The Campbeltown Heritage Centre is a

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

and

heritage centre A heritage centre, center, or museum, is a public facility – typically a museum, monument, visitor centre, or park – that is primarily dedicated to the presentation of Historical preservation, historical and Cultural heritage, cultural infor ...

Campbeltown Campbeltown (; or ) is a town and former royal burgh in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It lies by Campbeltown Loch on the Kintyre Peninsula. Campbeltown became an important centre for Scotch whisky, and a busy fishing port. The 2018 populatio ...

Argyll Argyll (; archaically Argyle; , ), sometimes called Argyllshire, is a Shires of Scotland, historic county and registration county of western Scotland. The county ceased to be used for local government purposes in 1975 and most of the area ...

, Scotland. The centre is the main repository for social history for the

Kintyre Kintyre (, ) is a peninsula in western Scotland, in the southwest of Argyll and Bute. The peninsula stretches about , from the Mull of Kintyre in the south to East Loch Tarbert, Argyll, East and West Loch Tarbert, Argyll, West Loch Tarbert in t ...

Peninsula from around 1700 to the present day, and is run by the Kintyre Amenity Trust.

History

Kintyre Amenity Trust (KAT) was formed in 1998 to lease the recently redundant Lorne Street Church from the

Church of Scotland The Church of Scotland (CoS; ; ) is a Presbyterian denomination of Christianity that holds the status of the national church in Scotland. It is one of the country's largest, having 245,000 members in 2024 and 259,200 members in 2023. While mem ...

and open a Heritage Centre to complement the existing Campbeltown Museum whose exhibits focused on archaeology and natural history. With grants and contributions from the local community the trustees established a museum that highlighted the different aspects of Campbeltown's success - it had the highest per capita income for any town in Scotland. This was based not only on the herring fishing industry but also coal,

shipbuilding Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and other Watercraft, floating vessels. In modern times, it normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation th ...

, whisky and agriculture. Exhibits were donated by many local people and the museum now holds a premier collection. In 2012 KAT opened Campbeltown Backpackers in the old Free Church School. This provides a modest revenue stream to support the activities in the museum. The Lorne Street Church was built in 1868 as a result of the Disruption in the Church of Scotland. The architect was James Boucher of Glasgow, perhaps inspired by a church recently built in Manchester by the leading Gothic architect of the day, E.W. Pugin. The highly unusual stripy pattern that emerged from the use of differently coloured bands of stone on the east front, rapidly led to the church being named colloquially as The Tartan Kirk. In 2016 KAT celebrated The Year of Scottish Architecture with a display of pictures of key Campbeltown buildings using contemporary pictures by the McGory Brothers, pioneer photographers from the early twentieth century. Also the very rare Minenwerfer that had come to the care of KAT was conserved and redisplayed.

Features

Social history of Campbeltown. Steamers were regular visitors to Campbeltown, as were navy vessels. Exports have included coal, whisky and herring, whilst shipbuilding was a major industry. Coal mining has been mined in Kintyre since the 15th Century, although the grade of coal was not the best it was a popular export. A model village includes the light railway that ran between Machrihanish and Campbeltown. A farming display showcases 400 years of farming in Kintyre and highlights the dairy and meat industries that are key to the prosperity of the area.

William McTaggart William McTaggart (25 October 1835 – 2 April 1910) was a Scottish landscape and marine painter who was influenced by Impressionism. Life and work The son of a crofter, William McTaggart was born in the small village of Aros, near Cam ...

- a popular artist and one of Scotlands finest landscape painters whose work was inspired by the coastal landscapes. In 2016, a conserved and stabilised German

17 cm mittlerer Minenwerfer The 17 cm mittlerer ''Minenwerfer'' (17 cm mMW) was a mortar used by Germany in World War I. Development and use The weapon was developed for use by engineer troops after the Siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, ...

(bomb thrower or mortar) was put on display in the grounds of the heritage centre. It is believed to be one of just eight surviving examples worldwide.

References

External links

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Campbeltown Heritage Centre on FacebookCampbeltown Heritage Centre on Twitter
{{coord, 55, 25, 23, N, 5, 36, 28, W, type:landmark, display=title Campbeltown Local museums in Scotland