Abstracts of Talks: Session 1999-2000 The ‘Power Centre’ of
Cromarty: Dr Richard Oram The origins of Cromarty were pushed
back a couple of hundred years by Dr Richard Oram at last week’s
meeting of the Cromarty History Society. Dr Oram, a
distinguished writer and historian on the Scottish medieval
period, told a packed meeting at the Cromarty Centre that the
evidence suggested that the town had been a centre of royal
authority since at least the tenth century and probably ‘since
time immemorial’. Cromarty, he argued, was a natural location
for a ‘power centre’. In a period when sea transport was more
important than overland routes, Cromarty’s natural harbour gave
it considerable strategic importance. When coupled with a rich
agricultural hinterland, this made Cromarty the logical location
for a ‘Thanage’ - administered on the King’s behalf by a Thane,
a kind of high-ranking bureaucrat. Dr Oram reminded his audience
that Andrew Wyntoun’s fourteenth-century ‘Chronicle’ spoke of
Macbeth as ‘Thane of Cromarty, Th