up to Brackla, and immediately scrapping them. She also told me that scrapped planes were buried not far from where she lived in Nairn, alongside Nairn Dunbar golf club. If you Google for Kingsteps Quarry, you will see that a few years ago they checked it for radioactivity.

It is indeed the B9006 at Leanach, between Culloden Moor and the railway. That field and the housing estate used to be an airfield! I assume you have heard of the legendary Captain Fresson and Highland Airways, which he founded in the 1930s. (You'll have seen the statue at Inverness Airport, and possibly the memorials at Kirkwall and Sumburgh.) He operated from the airfield at the Longman - close by the ICT stadium - but had this field as his designated emergency landing ground for when the lower-lying Longman was fog-bound. During WW2, the RAF took over the airfield, and initially used it as a satellite landing ground (SLG) for Lossiemouth. The idea behind SLGs is that the planes from a bigger airfield could be dispersed to smaller, camouflaged grass-strip fields, in case of attack on the main field. Leanach had Hurricanes, Defiants, Beaufighters and even Wellington bombers. However, they had a problem with brightly coloured civilian planes using it too, so they had to ban them because they compromised the camouflage. There was also an RAF unit at Dalcross, and later in the war they too used Leanach as a relief landing ground. The airfield was eventually de-requisitioned in March 1945. That hut, which is still there accornding to Google Street View, is an RAF building. My Dad, being an Innes Street lad and a teenager during the war, used to hang about the Longman airfield, and occasionally cadged a flight on a plane. I also know that he and my Mum once flew with Fresson, which would have been in the early to mid 1950s, when Fresson had a private charter business. Hence the photograph!

Aw, gie's a break! You could at least have pretended to wait for a while Right, here's one of my Dad's, from 1994 or 1995. The area looks a little different now, but it should still be fairly easy. The question is why my Dad would take such a boring looking photograph. There's a clue in the picture, and it's still there today.

Since I haven't a clue about most of these, I might as well put in one that I know. Where is this bloke and his headless companion?

Granny's Heilan' Hame.

Which is why I said at the start - and still do - that declaring the season null and void was the logical thing to do. No promotion, no relegation. Prize money could be problematic - split it equally in a division, and teams at the top will moan, split it according to place (or points-per-game) at suspension, and teams at the bottom will moan. But nothing insurmountable. Qualification for Europe could have been based on position - that doesn't seem to have caused any problems. 14-10-10-10 is a reasonable alternative, but, as I suspected, once the Central Belt numpties find out where Brora actually is, they are not so keen.

Thanks. I might have another look at my Dad's photographs. I did have "Inverness Remembered" in the back of my mind when I originally scanned in all his pictures, but I didn't think that they were good enough. However, those above have been through just the lightest of processing with a very old version of Photoshop - brightness, colour balance and minimal sharpening - and improved immensely. My Dad himself has appeared in "Inverness Remembered" a few times - usually old Boys Brigade pictures - and my grandfather, aunt and uncle, and sister have all been in it. About time we gave something back!

I was simply thinking that as soon as they start playing, they will start losing (more) money, because of the inevitable expenses - travel, opening up the stadium even for closed door matches, and so on. With no income, a shorter season would mean losing less money, and could literally be the difference between survival and liquidation for some clubs.

Finally, from the same film as the Rose Street pictures, here is Inglis Street and what was once the Playhouse Cinema.

From another film, but around the same time, here are views on Railway Terrace.

For comparison, the picture below is from 15th April 2001. By comparing maps, I once worked out that our flat at the top of George Street - or the garage in the pictures above - would have been just about where the lamp-post and parked car are in the bottom left of the picture.

The shop at the top of Innes Street, and the view down Innes Street. Below - looking down Rose Street towards Academy Street, past the top of George Street. I am sure that the garage used to be further along - there is an am baile photograph from the 1950s which shows the block that I used to live in, and the distinctive Esso sign in front of the garage closer to Academy Street. The garage was always known to me as Robertson's garage, being owned by a relative of my father of that name - Jack or possibly John Robertson.

Following on from a picture in the "Anyone Recognise?" thread, these are pictures of the demolition of the area around Rose Street, Innes Street and Railway Terrace, in preparation for the new railway bridge, road system and superstore which are now there. I think that they were taken in around 1988 or 1989. My late father lived in Innes Street when he was young. His father was born on Shore Street, played for Citadel, and worked all his life in Walker's Sawmill at the harbour. The community in that area was very close. The first picture below confused me for a while. It's on Rose Street, with the multi-storey car park on the right, looking past the top of George Street, towards the Longman. When I was very young, in the late 50s and up to 1960 or 61, we lived in a flat at the corner of Rose Street and George Street, just where the blue building - the garage - is. I don't remember, but it must be that the building with the flats was demolished and the garage, which used to be further along towards Academy Street, moved to the top of George Street.

Correct! I thought the giveaway would be the railway station canopy that you can see on the right in the second picture. This is the Falcon Foundry, established in 1858 by one John Falconer. As you can see, it was edge-on to the station, roughly where the western end of Eastgate 2 is now. When Eastgate 2 was built, it was dismantled and then reconstructed a few yards to the south-west and rotated by 90 degrees, to form one side of the new square, which was named after the foundry.

Another one from about three years later, which contains a giveaway.

Perhaps to contain losses at a level which will enable clubs to survive?

Just started looking for other pictures, and came across this one, which I think is ideal for this thread. Of course you recognise it, but...

OK. There's nothing much to see, and most of the photos are pretty ropey - that was about the best. Give me a day or two and I'll see if I can improve them without ruining them.

You're on fire, weeman! My Dad (and his Dad) used to live on Innes Street, so he took a few photographs as the top of the street, together with Railway Terrace and a large of chunk of Rose Street, disappeared for ever, to make way for the new road system. Just off to the right of this picture would have been the house with the parrots, which IBM remembered a couple of pages (and years) ago.

Aye - the main thing it tells us is that Rangers and Celtic should have been pushed out into a more competitive league a long time ago! That really does bring home how dominant they have been. Not good for the other clubs, and not good for them either. 35 years since another team last won the league

One of my father's photos. I think this would have been around 1989 - but I can definitely say that it doesn't look like this any more!

The first of our two visits to Orkney was in 2002. We went round the Highland Park distillery, and they told us then that some of their staff fired up the Scapa distillery for a few weeks each year, just to keep it in working condition. Didn't go round the Scapa distillery three years ago - just wanted to see if they had anything unusual in the shop, for a present for a friend.

So it must be the junction of Telford Street and Harrowden Road, before the roundabout was built? Can't remember it, yet I would have passed it so many times.

Now that I would have known straight away. Went to the distillery when I was last in Orkney, three years ago. A very basic shop, but we were still able to spend money

Nope. I'm off now. Hope someone else can work it out!