To poet Rabbie Burns the Falls of Foyers by Loch Ness, catalyst of for industry and tourism, created a 'horrid cauldron'
Visitors still flock to the spectacular Falls of Foyers and ramble down the slopes to Loch Ness where, 125 years ago, the UK’s first large scale commercial hydroelectric scheme – one of the first in Europe – began operations.
The Eas na Smuide – The Smoking Falls – tumbling 160 feet to the River Foyers, were a magnet for tourists when I strolled there the other day, past what Robert Burns called “a horrid cauldron” in 1787.
The British Aluminium Company proposed the hydro scheme to power their smelter. There was opposition to industry spoiling the environment, but not locally.
The Duke of Westminster, chairman of the National Trust, wrote to The Times protesting, but when he wrote a similar letter to The Scotsman it refused to publish it.
Artist Mary Rose Hill Burton was a leading opponent and made many paintings and sketches of the Falls, aiming to capture the landscape before it was lost. But the Inverness-based Northern Chronicle reported that, at a public meeting, her views were “barely tolerated.”
Her uncle was Inverness Burghs MP Robert Finlay – later the first Viscount Finlay of Nairn – who was Lord Chancellor at the time, but even his support was useless against the enthusiasm of Stratherrick crofters who saw the jobs and economic appeal.
British Aluminium imported nine Swiss-made turbines to use the water from the river augmented by that from Loch Mhor above.
In 1890 a small water turbine was installed at St Benedict’s Abbey, Fort Augustus, which the monks allowed to serve part of that village, becoming Britain’s first public hydro scheme. But what British Aluminium built was an ambitious commercial enterprise.
They created 250 jobs and built cottages for workers, the start of the village of Foyers. By 1909, 600 people were employed at the power station and smelter and one-sixth of the total world aluminium output was being produced there.
This month is the 80th anniversary of a German bomber travelling down Loch Ness from the Baltic to bomb the site. Two men were killed, but no serious damage was done to the factory.
The smelter was closed in 1967 and the original hydro station replaced two years later by SSE’s nearby 305 megawatt hydro pumped storage facility.
The almost hypnotic effect of watching the Falls affected leading scientist Robert Addams so much in 1834 that he wrote a paper on the visual after-effect, still known today as “the waterfall illusion”, of looking at something stationary after so long staring at the falling water.
The Falls’ visitor potential was significantly expanded after General Wade built his military road in the 1730s. The Loch Ness paddle steamer era saw, in 1862, a new pier permitting disembarking so people could visit the natural attraction.
It used to be a decidedly dodgy trip downhill to see the Falls and, after a scare in the 1830s, one rich visitor offered £5 towards funding a safer path. His companion was Inverness civil engineer Joseph Mitchell, who promptly raised a further £45 to build a less hazardous track.
Burns wrote:”Amang the heathy hills and ragged woods, the roaring Foyers pours its mossy flood, till full he dashes on the rocky mounds, where, thro’ a shapeless breach, his stream resounds.”
Burns referred to the “Falls of Fyers” and in 1773 Dr Johnson and Samuel Boswell visited what they called “Falls of Fiers”.
The falls remain a dramatic sight in their steep, green, timeless environment.
n Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
