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The Sutherland Clearances |
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In 1809 the Duke and Duchess employed the services of three 
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improvers to turn around their fortunes. William Young, James Loch and Patrick Sellar, were to prove the main protagonists in the events that followed. Their grand scheme involved the movement of people from the fertile land of the Straths (ideal for sheep farming) to the coastland, which had little or no farming potential.
The first of the new breeds of sheep arrived in 1808, and a mere 12 years later there were 118,000 across Sutherland. With the arrival of the sheep the resident population had to move. Some left voluntarily, as New World emigrants, others, however, were forced off the land, with Sellar implicated directly in some of the evictions.
The Sutherlands did not entirely abandon their tenants who moved to the coast, but whether they went to work in the brickworks at Brora, or become fishermen at the new village of Golspie, they were entering into new industries without training or any real choice. More unfortunate still were those who tried to continue farming on the new coastal strips with less land to work and much smaller houses for their families to live in. Most had to build new dwellings, the lucky ones with timber dragged from their old blackhouses; the less fortunate had to start completely from scratch. Some even ran off to the forests and attempted to eke out a living there.
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