Wick ( ; ) is a town and royal burgh in Caithness, in the far north of Scotland. The town straddles the River Wick and extends along both sides of Wick Bay. "Wick Locality" had a population of 6,913 at the time of the 2022 census, a decrease from 2011.

Pulteneytown, which was developed on the south side of the river by the British Fisheries Society during the 19th century,Jean Dunlop The British Fisheries Society 1786–1893 (Edinburgh,1978) p. 154 was officially merged into the burgh in 1902.

Elzy was described as on the coast a couple of miles east of Wick in 1836.

The town is on the main road (the A99–A9 road) linking John o' Groats with southern Britain. The Far North railway line links Wick railway station with southern Scotland and with Thurso, the other burgh of Caithness. Wick Airport is on Wick's northern outskirts and serves as a base for private helicopter flights to offshore wind and oil projects, as well as scheduled commercial flights to Aberdeen and Glasgow.

The main offices of The John O'Groat Journal and The Caithness Courier are located in Wick, as are Caithness General Hospital (run by NHS Highland), the Wick Carnegie Library and local offices of the Highland Council. Wick Sheriff Court is one of 16 sheriff courts serving the sheriffdom of Grampian, Highland and Islands.

History Pre-Christian Wick Iron Age activity in the parish of Wick is evident in the hill fort at Garrywhin. Evidence of activity around Wick from the Norse pagan period was discovered in 1837 when brooches and bracelets from the Norse were uncovered by archaeologists. The name Wick appears to be from a Norse word, vík, meaning bay, cf. also the word viking.

Conversion to Christianity In the eighth century, Saint Fergus, an Irish missionary, lived in Wick or its immediate vicinity during his mission to the people in the area. He is the patron saint of Wick. One of the fairs in Wick, the Fergusmas, is named after this saint. The old church of Wick, which stood at the east end of the town at a place called Mount Holie, was dedicated to him. It is believed that the Chapel of St. Tear in Wick Parish near Ackergill was founded in the eighth century by St Drostan, whose ministry was in Aberdeenshire.

11th century St. Duthac (1000–1065) was a native Scot who lived in or around Dornoch. He had a chapel in Wick.

12th and 13th centuries

Wick belonged to Norway, as did all of Caithness, until the reign of William the Lion (1165–1214), at which time the Norwegian earls held of the king of Scotland.

The Castle of Old Wick, commonly known as "The Old Man of Wick" (or "Aul man o' Wick") is thought to have been built in about 1160 by Harald Maddadson, Earl of Caithness and Orkney. Earl Harald, who was half Norse, is thought to have resided there. It was long used by fishermen as an aid to navigation in the North Sea.

The Origines Parochiales Scotiae records these events for twelfth-century Wick: Between the years 1142 and 1149 Rognvald Earl of Orkney went into Katanes and was there entertained at Vik by a husbandman named Sveinn the son of Hroald, a very brave man. When Sveinn Asleifson was in the Hebrides, he committed the keeping of Dungulsbae, which he had received from Earl Rognvald, to Margad Grimson, whose oppressions caused many to take refuge with Hroald in Wik. This occasioned a dispute between Hroald and Margad, and the latter soon afterwards went to Wik with nineteen men and slew Hroald. Between the years 1153 and 1156, Harald Maddadson, then joint Earl Katanes and Orkney with Earl Rognvald, passed into Katanes and wintered at Wik.

14th and 15th centuries In about 1330, the parish of Wick was included among the Caithness lands owned by the family of Cheyne. The last male heir, Sir Reginald de Cheyne, died and was succeeded by his two daughters, who, by marriage, carried the lands into the clans Sinclair, Sutherland, and Keith.

Between 1390 and 1406, King Robert III granted the town of Wick in heritage to Neill Sutherland with a burgh of barony.

In 1438, the clans Gunn and Keith joined battle near Wick on the moor of Tannach with both sides suffering heavy losses. However, hostilities between the two clans were not ended at that time.

16th century In 1503, the Parliament of Scotland established a sheriff for Caithness, who "should sit and have a place for administration of his office within the town of Wick".

The oldest extant charter in Wick was that by Andrew Stewart, Bishop of Caithness, to Alexander Brysbene signed on February 14, 1503. The charter was for a tenement in Wick for the annual payment of "two shillings of the usual money of Scotland" and attendance at "three suits and our three head courts" at Wick "with all arms."

In 1538, Ackergill Tower, north of Wick, was granted to William Keith, 4th Earl Marischal and Lady Margaret Keith, his wife. Nine years later, George, Earl of Caithness, and others seized the tower house, taking hostage Alexander Keith, captain of the castle, and John Scarlet, his servitor, who were imprisoned in Girnigoe, Braal Castle, and other places. They were charged with treason but were granted remission by Queen Mary.

