The Making of the Crofting Community by James Hunter

Author:James Hunter [Hunter, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912476329
Google: wN6-tQEACAAJ
Publisher: Origin
Published: 2018-04-12T23:23:12.415970+00:00

It was thus no coincidence that, during the troubles of the 1880s, those proprietors who managed their own estates were said to have experienced considerably less ‘inconvenience’ than landlords whose properties were looked after by factors.

Most of the estates presided over by Donald Munro, Alexander MacDonald and their fellows shared the same broad characteristics. On the mainland, it is true, there were one or two properties, such as the Knoydart estate in western Inverness-shire, where the clearances had been pushed to their logical conclusion and almost all the available land put under sheep. And there were other areas – Morvern, Glenelg, and parts of Mull and Skye, for instance – where crofters’ share of the land was so minute as to be almost negligible. The parish of Bracadale on the MacLeod estate in Skye was one of these. Described by a Skye crofter as ‘practically a desert’, it consisted almost entirely of six sheep farms, three of which, Glenbrittle, Talisker and Drynoch were enormous holdings whose tenants, in 1883, paid annual rents of £1,800, £1,575 and £1,260 respectively. More typical of the north-west coast and the Hebrides, however, were those districts where the effects of clearing extensive tracts of land and cramming evicted tenants into the less desirable corners could be observed side by side. Four such localities were the widely separated, but by no means untypical, parishes of Farr in Sutherland, Uig in Lewis, Duirinish and Waternish in Skye, and the islands of South Uist and Benbecula.

The aggregate land rental of the parish of Farr was £6,492. And in Farr, as elsewhere, the proportions paid by the various classes of agricultural tenants provide a fairly accurate guide not only to the value of the lands occupied by them but also to the nature of the social and economic system which the land supported. Of the total rental of £6,492, then, seven farmers paid £5,810 and 293 crofting tenants £682. Of the latter group, none paid more than £10 a year in rent, five paid between £6 and £10, 160 paid between £2 and £6, and the remainder paid under £2. The smallest farm was valued at £290 a year, the largest croft at £7.16s. And while almost 300 crofters occupied holdings whose aggregate value was only £682 a year, a single sheep farmer – who was not even resident in the district – held lands for which he paid an annual rent of £1,688. Such was the end result of the much vaunted ‘improvements’ on the Sutherland estate. The parish which had witnessed the clearance of Strathnaver now contained, as the Napier Commission observed, ‘the extremes of subdivision and consolidation; there is a striking absence of intermediate positions; the small farmer and the substantial crofter disappear entirely’.

The total land rental of the parish of Uig, in the south-western corner of Lewis, was £3,698. Although less far-reaching than those in Sutherland, the clearances in Uig had been far-reaching enough. As a result, the tenants of two deer forests – which,

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