Landownership and the Crofting System in Sutherland since I8OO /33' P. T. WHEELER HE seven crofting counties of Argyll, PROPRIETORS AND TENANTS r! Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, Suth- As a result of the destruction of the clan l i T erland, Caithness, Orkney, and Shet- system after i745, and the subsequent intro- land together cover r4,o5r square miles, or duction of large-scale stock farming, there 47' 2 per cent of the surface of Scotland. They were widespread evictions of small tenants are part of Highland Britain, an area of natural from their ancient areas of settlement in the difficulty and isolation, and are united on the Highlands. These evictions are popularly legal basis of the Crofting Laws. Outside the known as the 'Clearances'. The first recorded few small towns of the area, the greater part for Sutherland took place about x76o , and the i/i of the population of 277,716 in I96I , I77,z92 last in i872 , but the period of the great of whom lived in the "landward" or rural dis- 'Sutherland Clearances' should really be I ; tricts, was either directly or indirectly con- counted as i8o6-i82o. ; i nected with the system of small-holding The initial effect of these clearances in known as crofting. 1 This has been the object Sutherland was to depress still further the of much attention, official and private, espe- already low position of the small tenants, who, cially since it was realized that a great part of from having been largely subservient to the any solution to the problem of a declining tacksmen, were now overshadowed by the population in this rural area must be found farmers and sheep-farmers of the county. Yet in an equitable and efficient form of land in the nineteenth century, as in the eigh- tenure. Yet in spite of the great amount of teenth, most of the inhabitants of Sutherland material published, it is surprisingly difficult must have been of small tenant class. Table I to obtain precise, factual information. °- Thus shows the state of landownership immediately it is hoped that the compilation of certain before the major clearances. In the whole facts about one of the crofting counties-- county there were only thirteen proprietors Sutherland--and their presentation in chro- sufficiently substantial to be mentioned in the nological order will have a positive value. '~ list, of whom only three were permanently t Although ultimately derived from the ancient Highland smallholding system, the modern crofting ii 'J system is defined by a relatively recent body of legislation passed since the first Crofters Act in 1886. Nowa- days a croft, broadly speaking, is a tenant holding within the seven crofting counties, of less than 50 acres arable and/or £50 annual rent, that has been declared to be of crofting status. Its tenant, all things being equal, has security of tenure, an adjudicated Fair Rent, the right to compensation for improvements upon removal, and the right to nominate a successor subject to the approval of the Crofters Commission. The earlier term for 'crofter' was usually 'small tenant', and this is still worth using in a historical context, especially where a variety of types of tenure is subsumed. 2 Because official reports usually need considerable processing before their data can be used, and because the unfortunate history of the modern crofting system, embittered by memories of the Clear- ances, of the Potato Famine, and of emigration, in a society which remembers and values the past, has tended to produce polemical works of doubtful value as sources of factual data. 3 This information was largely obtained by the writer in the course of research on the Sutherland ! crofting system undertaken while reading for a Ph.D. in London University. The first really full and dependable published information available for Sutherland is contained in the parish descriptions of the First Statistical Account of Scotland (I792-9), closely followed by the General Viezo of the Agriculture of Sutherland (i 812). It is therefore convenient to begin at the turn of the eighteenth century. 45 46 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW resident. There was an intermediate class of when the consolidation of the estate of Suth- tacksmen and wadsetters and a very few be- erland was complete and before the subse- longing to the professional and trading quent sales had begun, the total holding of classes, but these amounted to an extremely the Dukes of Sutherland had increased from small proportion of the total population. 