In 1583, when George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness, died at Edinburgh, his heart was brought to Wick where it was encased in lead and placed in Sinclair's aisle at the church of Wick. However, it entered the story of Wick once again in 1588 when Wick suffered at the hands of Alexander Gordon, 12th Earl of Sutherland, in his campaign against the 5th Sinclair Earl of Caithness, who had killed his kinsman. While Sinclair and his men concealed themselves in Girnigoe Castle nearby, Sutherland proceeded to burn the town of Wick, "an achievement of no great difficulty, as the place at that time merely consisted of a few mean straggling houses thatched with straw". All structures in the town except the church were burned. During the chaos of the fire, a Highlander intent on plundering the church broke open the lead case which contained the heart of the late Earl of Caithness, and, disappointed that no treasure was in the casque, flung the heart into the wind.

In 1589, James VI made the town into a royal burgh in favour of the fifth Earl of Caithness.

17th century Wick did not escape the turbulence of the Reformation period when, in 1613, the Anglican archdeacon Richard Merchiston of Bower, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, was brought into Caithness by Bishop Patrick Forbes. Merchiston, a zealous iconoclast, angered the Catholic townspeople when he broke up the stone sculpture of St. Fergus, the town's patron saint. At first yielding to the city authorities who tried to prevent violence, a band of men nevertheless are said to have followed the parson as he returned home in the evening, took him by force, and drowned him in the Wick River. When questioned about the murder, they alleged that it had been the work of the saint himself, whom they claimed they had seen astride Merchiston, holding his head below the water. It should be noted, however, that John Horne, writing in his book of anecdotes about Wick, avers that a letter written by Merchiston with a later date than 1613 "either destroys the entire story or discredits the date of his death."

In 1680, the last clan battle in Scotland took place west of Wick at Altimarlach, involving a dispute between Campbell of Glenorcy and the Sinclairs over the earldom of Caithness. The Sinclairs headquartered in Wick, where they became the victims of a cunning stratagem by an agent of Glenorchy, who ordered that a ship loaded with whisky, "the nectar of Caithness", come to ground nearby, presuming the Sinclairs would imbibe the drink in quantity. He was not wrong. The next morning, weakened by their revels of the night before, the Sinclairs marched out to meet the Campbells and were ambushed at Altimarlach. Nearly all the Sinclairs were driven into the river and drowned.

In 1695, the minutes of the Caithness Presbytery reported that the industries of the town included "shoemaking, glovemaking, lacemaking, candlemaking, snuff making, lintspinning, and weaving, with, of course, building, and joinering."

At Wick, October 12, 1698, the Presbytery noted that after sorcerers were expelled from Orkney, "sorcery and witchcraft abound[ed] so much" in the parish of Wick that they recommended their banishment from "this town and country."

18th century In the eighteenth century, the people of Wick were Gaelic-speakers, but according to a presbytery report of 1707, they could understand English.

In 1750, the building which housed the Town Hall and Burgh Jail was erected.

When Robert Forbes, appointed episcopal Bishop of Caithness in 1762, arrived in the county, he discovered there was no minister at Wick, but he is known to have held services and performed confirmations at the "house of Mr. Campbell" there.

In the year of his arrival, Bishop Forbes reported that every year on the morning of the Feast of Innocents Day (28 December), the people of Wick and its environs would gather for prayer at the ruins of the Chapel of St. Tear near Noss Head. In ruins at the time, the chapel had originally been made of stone and mortar without any lime, leaving little gaps in the wall into which people would press offerings of bread, cheese, and money. He left this description of the event: In the afternoon, they get music—a piper and fiddler—and dance on the green where the chapel stands. The roof is off, but the walls are almost entire. One of the late Presbyterian preachers of Wick thought to have abolished this old practice; and for that end appointed a Diet of catechising in that corner of the parish upon the day of the Holy Innocents, but not one attended him; all went, as usual, to St. Tear's Chapel. I saw the font-stone for baptism lying on the green at the east end of the chapel. Mr. Sutherland, of Wester, observed that no doubt it has been called the Chapel of St. Tear from the tears of the parents and other relations of the murdered innocents.

The Rev. Charles Thomson, a nineteenth-century minister of the Free Church of Wick, stated in the New Statistical Account of Scotland that, though the bread and cheese were intended for the souls of the slain children, a dog-keeper in the neighbourhood would take the food out and feed it to the hounds.

In 1795, Sir John Sinclair raised a second battalion for the Rothesay and Caitness Fencibles (defencibles), which was to be sent to Ireland. In 1929, a Caithness man, age 86, remembered his grandfather's service in Ireland and remarked on the status of the language of Caithness, saying: "My grandfather was a Reay (a parish on the Sutherland Caithness border) man and spoke Gaelic, but my grandmother was born in Wick and like all 'Wickers' was unable to speak Gaelic."

19th century

In the late eighteenth century, the British Fishery Society had established fishing ports at Tobermory (1787) and Ullapool (1788), but when shoals of herring normally plentiful in the area moved away from the west coast, authorities turned toward Wick as a good prospect for the herring industry. Construction of Wick Harbour began in 1803 and was completed by 1811. It soon became a bustling harbour with ships from the Isles, the coast of Scotland, Wales, Shetland, and the Isle of Man. With the rise in fisheries, the size of the town increased, and Wick replaced Thurso as the centre of both shipping and trade in Caithness.