If you are lucky enough to be taking an Isle of Skye hiking tour this year, your itinerary may include a walk to the poignant deserted villages of Boreraig and Suisnish. They are located to the south west of the island, overlooking sea lochs and mountains to the west. Now just scattered remains, they still carry a heavy weight of history.
In fact, ruined and abandoned crofting communities can be found all over Skye, but Boreraig and Suisnish are the most well-known. They were destroyed during the ‘Highland Clearances’ which took place during the mid 1800’s.
This highly controversial practice involved forcibly removing people from the land, either to redeploy elsewhere in the country, or in some cases, to pack them onto emigrant ships. For this reason, many Scottish people of the 19th century started new lives in Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand, and their ancestors remain in those countries today.
The displaced people were known as ‘crofters’. This meant that they lived in crofts, which operated like self-sufficient smallholdings, growing crops and keeping animals for produce, such as goats, cows, sheep, and chickens. Most of the crofters lived at subsistence level, and had no resources to fall back on when the crofts were taken away.
The crofts were rented from the handful of powerful Scottish clan families or other rich aristocrats, who owned large swathes of Scotland at the time. They decided it would be more profitable to use the land for sheep grazing than for the modest rental income of the crofters, and so the people were told to leave, and even burnt out of their homes.
There were also more complex political factors at work, which can be traced back to the reign of James VI in Scotland. This led to conflict between the ancient clan families of the Scottish Highlands, and the more southerly population of Scotland, who tended to be more in favour of the Monarch.
The problems deepened in the 1830s, as the Highlands suffered from a potato blight, followed by the Great Highland Famine of 1946-8. The wealthy clan families struggled to support their vast estates, and they began to look for more profitable ways of managing their land.
On Skye, from 1840 onwards, 1,740 writs of removal were served, and almost 40,000 were affected in some way. It is thought that about 20,000 inhabitants emigrated to the United States. The shocking injustice and indifference to human suffering is still hard to comprehend even today for many people.
Some of the evicted crofters simply became homeless, and perished in the harsh winter Scottish climate. Others made their way to other areas of Scotland, and found work in factories or fishing. Of those who emigrated, many showed an entrepreneurial spirit, starting businesses, gold mining, or working in the timber, ranching, or construction sectors.
Although many displaced people went on to thrive in new places and occupations, the clearances still leave a sad and haunting legacy in the Scottish Highlands today.