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Lindsay's Cave

Covesea, Lossiemouth, Elgin, Moray, (Elginshire).

A raised beach seacave at the end of a small embayment in the cliff line; it faces ENE. The cave entrance is 4.7 m wide and 0.4 m high. It is almost entirely filled with earth and what looks like building waste. The slope of the talus/waste pile inside the cave matches the ceiling quite closely. It is hard to say how long the cave would have been when it was lived in (see below).

This may have just have been used as a convenient tipping point from the village above and west - as with Faskane's Cave (Portknockie). Or when vacated by the McPhee's it may perhaps have been deliberately made uninhabitable as with Charlie's Cave/shack, east of Cullen.

Cave which was occupied by a Scottish traveller. George Lindsay in the late 19th century. He died there in 1898, but it was still occupied at the time of the 1901 census by Charles McPhee and his family. At that time the cave mouth was closely built up with turf, with a wooden doorway, a square hole near the top of the turf building serving as both chimney and window. The census records that the McPhees then in residence in Dwelling 40 'Hole in Rock or Cave below Covesea Village' were Charles McPhee and his brother Campbell both travelling tinsmiths or tinkers, his sister in law and a niece. The cave is now (c. 2020) filled with grass cuttings from the golf course. [Moray HER]

Alternative Names: None recorded.

Notes: Access: from Lossiemouth towards Hopeman on B9040, turn right onto an unsigned track at NJ 18921 70468 and just before the left turn into the clifftop houses of Covesea village, there is a grassy parking area on the right. Go down E to the beach and go round right along the old cliff line.

George Lindsay died in a cave at Covesea near Lossiemouth in 1898.

"George should be with his "wife" Janet or Jessie McMilne/McMillan. He is in the Old Lime Kilns, Bilbohall in 1881 with his family and dies in 1898 in a cave in Covesea, Lossiemouth - Jessie is with him then and according to the article in the local papers at the time reporting his death, Geordie and Jessie lived on and off in the cave ( which had a door and windows by the look of the picture accompanying the article!) for the previous 11 years."

I'm fascinated by the possibility that by living "on and off" in the cave, and previously the Old Lime Kilns, this family were Highland Travellers but spent their Winters holed up in the cave/kilns? Or is their homelessness the product of abject poverty? I may ask my Edinburgh-based nephew to see if he can find the mentioned newspaper article via the Scottish Record Office, as the above quote may mean the cave was named "Lindsay Cave" since it was occupied for so long by the one Lindsay family. [Tony Oldham]