Orkney Image Library

Interesting to compare this with Photo 968. The first floor windows look the same but may have been replaced. Must be quite a beam to support the frontage.

The firm's name changed from Drever & Heddle to Heddle & Drever and back to Drever & Heddle with the changes in senior partners. Finally there was just W J Heddle and Bill Davie so there was no case for a further change and the name remained Drever & Heddle as it still is. There was also a Drever & Cormack with offices in the Sheriff Court House. The others were T P & J L Low on the corner of Broad Street and Buchanan across the street also MacRae & Robertson in what was the Commercial Bank Building in Albert Street.

The story of the name changes is that the firm was started by Peter Sinclair Heddle in 1856 and, apart from a short period when he was in partnership with Andrew John Gold and the firm was known as Heddle & Gold, he was a sole practitioner. When he died suddenly in 1884, his son William John Heddle was still an apprentice and therefore unable to practise on his own account, so William Peace Drever took over the practice and the firm became Heddle & Drever. By 1890 W. J. Heddle was qualified, but as Drever was senior partner, the firm name was changed to Drever & Heddle, which it remained even after Drever's death. I was told this building had a pronounced slope towards the Custom House and that there were two attic storeys, the upper containing box beds once used by servants and, amongst years of legal papers, everything from old top hats and a set of blown birds eggs to a gravestone with names and dates on it. Was it like that when you worked there, Tom?

I remember the grave stone, made the attic a bit eerie. There was also a very old Hammond typewriter. The early records were stored up there.