Early History of Sutherland - Part 3
Britain had to be prepared for invasion by
Napoleon and his army. And so the Fencible Regiments came
into being, for service and home defence only in Great Britain and
Ireland. They were not regular troops but their pay, arms,
clothing and discipline were like troops of the line. William,
Chief of Clan Mackay, raised a regiment of the Reay Fencibles in
1756 with Hugh Mackay of Bighouse as Lieutenant-Colonel. Between
1759 and 1798, three regiments of the Sutherland Fencibles were
raised by the Earl of Sutherland. Rob Donn (Mackay), buried at
Balnakeil, Bard and Poet of Clan Mackay was a privileged member of
the First, Sutherland Fencibles. Because of his ability to compose
poetry and so inspire the men, he was excused from all regimental
drill. Big Sam (Macdonald) of the Third Sutherland Fencibles,
standing 6 foot ten inches in his bare feet, was also privileged.
The Countess of Sutherland decided he needed more food than an
ordinary mortal and he was given an allowance in addition to his
regular
pay.
In 1785, the young Countess married
the English Marquis of Stafford. By 1800, the days of the
Fencibles were over. At Syre in Strathnaver is a stone
commemorating the raising of the 93rd Regiment of the line. It was
a famous regiment. It stood firm as the Thin Red Line at Balaclava
and is the only British Infantry Regiment entitled to bear that
name ‘Balaclava’ on its colour. It was later re-named The Argyll
and Sutherland Highlanders. The method of recruiting in 1800 is
worth mentioning. There had been a census on the estates of the
Countess. Her factors let it be known that they expected a certain
proportion of able-bodied sons of her tenants to enlist. It was in
a way a test of their loyalty to their chief and their duty to
their sovereign. 600 men answered the appeal, many from the Third
Sutherland Fencibles. Those who returned from fighting in far-off
lands found a different Sutherland from the one they had left.
There had been a rapid increase in population. There were new
modern theories of agriculture and industry. There was vast
economic and social change.
Ardvreck Castle.
The cause of this change has been
summed up in one word... sheep. And there followed what are known
as The Evictions, the Sutherland Clearances. Briefly, it is fair
to say that the land had been badly managed over the years. There
was no other employment for the people than on the land. The
estate of the Countess and her husband was quite obviously
uneconomic. A plan was drawn up to let the inland straths to big
sheep farmers from the Borders, and to resettle the people near
the coasts to learn fishing. As one of the factors of the
Sutherland estates wrote in 1811, “The industrious will be
encouraged and protected but the slothful must remove or starve”.
The WHY of the Evictions may be understood... The HOW, that is the
manner in which they were carried out, is not so easy to
understand. Comprehensible but none the less reprehensible, says
one writer on the Clearances.
Between 1809 and 1819, nearly 500,000
acres of land in the county were cleared for sheep. Some 15,000
folk were moved from their homes. Many emigrated to Red River
Settlement, to Nova Scotia, to Newfoundland, to Glasgow and Dundee
looking for work. Canada’s first Prime Minister is remembered at
Dalmore in Rogart. His family had been evicted and went to
Glasgow. He was later knighted, Sir John Macdonald G.C.B., P.C.,
M.P. His memorial was unveiled by Canada’s thirteenth Prime
Minister, descended from a Bannerman evicted from Kildonan.
The Countess and her husband spent
nearly £200,000 on improving communications, land conditions etc.
They built a complete curing installation at Helmsdale and
invested £14,000 to make it a modern fishing port.
Others too, in positions of
responsibility, saw the need to help the ordinary folk. George
Dempster of Dunnichen and Skibo believed that the manufacture of
cotton could be introduced into the Highlands. He and 18 other
‘gentlemen improvers’ put up £30,000 to build a spinning and
weaving mill at Spinningdale and to erect dwellings for the
operatives. Unfortunately, the scheme failed; the district was too
remote and transport costs were too heavy, despite the cheapness
of labour. When the mill burnt down in 1809, it was not rebuilt.
The ruins are still visible from the road just south of
Spinningdale.
Two other industries may be mentioned,
one of which was kelp gathering. The basic ingredient was seaweed
which in 1795 was gathered in almost every parish in Sutherland
with a sea coast – Clyne, Creich, Durness, Eddrachillis, Golspie,
Loth, etc. The kelp was cut and dried and fired in a kiln,
resulting in an alkaline extract used in the manufacture of soap
and glass. For a time, there was an expanding demand for kelp
since the Napoleonic wars made imports difficult and since there
was a tax on salt, on which was founded the later nineteenth
century industry. For a time, therefore, prices rose. In 1808, a
ton cost £20 but by 1850 the price had dropped to £3 and the end
of the kelp industry was near.
Croick Churchyard and East
Window.
The other industry was fishing. The
folk who lived near Sutherlands coasts were not primarily
seafarers. Descendants of the Norsemen though some of them might
be, they had not the sea in their blood. It was said of them that
“they never liked to set more than one foot off the soil and then
only for short periods.” In the 1750’s, two or more families in a
township nerved themselves to share a boat with a crew of four or
six. But it was a very limited local occupation.
After the
Evictions, there was an increase of potential labour on the north
and east coasts. Helmsdale was what we call today a ‘growth
point.’ By 1840, it was equipped for the steady marketing of fish.
