The Highland Clearances Trail E-Book

Rob Gibson

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 166

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The Highland Clearances Trail answers the where, why, what and whens of the Highland Clearances. Taking you around the significant sites of the Highland Clearances this vivid guide gives a scholarly introduction to a tragic moment in Scotland's history. Perthshire, Ross-Shire, Arran, Sutherland and Caithness are among the many areas covered. With full background information supplied, along with maps and illustrations, The Highland Clearances Trail provides an alternative route around the Highlands that will leave the reader with a deeper understanding of this sublime landscape.

Leseprobe

ROB GIBSON was born in Glasgow and brought up in Dennistoun, and now lives in Evanton, Easter Ross. His early interest in Scottish history encompassed both Highland hillwalking and land reform. In 1972 he graduated from Dundee University with a degree in Modern History and, until 1995, pursued a teaching career in Easter Ross. Through his love of traditional music he has convened the Dingwall-based Highland Traditional Music Festival for twenty years and he has sung in several groups. With the band Ceilidh Ménage, he has performed at festivals in Scotland and Brittany. He wrote the show Plaids and Bandanas for performance at the Highland Festival of 1998.

Rob’s interest in land issues has led to an active political life including working for eight years from 1988 as an SNP District Councillor in Ross and Cromarty. In 2003 he was elected as an SNPMSP, first as a regional member for Highlands and Islands, then in 2011 as constituency member for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. He convened the Rural Affairs Climate Change and Environment Committee from 2011 to 2016 when he retired from Parliament. He has contributed to various journals over the years and has published several books including The Promised Land: Crofter Power in Easter Ross, Toppling the Duke: Outrage on Ben Bhraggie?, Highland Cowboys and Reclaiming Our Land.

First published by Highland Heritage Educational Trust, 1983

First Luath Press edition 2006

Revised Edition 2023

ISBN: 978-1-913025-85-4

Map by Jim Lewis

Illustrations by James Dunn and Marilyn Kay

Typeset in 10.5pt Sabon by Lapiz

The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts 1988 has been asserted.

© Rob Gibson

Dedicated to the late Sandy Lindsay who inspired many to study the effects of the Clearances on modern Scotland. His posthumous foreword encapsulates the spirit of this guide.

MAPS, HEIGHT & DISTANCE

Ordnance Survey grid references have been checked from 1:50000 editions. Data has been checked at the time of publication. Scotland’s historic counties do not fit the current boundaries of local authorities. Since the Land Registers of Scotland are based on the 33 historic counties, this guide follows that model with areas measured in acres. Heights are given in metres as per Ordnance Survey practice and distances are measured in miles as on road signs.

TRAVEL

Travel around the Highlands and Islands needs to be well planned especially where ferries have to be caught. I have assumed road transport in the main although that can be copied and extended by bike. Rail routes on the north/south spine and eastern and western branches have much to recommend them. The traveller with limited time or budget can benefit from island hopping ferry tickets by CalMac ferries and rail rover tickets. Bus services and post buses are important social links that reach most corners, though isolated glens are difficult to access by public transport. For all areas of the country you can start with the VisitScotland website at www.visitscotland.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank various informants who have given valuable advice over the years in preparing this guide. Frank G Thompson of Stornoway, Joseph Mackay of Lairg, Katharine Stewart of Abriachan, Willie Orr of Oban, Sandy Lindsay of Kingussie, Dr Ian Glen of Dalnavert, Alan Roydhouse, Bob Mulholland of Farr by Inverness and Joan Fraser of Corstorphine deserve particular thanks. Many thanks to James Dunn and Marilyn Kay for the line drawings.

