Word Finder - firth

definition

An arm or inlet of the sea; a river estuary.

The estuary of the Urr, known as Rough Firth, is navigable by ships of from 80 to 100 tons, and small vessels can ascend as far as the mouth of Dalbeattie Burn, within a mile of the town.

Scapa Flow was preferred to the Cromarty Firth as his chief naval base by Admiral Jellicoe, but no preparations had been made and everything had to be improvised, guns being landed from the ships to strengthen the defences.

It is situated on the Firth of Forth, 24 m.

To the north, west and south, a flat coastal belt, bordering the Irish Sea, with its inlets Morecambe Bay and Solway Firth, and broadest in the north, marks off the Lake District, while to the east the valleys of the Eden and the Lune divide it from the Pennine mountain system.

Reisner & Firth have shown that the early culture of Nubia was closely akin to that of the predynastic Egyptians, which no doubt came from the south.

Four instances have, however, been recorded of its occurrence on the British coasts, one on the coast of Norfolk in 1588, one in the Firth of Forth in 1648, one near Boston in Lincolnshire in 1800, while a fourth entangled itself among rocks in the Sound of Weesdale, Shetland, in September 1808.

Yell (2483), separated from the north-east coast of Mainland by Yell Sound, is the second largest island of the group, having a length of 17 m., and an extreme width of 62 m., though towards the middle the voes of Mid Yell and Whale Firth almost divide it into two.

Burra Firth, in the north of Unst, is flanked on both sides by magnificent cliffs, including the Noup of Unst, the hill of Saxavord (934 ft.), the Gord and Herma Ness.

Towards the north the site of the city slopes gently to the Firth of Forth and the port of Leith; while to the south, Liberton Hill, Blackford Hill, Braid Hills and Craiglockhart Hills roughly mark the city bounds, as Corstorphine Hill and the Water of Leith do the western limits.

The central public baths in Infirmary Street, with branch establishments in other parts of the town, including Portobello, are largely resorted to, and the proximity of the Firth of Forth induces the keener swimmers to visit Granton every morning.

New docks, 93 acres in extent, with an entrance from the firth, were opened in 1905 at a cost of more than i,000,000.

The breadth at the mouth is 32 m.; near the head, where the Solway viaduct of the Caledonian railway crosses the firth, it is nearly i 2 m.

The Scottish counties bordering the firth are Wigtownshire, Kirkcudbright and Dumfriesshire; the English coast belongs to Cumberland.

On the English side the low Solway Plain borders the firth; except for a short distance above St Bees Head.

Thus in Scotland the Cree and other streams enter Wigtown Bay; the Dee, Kirkcudbright Bay; Auchencairn Bay and Rough Firth receive numerous small streams, and the Nith discharges through a long estuary.

The Annan has its mouth near the town of that name; and the Esk and Eden at the head of the firth, in Cumberland.

The waters of the firth are shallow, and a tidal bore occurs periodically.

The fisheries are extensive, and though there are no ports of the first magnitude on the firth, a considerable shipping trade is carried on at Whitehaven, Harrington, Workington, Maryport and Silloth in Cumberland, and at Annan, Kirkcudbright, Creetown and Wigtown on the Scottish side.

It is situated on the southern shore of the entrance to the Firth of Forth, 294 m.

Firth, for which see his Cromwell, pp. 281 ff.

It is situated on the south shore of the entrance to the Firth of Forth, 222 m.

According to General William Roy (1726-1790) Trimontium - so called, according to this theory, from the triple Eildon heights - was Old Melrose; other authorities incline to place the station on the northern shore of the Solway Firth.

The most successful of the first class, or pick machines, that of William Firth of Sheffield, consists essentially of a horizontal pick with two cutting arms placed one slightly in advance of the other, which is swung backwards and forwards by a pair of bell crank levers actuated by a horizontal cylinder engine mounted on a railway truck.

It is situated on rising ground within a mile of the southern shore of Dornoch Firth, 254 m.

In the 18th century it ranked next to Leith as a port, but the growth of Grangemouth, higher up the firth, seriously affected its shipping trade, which is, however, yet considerable, coal and pig-iron forming the principal exports, and pit props from the Baltic the leading import.

It is situated near the head of Cromarty Firth where the valley of the Peffery unites with the alluvial lands at the mouth of the Conon, 182 m.

The river flows out of Loch Earn, pursues an eastward course with a gentle inclination towards the south, and reaches the Firth of Tay, 62 m.

