The Highland Clearances In Scotland
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Published on 20 February 2008
In this Scottishweb section on the highland clearances there is a special focus on the Sutherland Clearances, sometimes known as 'the cruel clearances'.
The reality of the highland clearances can be seen all over Sutherland. The remains of burned out blackhouses, frequently comprising of whole villages and settlements, stand as witnesses to the cruel and uncompromising plans drawn up by men driven by greed. From Strathnaver to Assynt many thosands of people were moved from their ancestral lands to emigration ships bound for the colonies or to the difficult and rocky terrain of the coast.
The Clan system and way of life had died with Culloden and the Jacobite Rebellion, but the people of the highlands, and especially the north of Sutherland, were the same clan people, most of which carried the clan name - Mackay.
Life, however, was tough and anyone with an impression of a bonnie wee highland village where everyone was happy couldn't be more inaccurate. Most people had taken to growing potatoes, which provided more food but were vulnerable to disease and crop failure. The houses themselves consisted of a one-level stone dwelling, with some rough wooden rafters and thatched with turf. The fire was in the middle of the room and smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. Rough living, compared to those in Edinburgh! In fact, emigration was already happening to a degree in the highlands, where people chose for themselves to leave their homeland for pastures in the new world.
Despite the emigration, the population of every highland county increased between 1755 and 1821. Population was not the only thing on the way up. Rent was increasing and ordinary people found it more and more difficult to pay. Here are some views of travellers, writers and residents of the day. Notice the various different views on the changing highlands:
I should love my father not merely as such, because he was the son of the wise and pious Donald, whose memory the whole parish venerates, and the grandson of the gallant Archibald, who was the tallest man in the district, who could throw the putting stone further than any Campbell living, and never held a Christmas without a deer of his own killing, four Fingalian greyhounds at his fireside, and sixteen kinsmen sharing his feast. Shall I not be proud of a father, the son of such fathers, of whose fame he is the living record. What is my case is every other Highlander's.
Mrs. Grant of Laggan
Letters from the mountains, 1773
It is not easy for those who live in a country like England, where so many of the lower orders have nothing but what they acquire by the labour of a passing day, and possess no permanent property or share of the agricultural produce of the soil, to appreciate the nature of the spirit of independence in countries where the free cultivators of the soil constitute the major part of the population. It can scarcely be imagined how proud a man feels, however small his property may be, when he has a spot of arable land and pasture stocked with corn, horses and cows. He considers himself to be an independent person.
David Stewart of Garth
Sketches of the Highlanders, Vol.1
Near Taynish in Argyll, ridges of potatoes appeared on the steepest eminences, and green streaks of corn emerged on the summits of the hills amid clusters of white rocks. Almost every spot of arable land appeared cultivated, even where no plough could possibly be employed. On enquiry we found that the spade was used in tillage where the country is very rocky and irregular.
John Leyden
Tour in the Highlands and Western Islands, 1800
HIGHLAND DWELLINGS
By a house, I mean a building with one storey over another; by a hut, a dwelling with only one floor. The laird, the tacksman and the minister have commonly houses. Wherever there is a house, the stranger finds a welcome.
The wall of a common hut is always built without mortar by a skilful adaptation of loose stones. Sometimes a double wall of stones is raised and the intermediate space is filled with earth.The air is thus completely excluded. Some walls are, I think, formed of turf. Of the meanest huts, the first room is lighted by the entrance, and the second by the smoke hole.The fire is usually made in the middle.
There are huts, or dwellings, of only one storey, inhabited by gentlemen, which have walls cemented with mortar, glass wondows, and boarded floors. Of these, all have chimneys, and some chimneys have grates.
Dr Samuel Johnson
Journey to the Western Islands, 1773
The houses of the peasants in Mull are most deplorable. Some of the doors are hardly four feet high and the houses themselves, composed of earthen sods, in many instances are scarcely twelve. There is often no other outlet of smoke but at the door, the consequence of which is that the women are more squalid and dirty than the men and their features more disagreeable.
