Berwick's history of salmon netting on show
The exhibition at the Watchtower Gallery in Tweedmouth is entitled The Tweed & its Industries, and sponsored by Berwick Town Team.
Visitors are greeted at the front steps by a netboat, with the net laid on ready to row the first shot.
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Hide AdOnce inside an impressive array of photographs and paintings fills the walls. These include the stunning black and white images from Jim Walker’s book A Wake for the Salmon?, recording the working lives of the crews at fisheries around Berwick, Spittal and Tweedmouth shortly before the industry was reduced to a handful of men working in a few places after most of the fisheries had been bought out and closed down in 1987.
The journey of the salmon from the river to the table is captured in a series of photographs, among others, on show from the Berwick Archives. Numerous images have been collected from a variety of sources and the faces of generations of netsmen look out from the walls.
Other aspects of life on the Tweed in Berwick are touched upon; the herring industry, the shipyard, the sailing and rowing clubs, a display from the Tweed Mudlark and a recording of The Tweed Near Berwick from the Wilson’s Tales project.
There is a short film (including archive footage and photos) of some of the net fisheries from Coldstream down to the estuary made by Castle Productions which are making a documentary about the Tweed catchment and are looking for people with stories to tell or memories to share about living beside the river.
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Hide AdOnly two salmon fisheries remain: one at Paxton House which works with the Tweed Foundation catching fish to be tagged and released for scientific research; the other Gardo, beside the Old Bridge in Tweedmouth.
The exhibition is open Thursday to Sunday, noon to 4pm, until April 21.