Neil Robson
Neil belongs to: Merchants and Traders
Neil was born in Craster and is the fourth generation of his family in the kipper business. The business has gone through a series of changes in recent times, but Robson's continues to make kippers.
Neil was interviewed by Kylea Little on 7 February 2006. The interview took place at Robson's Kippers, Craster and lasted 13 minutes and 45 seconds.
Changes in the Craster fishing community
"There’s a lot, well, in, there’s been drastic changes within the local area"
There’s a lot, well, in, there’s been drastic changes within the local area. I mean at one time there were five boats fishing out of Craster, and we’ve only, well, there’s two boats but there’s only one crew, one boat takes out fishing trips in the summer and the other boat fishes for crabs and lobsters. There was, at one time there were three salmon licenses available- so allowed to go out and drift net for salmon- there’s none of those left- they’ve all been sold off. Generally, it’s been a decline but the knock-on effect of that is the ones that have stuck it out are getting better returns than what they’ve done for a long time because there’s less boats fishing, so they’ve got bigger areas to catch the stuff in. Plus, the modern design of boats means they can go out further afield than what they used to.
Neil has 15 memories in the memorynet:
Childhood memories of the business- Changes at Robson’s
- Decline in the herring stocks and changes in the industry
- Customers
- The future
- Changes in the Craster fishing community
- Making kippers
- Robson’s role in the local community
Kippers being smoked- Staff at Robson's
- Women preparing herring
- Fish waiting to go to the smokehouse
- The final product
- Robson's Kippers
- The piers at Craster
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