Ravenscraig, 58 Tay Street

Ravenscraig shows on John Steedman’s map of 1825 as ‘the new house and garden belonging to Miss Meldrum’: this makes it one of our older houses.

Apart from its age, there are two features at Ravenscraig worth mentioning. On the front of the house are two insurance marks from the Alliance Insurance Company. These were mounted on the front of a property, and showed that the owner was a bona fide paid up customer of the company. In other words, if the fire brigade turned up to put out a fire, they would go ahead, knowing they would be paid!

In the garden there’s a very large well. It’s wide and deep, 5 or 6 feet in diameter and going down some 27 feet. It appears that for many years it was used as a convenient rubbish dump, and it was a massive task for the house owner to clear it out.

Among the interesting finds were a collection of old medicine bottles, still labelled, from William Doig and Sons. They were in business in Newport from the 1870s until the 1950s. One of the bottles is at least 100 years old.