It had curing yards, boat builders’ yards, a steam mill for
coopers etc. In 1815, 5,318 barrels of fish were cured. In 1839,
46,571 barrels. Yet, with all this, the fishing industry did not
grow big enough to solve the problem of finding enough work for
the increasing population. Even when the fishing season was good,
there was the constant problem of how to market what was landed.
This marketing problem of both fish and wool – was a problem
created largely by the distance from large towns and, as
important, the complete lack of a road system in Sutherland.
Twenty years after Culloden, there was
only a bridle path north of the Meikle Ferry and no roads at all
in the county. There was one bridge at Brora. All traffic going
north or south had to cross firths and rivers by ferries or fords.
There is little doubt that the disaster at the Meikie Ferry in
1809 focused attention on this defect - 99 passengers and crew
were drowned and tales are still told of the tragedy. Work on new
bridges and roads was begun by landowners and Parliamentary
Commissioners, helped by Treasury grants. Thomas Telford reported
on behalf of the Commissioners in the Highlands and was personally
involved in the work in the county.
It is not always realised that
Telford’s work included the designing and building of
churches. Three of these are to be seen; at Strathy, on the north
coast, at Kinlochbervie on the west coast, and at Croick.
Croick Church was built in 1827. It
was then a centre of worship attended by a weekly congregation of
200 from the little communities which won a living from soil and
grazings round about. Now they are gone. Nothing remains but old
tracks radiating through the heather to green oases on the
hillsides and an occasional mound of stones which mark where the
houses of a thriving people once stood, mute evidence of the
Clearances and subsequent depopulation.
The centre of interest
lies in the east window where a few words and names scratched on
the diamond panes remind us of the whole sad story behind the
depopulation, the outcome of one of the later clearances or
“Improvements” of the last century.
Telford inspected and approved the old
bridge at Helmsdale, and the old iron bridge across the Kyle of
Sutherland at Bonar. He took part in the discussions for an
embankment or mound across the Fleet. This work was finished in
1816 and the Countess wrote with pride that she had crossed The
Mound in safety, carriage and all. The cost to the House of
Sutherland of the various improved communications is estimated at
about £35,000 which in 1819 was a very considerable sum.
The easing of
communications brought with it at least one disaster. In 1831, the plague of
cholera moved north from Haddington. In Dornoch a system of
vigilantes was set up and even the Procurator Fiscal from Golspie
was not permitted to set foot inside the burgh. Near Earl’s Cross
on the links to the east of Dornoch is the grave of one cholera
victim. He died at Portgower near Helmsdale but the Dornoch
parishioners denied him interment in the churchyard.
It was largely through the interest of
the third Duke of Sutherland that the Sutherland and Caithness
section of the Highland Railway came into being. An examination of
the map will show that this was no simple straightforward task. In
1865 the work on the new railway was started and the 77 miles of
track through the county involved surveying and levelling
something like 200 miles, according to that great civil engineer,
Joseph Mitchell. It was during the laying of the track of the
Highland Railway from Lairg to Rogart that treasure trove was
found. Underneath an earthfast boulder was uncovered a hoard of
most beautiful silver brooches. Three only have survived and one
of the three is in Dunrobin Museum. They were probably hidden by a
well-to-do Pictish family about 700 A.D. when the Norsemen – the
Vikings – were threatening to ravage the land. Why was the hoard
never collected by its owner? It may well be that he and his
family were killed and took their secret with them or that they
were made captive and taken away to finish their days north of
Sutherland over the seas.
This is one of the delights of
Sutherland. There is always to be found a thread of fact linking
the past of 1,200 years ago with the present century. In 1902, a
branch line was opened from The Mound to the old Royal Burgh of
Dornoch. The Dornoch Light Railway ran along the coast over level
crossing by Cambusavie, Skelbo and Embo until it arrived at
Dornoch Station, now transformed into an industrial estate. The
line was closed in 1960 but the memory of ‘The Coffee Pot’, as the
small steam engine and its three carriages was affectionately
known, will long remain. The old track (bereft of sleepers and
rails) is still to be seen and walked today. For many, it is the
ghost of a bygone age.
About the time of the discovery of the
silver Rogart brooches, came a gold rush in Kildonan. Camps were
set up at Carn nam Buth and Baile an Or (Gold Town), and
prospectors from all corners of the land made their way up the
Strath of Kildonan. They walked or they travelled by a daily
horse-drawn bus from Helmsdale. No one made a fortune – the
largest nugget ever found was valued at £9 But for a time, there
was a ‘little Klondyke’ in Kildonan. Scotland’s oldest coal mine
was at Brora. It began to be worked in the reign of Mary, Queen of
Scots. Alas, of recent years it has closed down. So, too, have the
brickworks. But the woollen mill, started in 1890, continues to
flourish and is well worth a visit. No one can foretell the future
of Sutherland. Fishing and agriculture will always be the basic
clue to our prosperity. What effects will follow the finding of
oil off the coast between Brora and Helmsdale, or the building of
a bridge across the Dornoch Firth remains to be seen. For many of
its inhabitants, Sutherland faces with confidence, the years to
come, bearing in mind the motto of Clan Mackay, ’MANU FORTI’, and
of Clan Sutherland, ’SANS PEUR’. Not a bad way to face whatever
may come – ‘with strength’ and ‘without fear’.