creating the spowart tartan

As you may have read my name is Neil Spowart. The image here is of my wife Lyn and I at my son's recent wedding. You'll see we are both sporting a fantastic tartan named "Hebridean Mackenzie". 

I have always worn kilts in the Mackenzie tartan as my Mother's family are Mackenzies however my Father's family, the Spowarts have no tartan.

Spowart is an unusual name, I believe first recorded in Kirkaldy in Fife with this spelling in 1614 where a Spowart was a witness at a wedding.

I have seen different versions of the name but all seem to link back to the Fife area of Scotland. I have read many suggestions as to the origin, I think most are without any real basis, stories include shipwreck survivors from the continent, something to do with tadpoles and one which suggested it originated in Transylvania in Romania ( I was able to debunk that version when some years ago I was working in Bucharest and quizzed my translator about the name, they dismissed the link as nonsense...)

Either way if you look at where many Spowart's are located today and what their previous occupations were, you'll see they are very much linked with coal mining areas and were often employed as miners (my family certainly seem to be).

With all that in mind I decided the time was right to have our family tartan designed. As such my ideas as to colours and looks have been submitted to Gordon Nicolson of Nicolson Kilt Makers in Edinburgh, link below, and I eagerly await his thoughts. I am very excited at this stage, the tartan will be registered as The Spowart Tartan and perhaps its creation may bring some more Spowarts out of the woodwork. 

In January of 2025 I excitedly started off my quest to have a Spowart tartan made. Unfortunately I chose the aforementioned Gordon Nicolson to do this. After an initial £495 payment to have the tartan designed and registered and two months chasing that up I paid a further £500 to have the tartan design I chose woven. I received conformation this had been ordered then nothing.

In June I emailed asking that was going on, I got a brief response from Gordon saying he was on holiday and a member of staff would update me, none did.

By September I started trying to find out why things were taking so long, I enquired if my tartan had been registered, it hadn't. I enquired how the weaving of the material was progressing and found that despite me being told in March it had been ordered it never had.

I then found out the company had gone into administration.

So I have been lied to both on email and verbally by them and conned out of nearly £1000. The company appear to have gone into administration in June, three months after my order was supposedly placed, clearly at that point they knew what was going on and my money has never ever been intended to be used for the order of material.

I'm hope there are not too many people who are in a similar situation but guess there probably are. It's very disappointing to have been lied to in such a manner and I now find myself financially unable to progress this quest in the meantime.c

I'm hope there are not too many people who are in a similar situation but guess there probably are. It's very disappointing to have been lied to in such a manner and I now find myself financially unable to progress this quest in the meantime.

Incredibly his Web site still appears to be operating, I'd stay well clear.