•  Lossie, Moray

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In 1882-4, Frances Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland described Lossie like this:

Losie, a river of Elginshire, which rises in the parish of Dallas, near Carn Kitty (1711 feet), where the parishes of Dallas, Edinkillie, and Knockando meet, 14 miles SW of the city of Elgin. Springing from the feeders of two small lochs-Trevie and Lossie-and receiving also near its source a burn from the loch marked on the Ordnance Survey map as Loch Nair, but which ought to be Loch-an-Iore, it flows in a very winding course, with a general N by E direction, to the Moray Firth at Lossiemouth, passing through or along the borders of the parishes of Dallas, Birnie, Elgin, Spynie, St AndrewsLhanbryd, and Drainie. ...

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The distance from source to mouth is only 19 miles, but so numerous are the windings that the distance along the river itself is 31 miles. The upper part of its course is bleak and bare, but there are pretty parts from Dallas church downwards, particularly in the neighbourhood of the city of Elgin, where one of the banks is always well wooded, and sometimes both. At Kellas, a little below Dallas, there is a very fine series of river terraces at three different levels, and not surpassed in the N of Scotland. Immediately further down there are narrow rocky gorges, through which the river flows in a succession of rapids. The lowest of these is the Dun Cow's Loup. Near Birnie a hollow known as Foths (? fosse, fossa) opens off. This is evidently an old course of the river, though the present channel, cutting backwards, is now at a much lower level. Below Birnie the flow, which is nowhere rapid, becomes more sluggish still, and the river along the greater part of the rest of its course has to be bounded by strong embankments. Good examples of terraces may again be seen W of the bend at Haughland near Elgin. In 1829 the river, like all the others on the N side of the Moray Firth, came down in heavy flood, sweeping almost all the bridges before it, and inundating the whole of the low country along its banks, and breaking into the old bed of the Loch of Spynie, which had been drained about twenty years before. The streams that join it from the E are the Burn of Corrhatnich, the Lennoc Burn, the Burn of Shougle, the Muirton, Linkwood or Waukmill Burn, and the Burn of Lhanbryd. The Lennoc Burn flows through the deep Glenlatterich, and at one narrow rocky gorge called the Ess of Glenlatterach has a fall 50 feet high. The streams from the W are the Lochty or Black Burn and the Monaughty Canal. The river and its tributaries afford good trout fishing (only three salmon have been captured within the last twenty years); and though the fishings are let by the proprietor, the Earl of Moray, the tenant allows the public to fish.—Ord. Sur., shs. 85, 95, 1876.

Lossie through time

Lossie is now part of Moray district. Click here for graphs and data of how Moray has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Lossie itself, go to Units and Statistics.

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