About Timespan Heritage Centre
- Open All Year Round
Comprised of a local history museum, contemporary art programme, geology and herb gardens, shop, bakery and cafe, we take a holistic and integrated approach to our programme and organisation so all elements of what we do and are, service our civic and political agendas – to make art and heritage work meaningfully for our constituents and village and as tools for global cultural and social change.
We are committed to diagnosing and responding to urgent contemporary issues, which are rooted in our local context of remote, rural Scotland, and to approach these from a global and multi-disciplinary perspective. We try to do this by assembling communities and individuals involved in art, science, heritage and activism, and deploy this collectively-produced consortium of ideas into action.
History Museum
Our history museum tells the local and social history of our parish and people, taking you on a journey from the sea and river mouth, upstream and inland to the Strath of Kildonan. Our museum covers the boom and bust of the herring fishing industry; the dark historic period of change of the Highland Clearances; the brief but feverish 1869 gold rush; the shameful burning of the last witch in Sutherland; Pictish mythology and the Borrobol Stone; the local history of space-travel; the last Wolf in Sutherland shot in 1700; the poisoning at Helmsdale Castle and the history of domestic making and craft essential for the parish’s agriculture and fishing industries. The history is told through a tapestry of local stories, historical objects, archival images, mythology and interactive displays, and is contextualised within a wider national and global history. The history of our parish is one of remarkable resilience and an intimate enduring relationship with ancient land and sea.
Photo: Timespan
Our Achive
Our archive is open to the public for self-guided research during Timespan’s opening hours. If you’re interested in the social history of our parish, or our museum has sparked your curiosity about the local and global implications of the Highland Clearances, our archive is a great place to find out more. The archive holds around 1500 original historical photographs and documents, 11,000 digital copies of photographs held by community members, and oral histories in audio and audio-visual formats. In addition, we hold copies of census records, parish registers, estate records and rentals, gravestone transcriptions, and secondary literature on a number of local historical themes: the Kildonan Clearances 1810–25, the Kildonan Gold Rush 1869, Sea and River Fishing, Land Ownership and the History of Crofting including the Highland Land League and much more.
Timespan commissions four major projects each year, each aligned with broader social movements. We programme a number of regular strands of events to offer a broad and accessible platform into the wider research that informs out programme. We are committed to supporting the development of new work and have a programme of artist residencies.
The Prague Shack at River Cafe
The Prague Shack is running Timespan’s River Cafe for the 2019 summer season, and have brought contemporary Czech cuisine to Helmsdale.
We’re in a stunning spot overlooking our community herb garden and the River Helmsdale. Our menu is all home-baked including the range of breads which can be bought from our small-scale bakery. We use local seasonal produce wherever possible to ensure freshness and to minimise the carbon footprint of our food miles. Our eggs come from Ula’s chickens a few miles up the Strath, smoked fish from the Helmsdale Smokehouse, coffee from Inverness Coffee Roasting Co, flour from Golspie Mill, and herbs from our own garden. Our menu changes regularly to follow what’s in season and is inspired by contemporary Czech cuisine.
We have a local produce stall in the River Cafe, which stocks locally sourced and made chutneys, jams and relishes, fresh local eggs when the chickens decide to lay them and veg and herbs from our constituent’s polytunnels and crofts.
Central to our ethos is to support local economic development by supporting local producers and supplying food which isn’t readily available locally.
Opening Times: The Prague Shack will be open 1000 – 1700 Monday – Sunday and Friday and Saturday evenings 1800 – 2100.
Contact: [email protected] for catering enquiries and bookings.
timespan.org.uk/visit/river-cafe
Photo: Prague Shack
The Bakery
We have some great bakers who are mad about bread and make delicious wholesome bread from natural ingredients without any additional additives. All bread used in the cafe menu is freshly baked each morning, keeping our food miles to a minimum.
You can pre-order your loaf by filling out the order form (available to download here) and emailing [email protected] or phoning 01431821327. Orders to be received by 1400 the day before delivery.
Our speciality bread list is ever-changing but you can get an idea of the different styles and flavour combinations from the list on the order form.
|Slow Bread Principles|
Bread is meant to be simple – flour, water and yeast – made this way it is healthy and nutritious. All too often, commercial bread is full of additives designed to speed the baking process and then preserve the bread while it is transported long distances.
At Timespan we are trying to restore the simplicity of real bread, so we use no artificial preservatives or means to force the bread to be ready before it naturally rises.
You can find out more about real bread principles from The Real Bread Campaign.
|Types of Bread|
While we can offer a range of breads with different shapes, textures and ingredients, all our loaves use one of three basic approaches:
Our sourdoughs mostly use a classic French style starter (called a Levain). This is made with white bread flour and is about 4 years old. It gives a light taste to the breads and means these loaves do not use fresh yeast (so may not rise very much). The German and Czech sourdoughs use what is called a Poulish starter (about 5 years old) made with Rye flour. In combination with the final ingredients, this gives dense, rich tasting breads with very little rise.
Most of our breads are made using the French and Italian technique of a pre-ferment. Basically this means the bread is made over 2 days and the first stage is a white flour, water and yeast starter. This is added to the rest of the ingredients on the second day and then the bread is baked. The starter gives the final bread extra flavour and texture. All our baguettes are made this way.
Finally, we make some breads using the conventional approach of mixing the flour(s), water, yeast and other ingredients and then letting it rise before baking.
If a bread is described as ‘enriched’ it will contain butter, most likely eggs and milk and usually some added sugar.
Photo: Bakery
Opening Hours
Timespan is open for you all year round.
March – October: Daily 10.00 – 17.00
November – March: Saturday + Sunday, 10.00 – 15.00, Tuesday 12:00 – 16:00 and by appointment
