Scottish Streets

Lybster, Keiss, Elzy, Dunbeath and Freswick are all small settlements in the remote Scottish county of Caithness.

They are also a group of streets in the east end of Blenheim.

A Marlborough Express article published in 1993 outlines how Blenheim man John Sandilands, while researching his own family history, also discovered a great deal about Blenheim's street names and our relationship to Caithness.

A founding father of Blenheim, James Sinclair, had been baptised in Wick, Caithness. He married Christina Sutherland (Sutherland Tce) in Lybster in 1850, and the couple emigrated with their firstborn child to New Zealand, arriving in 1852.

Mr Sinclair eventually owned a lot of land in Blenheim, among which was the land on which the street carrying Caithness names were built.

Kinross and Dunbeath, which are also within the same area of Blenheim, have Scottish roots too.

Christina Sinclair died in 1895, and James in 1897. They were survived by four sons and one daughter.

See a map of Street Name History