John Leyden
Tour in the Highlands and the Western Isles, 1800
Between 1812 and 1819, thousands of people were evicted from their holdings and dwellings to make room for sheep. Few subjects under the realm of Scottish history hold so much controversy and blood-feeling as the Sutherland Clearances.
Remote and undeveloped, a land of moor and mountain, with tiny patches of arable land like islands in a vast sea of heather, the county of Sutherland is located in the far north of Scotland. Once the land of the powerful and dominating clan Mackay, most of the people still carried the name at a time when the clan system had suffered a death.
Below are three accounts of the tenant evictions in 1819, written by people who knew Sutherland well at the time.
James Loch was a lawyer from the south who became commissioner of the whole of Sutherland Estates. Planning to improve the lands under his control, he moved thousands of people from their homes to the north coast, and created large sheep farms. He was definitely the 'landlords man' and his opinions are pretty obvious in these writings:
The men being impatient of regular and constant work, all the heavy labour was abandoned to the women, who were employed, occasionally, even in dragging the harrow to cover the seed. To build their hut, or to get in peats for fuel, the men were ever ready to assist; but most of their time, when not in persuit of game, or illegal distillation, was spent in indolence and sloth. They were contented with the most simple and poorest fare. They deemed no comfort worth the possession which was to be purchased at the price of regular work. The cattle which they reared on the mountains, and from the sale of which they depended for the payment of their rents, were of the poorest description.
The coast of Sutherland abounds with many different kinds of fish, not only sufficient for the consumption of the country but affording a supply for more distant markets, when cured and salted. It seemed as if it had been pointed out by Nature that the system for this remote district was to convert the mountainous districts into sheep-walks, and to remove the inhabitants to the coast.
The people who were to be removed were to hold their farms, during the last year of their occupation, rent-free on condition of their settling in their new lots without delay; and it was ordered that the moss fir belonging to their huts should be purchased from them because it would have been impossible for them to have carried it off. Some of the people, however, reappeared and constructed new, or repaired their old turf huts, and reoccupied their former possessions. This rendered a second ejectment necessary and, to prevent the possibility of its repitition, the only course which could be persued was to collect and burn the timber. This simple and necessary act has been falsified in every possible way. The most positive and direct denial is given to every account in which it has been attempted to apply these proceedings the character of cruelty and oppression.
The whole of the population from Altnaharra to Invernaver have been settled on the sea shore, as near to the various creeks as it is possible to arrange.These people have begun to cultivate their lots with much industry. Many of them have with great boldness taken to catch cod and ling.They have become as expert boatmen as any in the world.
James Loch
An account of the improvements of the estates of the Marquess of Stafford in Sutherland,1820
Pages 51, 63-64, 86, 99-100
Donald Macleod, a stonemason from Rosal in Strathnaver, suffered eviction himself and witnessed the clearances and burnings of 1819. His widely read book Gloomy Memories became the accepted view of the clearances, but critics claim his accounts are exaggerated because of his anger at his own eviction and also some twenty years had passed before the publication of his book. Although there is no confirmed photograph, the one pictured to the right is believed to be Donald Macleod.
I was an eye-witness at the scene. This calamity came on the people quite unexpectedly. Strong parties, for each district, furnished with faggots and other combustables, rushed on the dwellings of this devoted people, and immediately commenced setting fire to them, proceeding in their work with the greatest rapidity till about three hundred houses were in flames!
The consternation and confusion were extreme; little or no time was given for the removal of persons or property - the people striving to remove the sick and the helpless before the fire should reach them - next, struggling to save the most valuable of their effects. The cries of the women and children - the roaring of the affrighted cattle hunted at the same time by the yelling dogs of the shepherds amid the smoke and fire - altogether presented a scene that completely baffles description: it required to be seen to be believed.
A dense cloud of smoke enveloped the whole country by day and even extended far on the sea; at night an awfully grand and terrific scene presented itself - all the houses in an extensive district were in flames at once! I myself ascended a hight about eleven o'clock in the evening, and counted two hundred and fifty blazing houses, many of the owners of which were my relations, and all of whom I personally knew; but whose present condition, whether in or out of the flames, I could not tell. The conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins.
