THE ARCHIVES

100 years ago

The War Offices announces conditions governing the repatriation or transfer to a neutral country of British combatant prisoners of war captured by the German forces – repatriation either direct from Germany or from a neutral country is based on a schedule of disabilities of so serious a nature as to make the possibility of military employment for a lengthy period improbable. The decision in each case rests with the German authorities. Transfer is to Switzerland or Holland.

50 years ago

When gamekeeper James Moir saw what he thought was an oddshaped stone in Glenesk he gave it a kick. What he discovered has turned out to be one of the most important historical finds in the glen. Mr Moir found part of an illicit whisky still over 200 years old. It is made of finely beaten copper and comprises the “head” which fitted over the main brewing pot and three tubes which, it is thought, led to the worm in which the precious liquid was condensed and distilled.

25 years ago

An oil spill in the Shetland Islands was last night threatening sea birds in Noss National Nature Reserve. The slick of diesel oil was sighted three miles north-west of the nesting site of 7,000 pairs of gannets. By mid afternoon the tide had swept the oil into a three-milelong slick up to 100 yards wide, spreading around the northern shore of the island of Bressay and south past the Noss gannetry. The slick has been reported to the Government’s marine pollution control unit in London.

One year ago

Archaeologists have uncovered a lost medieval castle in the grounds of one of Scotland’s finest mansions. The 14th Century castle was built along with a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary at the National Trust for Scotland’s House of Dun, near Montrose. Recent repair work to the Erskine family mausoleum on the estate revealed the foundations of the chapel. Now an excavation led by NTS archaeologist Dr Daniel Rhodes has pinpointed the location of the castle.