The former village of Ceannabeinne, forcibly cleared in 1842.
After a week-long field trip in the NW Highlands, covering
much of the area of Sutherland, I’m still mulling over what I saw. Ostensibly,
the trip was to look at rocks, and indeed this is one of the most famous
centres of geological controversy. What any visitor sees, however, is not just
rocks. There was a lack of population, and yet the roads were busy with camper
vans (much less the permanent population). The weather was dramatically
different to the East Anglia where I live, so much so that it felt like a
different country when I returned. On the plane from Inverness to Gatwick, the
cabin crew told us the local time as we were landing, so clearly, this was a different
country.
As we clambered over the rocks, we saw the remains of traditional
stone-built houses, many of them derelict or simply repurposed into dry stone
walling. The number of permanent inhabitants in the NW Highlands area that
comprises the Geopark is around 2,500, which is close to one person per square
kilometre. Plenty of room, you might think, for people to live from the land –
but much of that land is barren, Lewisian gneiss, a very hard rock, on which
grass does not grow. Indeed, it was very visible where there were patches of
limestone, and a corresponding greenery on the surface, compared to the older
rocks.
Why so depopulated? Like many before me, I started reading
John Prebble’s The Highland Clearances (1963). This book is written with
a passion and drive that can only leave you indignant. It is a tale of grasping
landowners forcibly removing the local population to make room for sheep. Melodramatic,
yes, exaggerated, probably not, but certainly selective in its evidence. Nonetheless,
the work of Prebble created a whole generation of academic historians, as James
Hunter admitted. The best-known of these is Tom Devine, whose revisionist book The
Scottish Clearances (2019) acknowledges the achievement of Prebble, but
points out there were Lowland clearances as well. In fact, they weren’t all
clearances at all; many people left simply seeking more opportunity elsewhere. Devine
gives a whole range of causes for what he describes as the “dispossession” of
land (a considerably more neutral term). Scotland, he says, was one of the most
industrialized nations in the world by 1850, so some at least of that movement
was to the cities. Here, as elsewhere in the world, we see the seemingly
inexorable move towards industrialisation, urbanisation, and agricultural
revolution. For a region like the Highlands, there was (and is) no industry to
speak of, so next to no opportunities for work. Instead, a handful of local
initiatives, such as the Geopark, a flourishing pottery factory that even makes
mugs labelled “Torremolinos”, or the recent redevelopment of the island of
Tanera Mor by one very wealthy philanthropist. But these are like drops in the ocean.
We saw one very poignant former village, near Durness. A few
information boards stated there had been a handful of cottages, but the inhabitants
were all removed in a single clearance. Were the clearances, as the infamous
Peter Sellars stated, for the good of the inhabitants and their children? Would
it have happened anyway, as in other areas, like Lowland Scotland, perhaps only
in a less brutal form? Is emigration always tragic? Queuing to visit the Red
Star Line museum in Antwerp gave the impression that it was. Like Karl Marx, I
read about the triple hammer of urbanization, agricultural revolution, and
industrialization, and I see the impact very starkly today in deindustrialized
Britan in places such as Dundee or Glasgow. Initiatives to live in the
Highlands, like Frank Fraser Darling’s Island Years (1940), an account
of his living on an island for a few months, are at best quixotic, and
certainly not sustainable. Studying the bird life is great fun but does not,
for the most part, generate an income.
The questions I am left with are:
- Could the transition have been managed in a more humane way? (Of course it could).
- Is there a sustainability option for the NW Highlands today, or can it survive only on second houses and camper-van tourism?
- Was there ever a golden age in the Highlands when the clans lived in harmony, with the tenants working the land and relying on the chief for support and protection (very unlikely, but often this is the hidden assumption in many texts)?
In the meantime, I keep looking at that deserted village,
and imagining what live must have been like when it was inhabited.
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