Opening Times

Portsoy Salmon Bothy Volunteers Museums Galleries Accreditation

The Museum is open seasonally.  It opens for the 2025 season on Friday 18th April 2025 and will close at the end of September.

Opening times as follows: Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday 2pm – 4pm.

Appointments can be made outside of these hours by emailing contact@salmonbothy.org or telephoning 01261 842296

The Museum – Exhibitions

J & D Sellar, Portsoy
The Salmon Bothy Museum is housed in what were the ground floor ice house chambers used in the salmon fishing operation. Our strategy has been to create a museum and exhibition space that everyone can enjoy and explore.

Each chamber is dedicated to a subject area:

Chamber One

Chamber One
The Salmon House in operation, weighing, tying, boiling and packing. You will see a display of seafaring knots, where you can try your hand at securing various items using this once essential skill. Also available for visitors to try out, are a selection of block and tackles which would have been seen on all sailing vessels, used for every heavy lifting job from hoisting sails to hauling aboard gleaming shoals of the silver darlings.

Since this building was a salmon ice house, it is important that the salmon twinefishing industry is well represented in the museum. Once so vital to the Scottish economy, the life cycle of the salmon is described and demonstrates the development of commercial salmon fishing, which flourished in Portsoy until the closure of the fishery in 1990. A large variety of salmon fishing artefacts are on display here, which visitors are welcome to pick up and try for themselves.

 

Chamber Three

Chamber Two

Chamber Two
Demonstrates the busy industries once established in Portsoy, from the quarrying tools of Portsoy marble to the making of buoys for the fishing industry and from lime kilns to railways, not forgetting the lively smuggling activities which were once rife in this area! Here, an original clinker built pilot boat, complete with splendid sail, is an example of the kind of vessel which once sailed from the two harbours, while Jeannie, the star of the new exhibition looks on.

Jeannie, the lifelike and authentically dressed fisher lass, is the creation of Bothy volunteer, Jack Elliott. Accompanied by her kist full of her personal possessions, she would have been one of the thousands of gutting quines from all around Scotland who, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed the migrating herring from Shetland down to Yarmouth each year. Hers is certainly a story worthy of discovery.

Chamber Three
Since this building was a salmon ice house, it is important that the salmon twinefishing industry is well represented in the museum. This section illustrates the life history of the salmon, once so vital to the Scottish economy and demonstrates the development of commercial salmon fishing, which flourished in Portsoy until the closure of the fishery in 1990. A large variety of salmon fishing artefacts are on display here, which visitors are welcome to pick up and try for themselves.

Wee Bothy

wee bothy
This compact space once provided accommodation for the men who were employed as seasonal salmon fishermen.  You can still see the six bunks where all the crew members of the salmon coble would have snatched whatever sleep they could.

Today, the Wee Bothy is also home to the Bothy Shoppe.

Can You Help?

We are constantly looking for more information about Portsoy and area, the people and industries that made up its history, and wherever possible, examples of the artefacts that shaped that history.

If you have information or items that you might be prepared to let us see or have, please contact us. However, we must point out that our space is limited and we are anxious not to simply store items that may never see the light of day.