Obituary - Nancy Dunnett, social historian

Died: April 24, 2017

ANNE Leitch Dunnett, known as Nancy, who has died aged 84, was a miller's daughter who came to be regarded as a role model for a Scottish social historian. She will be best remembered for conceiving, editing and producing Lest We Forget: the Parish of Canisbay, a huge work on Scotland's most northerly mainland parish where she was born and raised.

The 471-page volume, containing scores of vintage illustrations, told the story of life, work, people, events and places in Canisbay, mainly over the past two centuries. It was first published in 1996 and later re-prints are still available.

It was a labour of love that took Mrs Dunnett five years to compile, but it sold thousands of copies and substantially funded the building of a new church hall alongside Canisbay Parish Kirk. As stated by her cousin Rognie Brown in his eulogy at her funeral, the reference volume has often been cited as a model for a Scottish community social history project.

As well as arm-twisting to convince dozens of local people to write for the project or lend their period photographs or drawings, Mrs Dunnett used her tactful, persuasive powers to access previously unpublished accounts of past life and industries on the Caithness shores of the Pentland Firth.

She was the first-born of two children to miller Magnus Houston and his wife Annie. After schooling at (the now closed) John O'Groats Primary and Wick High, where she excelled in science and maths, the teenage Nancy Houston enrolled at the Domestic Science College in Atholl Crescent in Edinburgh, (now part of Queen Margaret University) where she qualified as a school-teacher in home economics.

She began her teaching career in Aberdeen, before leaving for a lengthy spell in Canada and the United States.

On her return to Scotland, she taught at Golspie High, in Sutherland, before coming home in the mid-1960s, commuting daily from the Mill House as department head in Wick High.

Miss Houston, as she was then, innovated in the classroom with concepts that, at the time, were regarded as near revolutionary. She started crash-courses in cooking for senior boys; she also introduced then-exotic bolognaise dishes and curries, showing that such meals could be prepared economically and were also nutritious.

She had commenced her literary efforts (anonymously) in 1991 with the John O'Groats Cookery Book – a theme she returned to in Lest We Forget with 50 Recipes from Yesteryear, which included preparation instructions for salt-preserved traditional ingredients.

After retiring from teaching, she started a small B&B in the house she had built for herself, a stone's throw from the Mill House.

The family's milling business continued until the sudden death of Mrs Dunnett's younger brother Magnus in 2001. A local trust has now been formed to restore the stone-built mill to working order.

Mrs Dunnett's husband, bio-scientist Dr Jack Dunnett, MBE, also a native of Canisbay, established the Caithness Potatoes Company in the 1970s. Several of the new varieties he bred became best-sellers in supermarkets, not only in the UK, but in Australia and New Zealand. Mrs Dunnett helped out in his research programmes in breeding and testing new varieties, in the bio-laboratory, greenhouses and outdoors in soils in various parts of the UK.

Mrs Dunnett is survived by husband Jack, an elder at Canisbay Kirk, her sister-in-law Sina and her grown-up nieces Janet and Anne.

BILL MOWAT AND ROGNVALD BROWN