Wick Heritage Museum

The Wick Heritage Centre stands in Lower Pulteneytown, a planned settlement on the eastern bank of the Wick River where it meets the North Sea. The three two-storey buildings along Bank Row were designed in the early 19th century by Thomas Telford for the British Fisheries Society. They form part of a Category A listed ensemble, the last survivors of a once busy herring port that ranked among the busiest in the United Kingdom and northern Europe before the First World War. The museum’s displays trace daily life and the fishing industry with its salting and smoking processes. Rooms show 19th-century interiors through contemporary objects, while other areas cover local history, a small art gallery, military items and clothing from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The exhibits bring to life the people who worked in the harbour and the wider community. The buildings themselves have twelve-pane sash windows arranged symmetrically across the upper floors. Two of the long facades are harled, while the third shows coursed squared stonework. A segmental archway leads into the cobbled courtyard where herring were once cured. Grey slate roofs carry first-standing chimneys and small dormers, and the right-hand entrance has a plain fanlight above its door.