In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, many Highland landlords turned out long-standing tenants of small farms to create more profitable sheep ranches.
The most notorious ‘clearances’ were around the Flow Country, with whole communities displaced by the Countess of Sutherland and her husband, the Marquess of Stafford. In the winding glens that carry roads into the high peatlands, traces can still be seen of the farmers’ stone-and-turf houses.
Some were burned by evicting parties while frightened families looked on. Sheep grazed the land more uniformly than the farmers’ mixed livestock, reducing the vegetation variety; deer herds increased when the hills later became hunting estates for wealthy southerners, all impacting the biodiversity of the Flows.
In Gaelic, the sense of one-ness with the land is so important it has its own word: dùchthas. Would the draining and forestry that damaged the Flows have happened if the indigenous population had remained?
Top image: a former crofter's house at the Strand on Strandburgh Ness. Credit: Getty
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