63 to 79 per cent of the recalculated valuation of the whole county and covered 9 ° per cent TABLE I of its total area. In all, there were 433 land- ESTATESIN SUTHERLANDIN I808 owners in Sutherland, 348 of whom were Estate Vahtation householders with less than an acre of ground. (£ Scots) Only 85 proprietors held more than one acre: excluding the Sutherland Railway Company, £ s.d. six of these had land to a gross annual value 1. The estate or Lordship of Sutherland 16,554 6 1 of over £500, but only three exceeded £i,ooo, 2. Lord Reay's estate 3,647 13 4 the Duke having much the largest share with 3. The estate of Skibo 1,974 11 6 property worth £56,936. 2 4. The estate of Bighouse 900 0 0 Nineteenth-century estate management in 5. The estate of Strathy 564 0 0 Sutherland initially favoured the setting up 6. Rosehall 400 0 0 7. Part of the Pointzfield of great sheep farms. Thc first big lease of estate 466 13 4 lands of the estate of Sutherland, other than 8. Part of the Balnagown for agricultural or pastoral purposes, did not estate 431 18 0 occur till 1866 when Earl Grosvenor (later 9. Part of the Cadboll estate 354 0 0 10. The estate of Embo 346 0 8 first Duke of Westminster) took a lease of 11. Ospisdale and Ardeans* 253 6 8 Reay Forest; this may be said to have inaugu- 12. Creich* 200 0 0 rated the deer forest phase in the county. By 13. Achany* 100 0 0 1911-12 , the peak year, deer forests totalled ii:i Totalt 26,192 9 7~ 436,323 acres in Sutherland. Very soon after- i:! wards the fifth Duke of Sutherland decided I to break up his estate, and a series of big sales * Resident proprietors. bl "~ Total as given by Henderson. were held? In the first instance many of these + Equal to £2,I8z I5S. 9~d.7 sterling, of which sales were to sitting tenants, some of whom the estate of Sutherland accounts for 63 per cent had held their leases for many years. The in value. Taken from Henderson, A General View most important among these was undoubted- of the Agriculture of the County of Sutherland, London, i812. p. 4o. ly the Duke of Westminster, the lessee of Reay Forest. As a result of re-sales and gov- In 18o8, therefore, the estate of Suther- ernment action, the Westminster estate, the land 1 stood out as by far the most important Department of Agriculture for Scotland, and in the county, followed after a long interval the Forestry Commission are now the largest by the Reay and Skibo estates. The other landholders in the county. 1,1 estates (not counting further properties held On the whole, the small tenants were little I by their owners elsewhere) were often but affected by the various changes of ownership. 'bonnet lairdships'. During the nineteenth The sheep-farmers were most closely con- century the predominance of one proprietor cerned in the conversion of former sheep t ;J became even more overwhelming. By 1872 , farms to deer forests, and since in the agri- z Then held by the Marchioness of Stafford, Countess of Sutherland in her own right, whose husband was created first Duke of Sutherland in z833. i:ill 2 Scotland: Owners of Land and Heritages, z872-3, Cd. 899 , Edinburgh, x874 , pp. 2o4, zo 5. 3 George Granville Sutherland Leveson-Gower, fifth Duke of Sutherland, Looking Back, London, I957, p. 86. The first big sale of part of the estate of Sutherland took place in z899.--Evander Maciver, Memoirs ofa Higkland Gentleman, Edinburgh, I9o5, p. z48. Subsequent sales have reduced the estate of Sutherland to a small remnant of its former extent--Dunrobin, Uppat, and part of Tongue. CROFTING IN SUTHERLAND SINCE I8OO 47 TABLE II SUTHERLANDDEER FORESTS Year Acres Source 1883 144,771 1898 381,363 H.M.S.O., Deer Forests, Highland Crofting Counties... for the Years 1904 418,191 1883, 1898, 1904, and 1908, Glasgow, 19o8, pp. 4-5. 1908 427,548 1911-12 436,323 H.M.S.O., Deer Forests and Sporting Lands (Scotland)... according to the Vahtation Roll for the Year 1911-12, London, 1913, p. 538. 1920 380,044 H.M.S.O., Report of the Departmental Comndssion on Lands in Scotland used as Deer Forests, Cd. 1636, Edinburgh, 1922, App. IX. 1950 241,036 Annual 4 June Agricultural Returns. 1951 291,526 1957 348,956 The largest acreage of deer forests in Sutherland ever given was 998,571 acres on forty-six forests in 19o5, but this included lands which had not been cleared of sheep.--D. McLean, SutherlandDeer Forests, r9o5, Sutherland Estates office, Golspie, 19o5. cultural depression of the late nineteenth cen- much reduced: in fact, the remaining deer- tury the rents of sheep farms had to be re- forest land is generally that which is of little duced by about half between 1875 and 1895, use for any other purpose. 1 while costs of rates and labour had increased heavily, it may be surmised that in practice SMALL TENANTS the sheep-farmers were not too hostile to the Since published statistics rarely distinguish change.