Donald Macleod
Gloomy Memories, 1892
Rev. Donald Sage, the missionary at Achness, lived across Loch Naver from Grummore. Even at this time, with ministers appointed to parishes by landlords, his personal sympathy lay with the people when they were evicted from their homes.
To my poor and defenceless flock the dark hour of trial came in right earnest. It was the month of April 1819 that they were all - man, woman and child - from the Heights of Farr to the mouth of the Naver, on one day to quit their tenements and go - many of them knew not whither. For a few, some miserable patches of ground along the shore were doled as lots without anything in the shape of the poorest hut to shelter them. Upon these lots it was decided that they should build houses at their own expense, and cultivate the ground, at the same time occupying themselves as fishermen, although the great majority of them had never set foot in a boat in their lives.
At an early hour on a Tuesday, Mr. Sellar, escorted by a large body of constables, sheriff-officers and others, commenced work at Grummore, the first inhabited township to the west. They gave the inmates half an hour to pack up and carry off their furniture, and then set the cottages on fire. To this plan they ruthlessly adhered. The roofs and rafters were lighted up into one red blaze.
I had occasion the next week to visit the manse of Tongue. On my way thither, I passed through the scene of the campaign of burning. Of all the houses, the thatched roofs were gone; but the walls remained. The flames of the preceeding week still slumbered in their ruins, and sent up into the air spiral columns of smoke. The sooty rafters of the cottages as they were being consumed, filled the air with a heavy and most offensive odour. Nothing could more vividly represent the horrors of grinding oppression.
Donald Sage
Memorabilia Domestica, p.215
In the 19th century, something happened in the highlands of Scotland that should never have happened at all. The Highland Clearances were a shock ripple from the wave that was the battle of Culloden. Years afterwards, when the rest of Britain was waking up to a new era of civilisation and enlightenment, greedy landlords of estates and lands in the highlands of Scotland began to remove the local people to make way for sheep. Sheep were given priority over people, but not just any people. For the folk burned out of their homes were the decendants of the clansmen, the native people of the land - the highlanders.
The highland way of life in 19th Century Scotland
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In this Scottishweb section on the highland clearances there is a special focus on the Sutherland Clearances, sometimes known as 'the cruel clearances'.
The reality of the highland clearances can be seen all over Sutherland. The remains of burned out blackhouses, frequently comprising of whole villages and settlements, stand as witnesses to the cruel and uncompromising plans drawn up by men driven by greed. From Strathnaver to Assynt many thosands of people were moved from their ancestral lands to emigration ships bound for the colonies or to the difficult and rocky terrain of the coast.
The Clan system and way of life had died with Culloden and the Jacobite Rebellion, but the people of the highlands, and especially the north of Sutherland, were the same clan people, most of which carried the clan name - Mackay.
Life, however, was tough and anyone with an impression of a bonnie wee highland village where everyone was happy couldn't be more inaccurate. Most people had taken to growing potatoes, which provided more food but were vulnerable to disease and crop failure. The houses themselves consisted of a one-level stone dwelling, with some rough wooden rafters and thatched with turf. The fire was in the middle of the room and smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. Rough living, compared to those in Edinburgh! In fact, emigration was already happening to a degree in the highlands, where people chose for themselves to leave their homeland for pastures in the new world.
Despite the emigration, the population of every highland county increased between 1755 and 1821. Population was not the only thing on the way up. Rent was increasing and ordinary people found it more and more difficult to pay. Here are some views of travellers, writers and residents of the day. Notice the various different views on the changing highlands:
I should love my father not merely as such, because he was the son of the wise and pious Donald, whose memory the whole parish venerates, and the grandson of the gallant Archibald, who was the tallest man in the district, who could throw the putting stone further than any Campbell living, and never held a Christmas without a deer of his own killing, four Fingalian greyhounds at his fireside, and sixteen kinsmen sharing his feast. Shall I not be proud of a father, the son of such fathers, of whose fame he is the living record. What is my case is every other Highlander's.
