Clearances

     During what became known as the ''Highland Clearances'' tens of thousands of men, women and children were evicted, often violently, from their homes to make way for large scale sheep farming.  In some areas whole glens were cleared, which today are as silent as they must have been when the landlord's factors had finished ruthlessly carrying out the orders of their masters.  Homes were burnt and tenants forced to leave at the point of a sword or musket, carrying little or nothing as they headed towards a life of poverty and hunger.

     There were two distinct types of clearance.  The first was forced settlement on barren land usually near the sea.  The crofts, as these plots of land became known, had very poor agricultural potential which the gentry wrongly assumed would be compensated for by fishing and seaweed harvesting, or kelping as it was called. 

     The second type of clearance was often prompted by the failure of the crofts to produce a living for the Highlanders.  It was a hopeless situation for many.  The sheer number of people pushed to the coast coupled with huge rent increases, over-fishing and over-kelping resulted in destitution and starvation.  When, in 1846, the potato crop failed many were left with no alternative but to migrate south or emigrate to the colonies.

     In Knoydart, Ross, Skye, Tiree and most notably in the vast tracts of land in Sutherland owned by Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, the clearances were particularly noted for the violence used.

     Two of the most notorious evictors were James Loch and Patrick Sellar.  Around 1820 demand for kelp and cattle dwindled and many tenants sank into rent arrears and apathy.  In turn the rise in number of those unable to pay their rent encouraged landowners to evict the tenants from the marginal land leaving emigration as the only alternative.  Lord MacDonald alone cleared most of North Uist and Skye or sold out to the infamous John Gordon of Cluny.

     Even today, generations after the last Highlanders set sail aboard wooden sailing ships at Ullapool and other ports on the west coast, never again to see the mountains and glens of home, the arguments still rage.

     There is no question that many Highlanders were betrayed by their clan chiefs and imported English noblemen.  The utter disregard for the life of a proud people inflamed passions then, as it still does.  Much of the land is still owned by the same families and sheep are still farmed where people once lived. During 1995, a campaign began to remove a statue of the notorious 1st Duke of Sutherland, which dominates the hills and skyline above the small east coast town of Golspie, replacing it with a more fitting memorial to the victims of the Clearances.

     Whether that will ever happen remains to be seen.  But it is worth recalling that when the factor called by after the Duke's death in 1833, those tenants allowed to remain on the Sutherland estates were asked to contribute to the costs of raising the monument.  They knew they had a choice - pay up or face the threat of eviction, hence the reason for them being described as ''grateful tenants'' in the inscription on the statue's plinth.

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Some of the Principle Events of the Clearances:

1782 - The first lease to a Lowland sheep-farmer.
1785 - The first large-scale clearances from Glengarry (MacDonnell) estates.
1786 - Mass evictions from Knoydart, on the Glengarry estates, with the people sent to
          Canada.
1792 - The Cheviot sheep introduced to the Highlands.
1800 - The first Sutherland clearances, from Strath Oykel.
1801 - Clearances from Strathglass and Glengarry.
1807 - Clearances from Farr and Lairg, in Sutherland.
1809 - Wm. Young and Patrick Sellar employed as agents by Lord Stafford (Duke of     
           Sutherland).  Evictions from many Sutherland parishes, and from Strathglass.
1812 - Large-scale clearances from Assynt and Kildonan in Sutherland.
1814 - First clearances in Strathnaver.
1819 - Final clearances in Strathnaver and Kildonan.  These immense and fertile glens now effectively empty
except for thousands of sheep and a handful of Lowland shepherds.
1820 - Riots and evictions in Strath Oykel.
1821 - Riots and evictions at Gruids, Sutherland.
1825 - The demise of the kelp industry, which had provided employment for many Highlanders cleared
from their land, but permitted to remain elsewhere, usually on relatively useless land.
1830 - Wave of emigration caused by total poverty in the wake of the kelp fiasco.
1832 - Cholera breaks out in the Scottish Highlands.
1836 - Deaths from famine in the Highlands.
1845 - Glencalvie, Easter Ross, cleared.
1845 - The start of potato blight, and famine throughout the Highlands.
1849 - Evictions from Glenelg in Invernesshire, and Sollas, North Uist.
1850 - Clearances from Strath Conon.
1851 - Clearances from South Uist and Barra.
1853 - Final clearances from Boreraig and Suishnish, Skye.  The last MacDonnells evicted
           from Glengarry.
1854 - Final clearances from Strathcarron.

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