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Cnocaneach
Just down the coast was Inverkirkaig (pictured below), where in 1597 a bloody battle took place in which Ian Beag MacLeod of Handa, a kinsman of the MacLeods of Assynt, captured and killed John Missison, hereditary breve of Lewis. It is now the home of the only local bookshop, where we hoped to pick up some MacLeod literature. There was disappointingly little, but the owner (whose wife was a MacLeod) showed us two books by the local historian, Malcolm Bangor-Jones, Historic Assynt and The Assynt Clearances. We spotted a third, Population Lists of Assynt 1638-1811. ‘What about this?’, we asked. ‘That’s just for hard-core genealogists’ he said. ‘We’ll have it!’ we replied.
The Assynt Clearances is a study of the forced removal of the population of Assynt, which was part of the great Sutherland Estate in order to make the most fertile land available for commercial sheep farming. The process, which throughout Scotland spanned the period between the 1760s and 1860s, lasted in Assynt between 1812 and 1821, when the factors, William Young and Patrick Sellar, created five great sheep farms by evicting over 160 families from their relatively fertile inland farms to the rough, boggy land around the coast, where they were invited to eke a new living out of smallholdings, kelp-making and fishing. Over coffee in the bookshops’ tiny café, we leafed through looking for MacLeods mentioned in context of Badnaban. There was only one entry:
Cnocaneach
Cnocaneach and Badnaban were held by George Ross from Easter Ross who went on to work for the Custom House in Ullapool. He had removed people from Cnocaneach prior to 1812. The MacLeods, who were removed when the lands became part of the Culag sheepfarm in 1812, accepted holdings in Baddidarrach but then changed their minds.
| Cleared |
Head of Household |
Destination |
| 1812 |
Alexander MacLeod |
Langwell sheepfarm, Coigach |
| 1812 |
Angus MacLeod (son of the above) |
Badnaban |
| 1812 |
Roderick Ross |
Bad a’ Ghrianan |
The day before, we’d had a walk around Baddidarrach (pictured below), up over the hill overlooking the harbour towards Badnaban, and thence to the great sugarloaf bulge of Suilven, an ancient volcanic core of rock left isolated by the glaciers in the Ice Age. Baddidarrach was a pretty bleak place, the ground either bare rock or suppurating bog, and no place to make a home. Badnaban was presumably a slightly more attractive option, because it was on the same side as the estuary as Lochinver, which had been founded as a fishing port in 1775.
We were now fascinated that the MacLeods of Badnaban had lived elsewhere before 1812. We scoured the 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map of the area that we’d bought presciently beforehand, and Scott emitted a cry of triumph when he found ‘Cnocnaneach’, just under two miles due east of Badnaban, an uninhabited spot but clearly marked with a track and what looked very much like a building.
We drove as far as we could, up a road from Lochinver and then walked, past the shores of the beautiful Loch Druim Suardalain (‘Drumswordlin’), under the distant slopes of Suilven, and up through a wooded ravine, under the slopes of Cnoc nan Each (which I believe means ‘hill of the mound’). The stone walls of the sheep farm came together where the house was – a ruined croft, and then, just round a bend in the track, Scott emitted a second cry of triumph at the site of a ruined house, not deliberately pulled down like the other, but still very much derelict. It had been rebuilt, according to a date-stone in the wall, in 1870, but we knew that many newer homes were built on the foundations of ruined ones. No other ruined buildings could be seen, but the outline of several small ruined paddocks, were obvious. The MacLeods and the Rosses had been thrown out of Cnocaneach in 1812 – and here were two ruined houses.
It would have been a pretty tough place to live, but nowhere near as much as Badnaban. Instead of a smallholding squashed between the road and the burn, the farm at Cnocaneach was set in a sheltered valley, proudly independent of anywhere or anyone else, with fertile pastures for cattle, plenty of land for growing vegetables and hay, a wood nearby for fuel and a burn running into the loch, for drinking water, washing and fishing trout, especially the notorious local ferox trout, that prey on others of their own species.
The clearances destroyed many old settlements: inland Assynt is littered with the ruins of houses, kale-yards, and areas of cultivation rigs and lazy beds which were ridges made by laying seaweed, dung and used thatch over the bog, for growing oats and potatoes.
Some clearances were enforced by violence: in extreme cases, some tenants actually died when their farms were burned down around them. The area certainly saw violent protests, and we read that the residents of Inchnadamph rioted in 1813 when a minister who favoured clearances was appointed. Most clearances, however, took place relatively peacefully, the landlord waiting until the lease ran out and simply refusing to issue a new one.
The MacLeods probably went quietly, but as we walked back down the track to the loch we felt an immense sadness knowing we were walking in the footsteps of the departing MacLeods, who lead their animals away, all their worldly goods tied to a cart, that grim day in 1812. They were being separated, father Alexander to the Langwell Sheep Farm, and son Angus to Badnaban, where he knew his ability to provide for his family would be seriously impaired.
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