Mrs. Grant of Laggan
Letters from the mountains, 1773
It is not easy for those who live in a country like England, where so many of the lower orders have nothing but what they acquire by the labour of a passing day, and possess no permanent property or share of the agricultural produce of the soil, to appreciate the nature of the spirit of independence in countries where the free cultivators of the soil constitute the major part of the population. It can scarcely be imagined how proud a man feels, however small his property may be, when he has a spot of arable land and pasture stocked with corn, horses and cows. He considers himself to be an independent person.
David Stewart of Garth
Sketches of the Highlanders, Vol.1
Near Taynish in Argyll, ridges of potatoes appeared on the steepest eminences, and green streaks of corn emerged on the summits of the hills amid clusters of white rocks. Almost every spot of arable land appeared cultivated, even where no plough could possibly be employed. On enquiry we found that the spade was used in tillage where the country is very rocky and irregular.
John Leyden
Tour in the Highlands and Western Islands, 1800
HIGHLAND DWELLINGS
By a house, I mean a building with one storey over another; by a hut, a dwelling with only one floor. The laird, the tacksman and the minister have commonly houses. Wherever there is a house, the stranger finds a welcome.
The wall of a common hut is always built without mortar by a skilful adaptation of loose stones. Sometimes a double wall of stones is raised and the intermediate space is filled with earth.The air is thus completely excluded. Some walls are, I think, formed of turf. Of the meanest huts, the first room is lighted by the entrance, and the second by the smoke hole.The fire is usually made in the middle.
There are huts, or dwellings, of only one storey, inhabited by gentlemen, which have walls cemented with mortar, glass wondows, and boarded floors. Of these, all have chimneys, and some chimneys have grates.
Dr Samuel Johnson
Journey to the Western Islands, 1773
The houses of the peasants in Mull are most deplorable. Some of the doors are hardly four feet high and the houses themselves, composed of earthen sods, in many instances are scarcely twelve. There is often no other outlet of smoke but at the door, the consequence of which is that the women are more squalid and dirty than the men and their features more disagreeable.
John Leyden
Tour in the Highlands and the Western Isles, 1800
The Sutherland Clearances in northern Scotland
Between 1812 and 1819, thousands of people were evicted from their holdings and dwellings to make room for sheep. Few subjects under the realm of Scottish history hold so much controversy and blood-feeling as the Sutherland Clearances. Remote and undeveloped, a land of moor and mountain, with tiny patches of arable land like islands in a vast sea of heather, the county of Sutherland is located in the far north of Scotland. Once the land of the powerful and dominating clan Mackay, most of the people still carried the name at a time when the clan system had suffered a death.
Below are three accounts of the tenant evictions in 1819, written by people who knew Sutherland well at the time.
James Loch was a lawyer from the south who became commissioner of the whole of Sutherland Estates. Planning to improve the lands under his control, he moved thousands of people from their homes to the north coast, and created large sheep farms. He was definitely the 'landlords man' and his opinions are pretty obvious in these writings:
The men being impatient of regular and constant work, all the heavy labour was abandoned to the women, who were employed, occasionally, even in dragging the harrow to cover the seed. To build their hut, or to get in peats for fuel, the men were ever ready to assist; but most of their time, when not in persuit of game, or illegal distillation, was spent in indolence and sloth. They were contented with the most simple and poorest fare. They deemed no comfort worth the possession which was to be purchased at the price of regular work. The cattle which they reared on the mountains, and from the sale of which they depended for the payment of their rents, were of the poorest description.
The coast of Sutherland abounds with many different kinds of fish, not only sufficient for the consumption of the country but affording a supply for more distant markets, when cured and salted. It seemed as if it had been pointed out by Nature that the system for this remote district was to convert the mountainous districts into sheep-walks, and to remove the inhabitants to the coast.