Contents

Map

Foreword

Introduction to the First Edition

Introduction to the Second Edition

CHAPTER 1 Sutherland and Caithness

CHAPTER 2 Mainland Ross-shire

CHAPTER 3 Strath Glass, Glen Moriston, Glenelg and Kintail

CHAPTER 4 Skye and Raasay

CHAPTER 5 Harris and Lewis

CHAPTER 6 Inverness, Strathnairn, Lochaber, Morvern, Mull, Knoydart and Moidart

CHAPTER 7 The Small Isles

CHAPTER 8 North and South Uist, Benbecula and Barra

CHAPTER 9 Argyll, including Lorne, Islay, Jura, Colonsay, Gigha and Kintyre

CHAPTER 10 Arran

CHAPTER 11 Perthshire

CHAPTER 12 Strathspey and Badenoch

CHAPTER 13 Deeside and Angus Glens

CHAPTER 14 Orkney

CHAPTER 15 Shetland

Bibliography

Map Index

1.1 Strath of Kildonan, Sutherland

1.2 Helmsdale

1.3 Gartymore Land League cairn

1.4 Loth

1.5 James Loch statue, Uppat Wood

1.6 Dunrobin Castle

1.7 Duke of Sutherland statue, Ben Bhraggie

1.8 The Mound

1.9 Loch Assynt

1.10 North Assynt Crofters’ Estate

1.11 Balnakeil House, Durness

1.12 Ceannabeinne

1.13 Laid

1.14 Ewen Robertson Monument, near Tongue

1.15 Alltnacaillich

1.16 Strathnaver

A Achanlochy

B Dunviden

C Rosal

D Donald MacLeod plaque

E Achadh an Eas

F Grumbeg

G Grummore

H Patrick Sellar’s House, Syre

1.17 Strathnaver Museum, Bettyhill

1.18 Reay, Caithness

1.19 Dunnet

1.20 Freswick

1.21 Lybster

1.22 Badfern

1.23 Badbea

2.1 Lovat Bridge / Stock Ford of Ross

2.2 Killearnan, Ross-shire

2.3 Drynie Park

2.4 Heights of Dochcarty

2.5 Gower Crofts, Knockfarrel

2.6 Strathconon

2.7 New Kelso

2.8 Slumbay, Lochcarron

2.9 Applecross

2.10 Diabeg

2.11 North Erradale, Gairloch 2.12 Laide and Gruinard

2.13 Scoraig

2.14 Destitution Road, Dundonnell

2.15 Leckmelm

2.16 Museum, Ullapool

2.17 Coigach

2.18 Culrain, Strath Oykell

2.19 Croick Church, Strathcarron 2.20 Greenyards

2.21 Boath, Strathrusdale 2.22 Cnoc Fyrish, monument

2.23 Clare, Strath Skiach

3.1 Abriachan, Inverness-shire

3.2 Old Parish Church, Kilmorack

3.3 Urchany

3.4 Strath Farrar

3.5 Glen Cannich

3.6 Tomich to Torgyle drove road

3.7 Shiel Bridge

3.8 Duncraig Castle, Plockton

3.9 Glenelg

4.1 Armadale, Skye

4.2 Kyleakin

4.3 Suishnish and Borreraig

4.4 Strollamus

4.5 Raasay

4.6 Braes Land League Cairn

4.7 Drynoch

4.8 Bracadale

4.9 Colbost Blackhouse Museum 4.10 Glendale Land League Monument

4.11 Glendale Free Church

4.12 Lorgill and Ramasaig

4.13 Orbost

A Idrigill

B Glen Bharcasaig

C Ollisdal

D Dibidal

4.14 Fairy Bridge, Dunvegan

4.15 Kingsburgh, Trotternish

4.16 Kilmuir

4.17 Valtos and Ellishader, Staffin

5.1 Amhuinnsuidhe

5.2 Tarbert, Harris

5.3 Bays of Harris

5.4 Balallan, Lewis

5.5 Bernera, Uig

5.6 Aignish

5.7 Gress

6.1 Tolbooth, Inverness

6.2 Crochy

6.3 Glen Garry

6.4 Achnacarry

6.5 Coirechoille

6.6 Aoineadh Mor, Morvern

6.7 Lochaline

6.8 Auliston

6.9 Shiaba, Ross of Mull 6.10 Ulva

6.11 Crackaig

6.12 Calgary Bay

6.13 Dervaig & Tobermory

6.14 Ardnamurchan

6.15 Moidart

6.16 Kinloid, Arisaig

6.17 Inverie, Knoydart

7.1 Rum

7.2 Canna

7.3 Eigg

7.4 Muck

8.1 Solas, North Uist

8.2 Lochmaddy

8.3 Balelone Farm

8.4 South Uist

8.5 Barra and Vatersay

9.1 Tiree, Argyll

9.2 Coll

9.3 Glenorchy

9.4 Glen Shira, Inveraray

9.5 Arichonan

9.6 Kilchiaran, Islay

9.7 Mull of Oa, Islay

9.8 Cnocbreac, Jura

9.9 Gigha

9.10 Colonsay

9.11 Mull of Kintyre

10.1 North Glen Sannox, Arran 10.2 Laggantuin

10.3 Cock Farm, Lochranza

10.4 Catacol

10.5 Arran Heritage Museum, Brodick

