Dunbeath
| Dunbeath Gaelic: Dùn Bheithe | |
| Caithness | |
|---|---|
 'Kenn and the Salmon' statue in Dunbeath harbour | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | ND160298 |
| Location: | 58°14’58"N, 3°25’55"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Dunbeath |
| Postcode: | KW6 |
| Dialling code: | 01593 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Highland |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross |
Dunbeath is a village in south-eastern Caithness, on the A9 road.
The village was the birthplace of Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973), author of The Silver Darlings, Highland River etc., many of whose novels are set in Dunbeath and its Strath. Dunbeath has a very rich archaeological landscape, the site of numerous Iron Age brochs and an early mediæval monastic site.[1]
Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn wrote:
- "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate beauty. In boyhood we get to know every square yard of it. We encompass it physically and our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and an occasionally visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and disappearing rabbit scuts, a wealth of wild flower and small bird life, the soaring hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the folk who once lived far inland in straths and hollows, the past and the present held in a moment of day-dream."[2]
There is a community museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old village school.[3]
History
On 25 August 1942, Prince George, Duke of Kent, was killed when his Short Sunderland flying boat crashed on a Dunbeath hillside.[4]