Glenbuchat Heritage

17 John Callam's Diary 1837-1839

Click for Callam family introduction

John Callam, 1804 - 1884 was one of several successive generations of Callam carpenters at Newton He was the third generation of John Callams to live in Glenbucket. His father and grandfather John before him and his son Alexander and his grandson John followed after him. (See his family history below). He lived at the Newton croft in Glenbucket and in the census reports he is at various times labelled as farmer, master carpenter, crofter.

He kept the note book, and in subsequent years used the remaining empty pages to record his carpentry business accounts. Ken Cruickshank obtained photo copies of examples of his accounts but not all of them. Also a few minor diary entries about harvest on the croft and a reference to the Muckle Spate of 1829. (noted above)

The Muckle Spate 1829
(Wikipedia)

The Muckle Spate was a great flood in August 1829, which devastated much of Strathspey, in the north east of Scotland. (Muckle is a word for 'much' or 'great', chiefly used in North East England and Scotland.

It began raining on the evening of 2 August 1829, and continued into the next day when a thunderstorm broke over the Cairngorms. To the south, the River Dee rose rapidly above its normal level - 15 ft (4.6 m) in places (27 ft at Banchory). The Rivers Nairn, Findhorn, Lossie and Spey were affected, to the north.


As well as flooding, many bridges were washed away, including those over the Linn of Dee and Linn of Quoich. The original Mar Lodge was affected. Carrbridge's most famous landmark, the old bridge, built in 1717, from which the village is named was severely damaged and left in the condition we see today. Homes were lost in Kingston, Moray, a small village on the Moray Firth coast, at the mouth of the River Spey. Five Findhorn fishing boats rescued residents trapped by the floods on the plain of Forres. Across the north-east between six and eight individuals lost their lives, 22 bridges and 60 houses were destroyed and 600 families were made homeless.

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