10.6 Emigration cairn, Lamlash

10.7 Kilmory Water

10.8 Sliddery Water

11.1 Loch Tay, Perthshire

11.2 Glen Quaich

11.3 Black Wood of Rannoch

11.4 Clan Donnachaidh Museum, Bruar

11.5 Glen Tilt

11.6 Glen Fincastle

11.7 Straloch

12.1 Loch Garry, Drumochter

12.2 Laggan, Strath Mashie

12.3 Glen Banchor, Newtonmore

12.4 Turus Tim Folk Park

12.5 Highland Folk Museum, Kingussie

12.6 Glen Feshie and Gaick

12.7 Glenmore

12.8 Boat of Garten

13.1 Baddoch, Deeside

13.2 Luibeg

13.3 Glen Dee

13.4 Glen Ey

13.5 Glen Gelder

13.6 Glen Tannar

13.7 Glen Mark and Glen Lee, Angus

14.1 Hoy, Orkney

14.2 Rousay

15.1 Garth, Shetland

15.2 Lerwick

15.3 Fetlar

Foreword

THIS BOOK IS a brief but scholarly introduction to the most tragic period in the history of Scotland. It illustrates ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ in that, given powers over their fellow men, those in positions of authority care solely for their own wealth and wellbeing.

This period has real importance in that the Gaelic people were regarded as inferior. The destruction of their language, culture and way of life was regarded as no more important than that of any native people in the British Empire. Recently the Daily Telegraph, a long-established English newspaper, through one of its columnists, the late Auberon Waugh, made this aspect very clear. I am pleased that Rob Gibson should bring this to our notice.

It is a simple matter of fact that the education establishment choses to ignore this chapter in our history, and demonstrates that Scottish education in this matter has failed our communities. This book goes some way to redress this lack of information. In practical terms those interested in the reality of historical crime can follow the Clearances Trail to the various significant locations described here.

Se Firinn Is Ceartas a Sheasas – Truth and justice will prevail.

Sandy Lindsay

Kingussie

Introduction to the First Edition – Clues to the Highlands of today

BY 1819 THE final stages of forced upheaval that was designed to modernise the Sutherland Estates were about to take place. Patrick Sellar, the incoming sheep farmer, wrote to James Loch, chief factor, with his triumphant opinions:

It had induced already a most astonishing effect on the minds of the aborigines. Several – I believe most of the half-pay captains are meditating or have already planned their flight, and the common people are so effectively cowed that, since Martinmas, here, to the wonder of all my people, [we have not] lost one sheep by theft!. . . we shall move steadily forward at Whitsunday, and shall make your Clearance of the hill. . . once and for all.

It is little wonder that the grip held by the Highland Clearances on Scottish minds is as strong now in the 21st century, as it was when a bragging ‘Improver’ like Patrick Sellar discussed his business plans, or the people forced from their homes first told their heart breaking story.

Since the 1850s most Scots have lived in towns and many have taken the emigrant boat, train or bus to other lands, by choice or by necessity. Looking back on the Clearances engenders discomfort, anger and puzzlement. This is especially so since modern journalists and historians have sought to explain why Scots, who were seen as the most enterprising of people in the 19th century, saw significant numbers from their midst being hounded, leaderless, from their ancient homelands in the Gaelic north and west Highlands and Islands.

