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.
Childhood memories of the business
"Well, when I was a kid, as it was, as it always was, up until the sort of late seventies, the herring was always caught on this coastline"
Well, when I was a kid, as it was, as it always was, up until the sort of late seventies, the herring was always caught on this coastline, here, either Seahouses or Eyemouth or North Shields the herring were landed at. And I remember as a kid going with my father in the lorry early in the morning going to the market, buy the herring and coming back.
But in the late seventies it was over fished, and they put a seven year ban on the landing of herring on this coast altogether, so we had to go further afield to source the herring, on the west coast of Scotland, and we got them from either were Mallaig, Ullapool or Tarbert, the three main ports we got herring from after that, but it was a seasonal thing. Usually went from about the middle, end of May to the middle of September and obviously there was no more herring to be got after that, so we did a bit of white fishing, we also had a haulage business to keep us busy over the winter months.
Visitor Comments
Craster
Always in my thoughts no matter which part of the World I'm in.
By Neville Young On 8 September 2006
Neil has 15 memories in the memorynet:
Neil's memories with a Skills theme:
Neil's other memories:
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
- Robson’s role in the local community
Kippers being smoked- Staff at Robson's
- Fish waiting to go to the smokehouse
- The final product
- Robson's Kippers
- The piers at Craster
This memory has these themes:
Change | Childhood | The North East | Traditions | Work
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