Moray Firth Gansey Project

Following our successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for £50,000 towards the Moray Firth Gansey Project and other fundraising, we are delighted to have  been offered  £39,000 LEADER funding from the Highland, Moray and Aberdeenshire areas, so will be formally launching this project soon.

(c)Photo courtesy of Gordon Reid  www.ganseys.com

The project will focus on the tradition of gansey hand knitting among the Moray Firth’s fishing communities as a way of introducing the craft – and the area’s wider fishing heritage – to new audiences. It will pay for local project assistants to help locate, record and conserve examples of traditional Moray Firth Ganseys, patterns and traditions.   The project will involve schools and colleges, communities and individuals, provide skills development training and also promote local economic development opportunities.

If you are interested in taking part in this project, please get in touch.   If you have information, stories, patterns, old pictures showing ganseys or gansey knitters etc, we would be delighted to hear from you so that we can start to record these.  tel:  01463 225530  email: 

It is so important that old examples of ganseys are not thrown away - it does not matter if they are well worn!  The important element is that we get to record the patterns and the style so that we can build up a complete picture around the Firth.

It is thought that when the herring girls were travelling the country, that started using new patterns that they saw and liked, thus making it quite difficult to establish whether they were originally distinctive patterns or pattern combinations associated with a village or area.

Few people in the area now knit (or wear) ganseys. Even an experienced and fast knitter could take several weeks to complete one gansey, and longer if it was highly patterned. However, old examples survive, meaning that traditional patterns can be analysed and reproduced. There is also potential to give ganseys a modern “spin” by experimenting with the use of new materials and techniques.

We will provide more information once the project gets underway.