Dispossession and removal seems to be something confined today to trouble spots on other continents, yet some commentators in our own country have consistently denied the very core concerns people have about the Highland Clearances, or indeed, that they ever occurred. The rude awakening of modern thinking to explain the Clearances was written by John Prebble, the English journalist-cumhistorian in the 1960s. His popular trilogy Culloden, The Highland Clearances and Glencoe shook academic complacency to its roots. He was joined by his contemporary, Ian Grimble, who was by contrast a distinguished, trained historian. James Hunter, Allan MacInnes, Tom Devine and Eric Richards and others since have expanded our vision as the old texts of 18th and 19th centuries were dusted down and new light shone on murky places.

University-based historians insisted that people had always been moved here and there by their landlords and chiefs. After all, the homes of 100,000 poor folk were swept aside to drive the railways into central London; surely it was all for the best? Hadn’t the Borders and Lowlands of Scotland been modernised by removals, following the pattern of the prolonged English enclosures begun in Tudor times? This did not explain the Highland situation that was characterised by such swift changes, the destruction of an ancient Gaelic culture and the consequent arrival of sheep ranching and vast Victorian deer forests. The new order left no place for the native people and abused their land. Of course this same colonialism was going on all over the world at that time. Indeed some Highlanders were amongst the worst abusers of other native peoples. Of this there is ample proof, but with the growing doctrine of superior and inferior peoples amongst the empires of Europe and America, Highlanders often chose to grab what they could abroad.

Nevertheless there are glowing exceptions. A lad of five years from Baldoon, Ardross accompanied his father on business and witnessed the clearance of Glencalvie in May 1845. In his adulthood, as second son of the farm, he emigrated to New Zealand. John MacKenzie remembered the reasons for Glencalvie when he became a minister in the Liberal government of 1890. He led the campaign for laws to be passed that ensured no big estates would gobble up the land to the detriment of family farmers. His record, as with all administrations, was less sound regarding Maori lands in North Island, but not so grossly exploitative as the local Tories. Modern studies in social history helped fuel the ferment of student uprisings and the anti-war movements of 1968. Historian EP Thompson, in his groundbreaking book of 1963, The Making of the English Working Class, chronicles the effects of modernisation and capitalism on the working classes in England. Simply put, he answered major questions about how industrialisation affected the lives of ordinary folk. He carefully noted the different experience of Scots from the English workers and their families especially prior to 1820. But the Highland experience was a world further apart.

The rise of Scottish political consciousness in the 1960s coincided with this age of enquiry into social history and brought new analysis to bear on the effects on Scotland of being an engine room of the British Empire. Questions as to why so many Scots had emigrated to the far corners of the Earth pointed back to the disproportionate losses of people from the Highlands and Islands that accelerated from the mid- 18th century onwards. Indeed the consequences of this continued drain were proving a running sore for British governments in the 1960s. Emigration and lack of work were seriously disabling and depopulating large areas of rural and also urban Scotland.

Until the 1960s Scottish universities had played a less than glorious part in analysing the Highland problem. The much-heralded 1969 book by TC Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830, seems to have made erroneous judgements about the plight of the Highlanders. It contained part of a quotation of Thomas Pennant, yet Prof. Smout excluded the explanation of the people’s plight offered by the 18th century Welsh naturalist, antiquary and traveller who had visited Sutherland at a critical time:

They are content with little at present, and are thoughtless of futurity; perhaps on the motive of Turkish vassals, who are oppressed in proportion to their improvements. Dispirited and driven to despair by bad management, crowds are now passing, emaciated with hunger, to the Eastern coast.

Prof. Gordon Donaldson, former head of the Scottish History Department of Edinburgh University, decried John Prebble’s work in a Sunday Standard interview by James Hunter on 3 May 1981 as, ‘contributing a great deal to the state of mind of left wing agitation’. Donaldson continued, ‘I am 68 now and until recently I had hardly heard of the Highland Clearances. The thing has been blown up out of all proportion.’ Donaldson and in his turn Smout were appointed as Historiographers Royal for Scotland.

