About
The Salmon Bothy at Portsoy is a Category B listed building of 1834 standing on the harbour, and it was built for a single, very specific industry. Its purpose was to prepare salmon for transport to market, to store and repair the nets used to catch them, and to provide sleeping and cooking space for the men who worked the fishery through the season. Restored and now open as a museum, it is one of the clearest surviving examples anywhere on the Moray Firth coast of the working accommodation that a nineteenth-century salmon netting station required.
Salmon fishing on the north-east coast operated quite differently from the herring and white fisheries that dominate most Scottish maritime museums. It was a shore-based, seasonal, tightly regulated business carried out with fixed nets set from the beach and rocks, tied to specific stretches of coast held under long-established fishing rights, and worked by crews housed on site for the duration. The ice house, the bothy, the net store and the boiling and packing arrangements were as essential as the boats, and the Salmon Bothy displays explain that whole apparatus in the building that once contained it.
The museum covers two subjects. The first is the salmon fishing industry in Scotland, its methods, its regulation, its markets and its long decline. The second is the history of Portsoy harbour and the surrounding district — a coast of small burghs, quarries and fisheries, with Portsoy itself notable for its old harbour and for the distinctive serpentine marble that took its name across Europe. The town's annual traditional boat festival keeps that maritime identity conspicuously alive.
The Bothy receives no public funding and is operated entirely by volunteers, with admission free and donations appreciated. For 2026 it opens on Friday 1 May and closes at the end of September, with hours of 2pm to 4pm Monday to Saturday and 10am to noon on Sundays. Appointments can be made to visit outside those times by contacting the museum in advance, and given the short daily window that is worth considering rather than treating as a fallback. It is a small museum, but it occupies one of the very few buildings in Scotland where an entire vanished industry can still be understood from the inside out.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The 2026 season runs 1 May to the end of September — the Bothy is closed through the winter.
- Note the unusual pattern: 2pm to 4pm Monday to Saturday, but 10am to noon on Sundays.
- Admission is free, but the Bothy has no public funding at all, so a donation genuinely matters.
- Appointments to visit outside the regular hours can be made by phoning 01261 842951 or emailing the museum.
- Step out onto the harbour afterwards — the quayside is the context the whole collection depends on.
- The harbourside has cobbles and uneven ground, so wear sensible footwear.
- Combine the visit with the Museum of Banff, about 13 km east along the coast, for a fuller picture of this stretch of the Moray Firth.
- Portsoy hosts a traditional boat festival that transforms the harbour — check dates if you would like to see the town at its busiest.
Highlights
The 1834 Bothy Building
The museum's principal exhibit is the building itself, a Category B listed structure of 1834 built on Portsoy harbour for the salmon fishery.
Its three original functions were entirely practical: preparing the catch for transport to market, storing and repairing the nets, and providing sleeping and cooking space for the men who worked the season. Buildings of this specific type were once common along the north-east coast and are now rare, most having been demolished or converted beyond recognition, which makes the restored Portsoy bothy an unusually complete survival of a vanished working landscape.
Scotland's Salmon Fishing Industry
A dedicated section covers the salmon fishery across Scotland, an industry that worked quite differently from the herring and white fisheries which dominate most Scottish maritime museums. Salmon netting was shore-based, strictly seasonal, tightly regulated and tied to specific stretches of coast and river mouth held under long-established rights.
Understanding those rights is essential to understanding the industry, because they made salmon fishing a property matter as much as a maritime one, and the displays set out the methods, the markets and the long contraction that followed.
Nets, Curing and Transport to Market
The bothy's original working purposes structure the displays. Nets required constant maintenance, being both the most expensive item of equipment and the most vulnerable to rot, tide and damage, so net storage and repair occupied a large part of the building's floor. Preparing the catch for market was a race against spoilage, and the arrangements for it — including the ice houses that became standard along this coast — determined how far a season's salmon could actually be sold.
The displays make these ordinary logistical constraints the centre of the story, which is the right decision.
Living Quarters for the Crews
Part of the bothy provided sleeping and cooking space for the men who worked the fishery, and this domestic dimension is one of the more revealing aspects of the building. Salmon netting crews were housed at the station for the duration of the season, living communally in cramped quarters immediately alongside their work, an arrangement that shaped the culture of the fishery as much as the practicalities of it.
The word 'bothy' carries exactly that meaning in Scots — rough working accommodation — and this is one of the few places where a salmon fishing bothy can still be seen as such.
Seasonal labour housed at the workplace was normal across Scottish fishing, farming and forestry, but the buildings that held it were the first to be cleared away once the work stopped.
Collections
Portsoy Salmon Bothy is a Category B listed building of 1834 on Portsoy harbour, built to prepare salmon for transport to market, to store and repair fishing nets, and to provide sleeping and cooking space for the men working the fishery. Restored and opened as a museum, it presents two subjects: the history of Portsoy harbour and the surrounding Moray Firth coastal district, and the salmon fishing industry in Scotland — its shore-based netting methods, its regulation under long-established fishing rights, its markets and its decline.
The building itself, one of the more complete survivals of a nineteenth-century salmon netting station on this coast, is the principal exhibit.
The Bothy receives no public funding and is operated entirely by volunteers. Admission is free with donations appreciated, and the 2026 season runs from 1 May to the end of September.
Scotland's Salmon Fishery
The methods, regulation, markets and decline of the Scottish salmon netting industry, presented in the building constructed to serve it.
Portsoy Harbour and District
The history of the harbour, the town and the surrounding Moray Firth coast, including Portsoy's marble and its maritime traditions.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.