The people who were to be removed were to hold their farms, during the last year of their occupation, rent-free on condition of their settling in their new lots without delay; and it was ordered that the moss fir belonging to their huts should be purchased from them because it would have been impossible for them to have carried it off. Some of the people, however, reappeared and constructed new, or repaired their old turf huts, and reoccupied their former possessions. This rendered a second ejectment necessary and, to prevent the possibility of its repitition, the only course which could be persued was to collect and burn the timber. This simple and necessary act has been falsified in every possible way. The most positive and direct denial is given to every account in which it has been attempted to apply these proceedings the character of cruelty and oppression.
The whole of the population from Altnaharra to Invernaver have been settled on the sea shore, as near to the various creeks as it is possible to arrange.These people have begun to cultivate their lots with much industry. Many of them have with great boldness taken to catch cod and ling.They have become as expert boatmen as any in the world.
James Loch
An account of the improvements of the estates of the Marquess of Stafford in Sutherland,1820
Pages 51, 63-64, 86, 99-100
The Sutherland Clearances - Donald Macleod
Donald Macleod, a stonemason from Rosal in Strathnaver, suffered eviction himself and witnessed the clearances and burnings of 1819. His widely read book Gloomy Memories became the accepted view of the clearances, but critics claim his accounts are exaggerated because of his anger at his own eviction and also some twenty years had passed before the publication of his book. Although there is no confirmed photograph, the one pictured to the right is believed to be Donald Macleod.I was an eye-witness at the scene. This calamity came on the people quite unexpectedly. Strong parties, for each district, furnished with faggots and other combustables, rushed on the dwellings of this devoted people, and immediately commenced setting fire to them, proceeding in their work with the greatest rapidity till about three hundred houses were in flames!
The consternation and confusion were extreme; little or no time was given for the removal of persons or property - the people striving to remove the sick and the helpless before the fire should reach them - next, struggling to save the most valuable of their effects. The cries of the women and children - the roaring of the affrighted cattle hunted at the same time by the yelling dogs of the shepherds amid the smoke and fire - altogether presented a scene that completely baffles description: it required to be seen to be believed. A dense cloud of smoke enveloped the whole country by day and even extended far on the sea; at night an awfully grand and terrific scene presented itself - all the houses in an extensive district were in flames at once! I myself ascended a hight about eleven o'clock in the evening, and counted two hundred and fifty blazing houses, many of the owners of which were my relations, and all of whom I personally knew; but whose present condition, whether in or out of the flames, I could not tell. The conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins.
Donald Macleod
Gloomy Memories, 1892
The Sutherland Clearances - Rev. Donald Sage
Rev. Donald Sage, the missionary at Achness, lived across Loch Naver from Grummore. Even at this time, with ministers appointed to parishes by landlords, his personal sympathy lay with the people when they were evicted from their homes.To my poor and defenceless flock the dark hour of trial came in right earnest. It was the month of April 1819 that they were all - man, woman and child - from the Heights of Farr to the mouth of the Naver, on one day to quit their tenements and go - many of them knew not whither. For a few, some miserable patches of ground along the shore were doled as lots without anything in the shape of the poorest hut to shelter them. Upon these lots it was decided that they should build houses at their own expense, and cultivate the ground, at the same time occupying themselves as fishermen, although the great majority of them had never set foot in a boat in their lives.
At an early hour on a Tuesday, Mr. Sellar, escorted by a large body of constables, sheriff-officers and others, commenced work at Grummore, the first inhabited township to the west. They gave the inmates half an hour to pack up and carry off their furniture, and then set the cottages on fire. To this plan they ruthlessly adhered. The roofs and rafters were lighted up into one red blaze.
I had occasion the next week to visit the manse of Tongue. On my way thither, I passed through the scene of the campaign of burning. Of all the houses, the thatched roofs were gone; but the walls remained. The flames of the preceeding week still slumbered in their ruins, and sent up into the air spiral columns of smoke. The sooty rafters of the cottages as they were being consumed, filled the air with a heavy and most offensive odour. Nothing could more vividly represent the horrors of grinding oppression.
Donald Sage
Memorabilia Domestica, p.215