Strathearn, as the valley of the Earn is called, extending from the loch to the Firth of Tay, is a beautiful and, on the whole, fertile tract, though liable at times to heavy floods.

He was abbot of Inchcolm (in the Firth of Forth) from 1418, was one of the commissioners for the collection of the ransom of James I., king of Scots, in 1423 and 1424, and in 1433 one of the embassy to Paris on the business of the marriage of the king's daughter to the dauphin.

The fleet now stood in to a bay called by the explorers Streamfiord or Firth of Currents, and wintered there (1003-1004), suffering some privations, and apparently getting no more news of the fruitful country desired.

Formerly the term was held to embrace not only all the islands off the Scottish western coast, including the islands in the Firth of Clyde, but also the peninsula of Kintyre, the Isle of Man and the Isle of Rathlin, off the coast of Antrim.

The islands are separated from the mainland by the Pentland Firth, which is 64 m.

Many indications of ice action are found in these islands; striated surfaces are to be seen on the cliffs in Eday and Westray, in Kirkwall Bay and on Stennie Hill in Eday; boulder clay, with marine shells, and with many boulders of rocks foreign to the islands (chalk, oolitic limestone, flint, &c.), which must have been brought up from the region of Moray Firth, rests upon the old strata in many places.

Papa Westray (295) and North Ronaldshay (442) are the most northerly islands of the group. The latter is only reached from Sanday, from which it is separated by a dangerous firth 2 m.

With this he took part in the capture of Arkansas Post on the firth of January 1863.

According to Cedrenus, a Greek writer of the firth century (2uvoIits `Ivropu,)v, i.

The Firth of Forth had been selected, before the war, as the eastern terminus of a mid-Scotland canal which was to connect with the existing canal and follow its line for part of the way, and then crossing the low ground in the neighbourhood of Stirling, to enter Loch Lomond, and ultimately to reach the sea by a short canal from Balloch to a point near Dumbarton.

It is situated on the Moray Firth, at the mouth of the Nairn and on its left bank, 154 m.

It lies on the Firth of Forth, 26 m.

The discovery of new lands in the West by the Norsemen came in the course of the great Scandinavian exodus of the 9th, 10th and firth centuries - the Viking Age - when Norsemen, Swedes and Danes swarmed over all Europe, conquering kingdoms and founding colonies.

It is situated on an inner bay of the shore of the Firth of Forth, 31 m.

It is a diamond-shaped peninsula jutting out from the mainland in a north-easterly direction, the longer axis, from Muir of Ord station to the South Sutor at the entrance to Cromarty Firth, measuring 20 m., and the shorter, from Ferryton Point to Craigton Point, due north and south, 12 m., and it has a coastline of 52 m.

The greatest length from Cape Wrath in Sutherland to the Mull of Galloway is 274 m., and the greatest breadth from Buchan Ness to Applecross in the shire of Ross and Cromarty 154 m., but from Bonar Bridge at the head of Dornoch Firth to the head of Loch Broom it is only 26 m.

Along both sides of the Moray Firth a strip of level land lies between the foot of the hills and the sea, while the county of Caithness, occupying a wide plain, does not, strictly speaking, belong to the Highlands.

Seen from Strathmore or the Firth of Clyde the Highlands present well-defined masses of hills abruptly rising from the Lowland plains, and from any of the western islands their sea front resembles a vast rampart indented by lochs and rising to a uniform level, which sinking here and there allows glimpses of still higher summits in the interior.

The Lowlands of Mid-Scotland, or the Central Plain, constitute a broad depression with south-westerly to north-easterly trend lying between the Highland line that runs from the head of the Firth of Clyde to Stonehaven and the pastoral uplands that stretch from Girvan to Dunbar.

The chains of the Ochil, Sidlaw, Pentland, Renfrew, Campsie and Fintry Hills, and the valleys of the Strathmore, Firth of Tay, and the basin of Midlothian may be cited as examples.

The Carse of Gowrie is the strip of low ground intervening between the Firth of Tay and the Sidlaw Hills.

In the basin of the gorges Moray Firth some fine examples may be seen on the Nairn and Findhorn, while on the west side of the Cromarty Firth some of the small streams descending from the high grounds of the east of the shire of Ross and Cromarty have cut out defiles in the Conglomerates, remarkable for their depth and narrowness.

They are more abundant on the east coast, however, especially on the shores of Aberdeenshire, between the mouths of the two Esks in Forfarshire, on both sides of the mouth of the Firth of Tay, and at various places on the Firth of Forth.