While both Donaldson and Smout acknowledged chronic economic problems of living in the tough climate and terrain of the Highlands and Islands, they did not analyse the economic impact of introducing the potato that increasingly became the staple food of so many. They minimised the effects of shovelling the native people to the barren coasts from fertile inland straths. They ignored the Highlands’ lower than average population increase or the uncertain and truncated development of cattle, whisky, kelp, fishing, weaving, quarrying, military service and iron smelting. Neither assessed the impact of conflict between the dominant values of Hanoverian British rule of progress and order on the apparently backward pastoral Celtic society. Parts of it dared to defy the regime for a century, sometimes attracting the Scottish elite to the cause, until the final pacification in 1746. Culloden, the disastrous last pitched battle on Scottish soil, was a breaking point that induced the passage of repressive legislation on a new scale of thoroughness. Neither historian referred to the role of blatant racism in 19th and early 20th century Britain against the ‘backward’ Celts, who were despised in Ireland and treated in Scotland during the potato blight as requiring moral uplift through regular manual labour.

Unsurprisingly Scottish schools shied away from studying the Clearances until Standard Grades in the 1980s introduced a patch study of the key period. Previously Highland evictions appeared to have no significant part in the greater tale of British history, so they were ignored. Surprisingly most Scots came across oblique references to Highland unrest, if at all, through a focus on the Irish Land League and demands for Irish Home Rule that eventually rocked the British Empire. So it was left to popular culture to remember the people’s past. The left-wing political theatre group 7:84 who performed John McGrath’s ceilidh play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, which swept the Highlands in 1973, argued that until economic power, land and other resources were in the people’s hands the exploiters would prevail. This coincided with massive Scottish oil finds in the North Sea and led more and more Scots to agree.

In November 1981 a group called Highland Heritage promoted an alternative view of the Highlands to the castles, tartan and heather image. They produced a Clearances Trail Guide leaflet listing places to visit where the glens were denuded of people over the preceding 200 years and where the crofters fought back. A rebuff from the local Tourist Board officer stated, ‘although the leaflet is not of a party political nature, it is clearly controversial and inappropriate for distribution from our information centres.’ Highland Heritage’s offer to supply it to the tourist information centre in Inverness was emphatically rejected and the subsequent Glasgow Herald story headlined ‘Highland tourist offices ban leaflet explaining Clearances’. In an editorial comment entitled, ‘Unsuitable for tourists’ the Herald leader writer felt that the Scottish Tourist Boards’s excuse that the leaflet was too ‘controversial’ and therefore ‘inappropriate’ for tourists was ‘feeble’. Nevertheless the paper concluded, ‘the Clearances may have been economically and historically inevitable but that does not dilute their dark and tragic aspect which still moves our anger and compassion.’

What could induce myopia and taint of political bias among those who would suppress the story? For much of the century the marginal nature of Highland life was treated as a footnote in general histories. Wilful misrepresentation was the mark of mainstream academics regarding the work composed by Gaelic poets and folk memory. The voices of ordinary people in the Crofting Counties were easily ignored.

The Victorian craze for sport in the wild Highlands saw the natives as ghillies, servants and deer watchers and consequently led to the destruction of peasant life. But a remarkable fightback using the Irish Land League model came about in the early 1880s and led to some security of tenure for small tenants. Many academics still ignored the testimony given to Royal Commissioners in communities all around the north in 1883 and 1893. The distinguished historian Rosalind Mitchison dismissed the recollections of men like Angus MacKay of Strathy Point for the Napier Commission in 1883. MacKay had described conditions in Strathnaver before the Sellar Clearances where ‘the people had plenty of flocks of goats, sheep, horses and cattle, and they were living happy.’ Mitchison continues, ‘the picture is clearly rubbish, and it is the duty of the historian to label rubbish as such when he meets it.’

Thanks to painstaking study by Iain Grimble, contemporary evidence of 18th century life in north Sutherland was presented. His witnesses include the poet Rob Donn MacKay; the testimony of emigrants at their point of departure to port officials; the travellers’ tales of Episcopal bishop Richard Pococke; the observations of naturalist Thomas Pennant and the memoirs of the son of the Kildonan parish manse the Rev. Donald Sage. They all swelled a new stream of consciousness because they had seen a society on the brink of being sundered as it had never been since the arrival of the Vikings in the 9th century.

The results of the economic slump after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 were falling incomes and fewer economic opportunities. By the mid-1840S