Throughout the coastal fringes of the North West Highlands and Islands, the traditional system of micro-scale farming continues today in modern crofts. There are around 2,000 working crofts on Skye with an average croft size of between 2 and 15 acres. Many still retain common grazing rights and it is quite usual to see domestic animals freely roaming the hills and roads.
Modern Crofting
The crofting way of life is safeguarded by legislation which imposes a number of statutory duties on tenants and owner-occupiers. The Crofting Register maintains a list of registered crofts with maps of their boundaries and the Crofting Commission both regulates and promotes the interests of crofts and common grazing rights.
Crofts remain a very important part of Island culture and play a vital role in preserving the Gaelic language as most Skye crofters have the Gaelic. The smallholding model is regarded as a sustainable economic activity. It is environmentally friendly and food production is local, traceable and generally of a high quality.
Owing to the small size of a croft, food production is relatively small-scale and diverse so crofting often provides a tributary source of income for crofters, whose crofting lifestyle is, more often than not, reliant on a secondary income and Government subsidies.
Crofters are often seen out on the hills with their dogs herding sheep, tending to the lambs and sometimes cutting peat. The geology of the Island makes it unsuitable for large-scale crop production, so crofters mainly rely on breeding hardy sheep, cattle and pigs which they can eventually sell at the markets.
Crofting is still very much a community-orientated practice. Crofters not only come together to dip and shear sheep, for example, but the likes of market day in Portree and the agricultural shows in Portree and Dunvegan every summer allows them to meet, show off their best animals, exchange stories and indulge in a little healthy competition.
Diversification is key to the successful croft, and the Island’s crofters also produce honey, micro-salad leaves in polytunnels; hens, ducks, geese and eggs; root vegetables; and fruit. Many crofters are also fishermen, bringing in herring, pollack and shellfish to sell to local restaurants and cafés as well as further afield.
Some crofters also take advantage of the rich sea harvest and have diversified into the likes of hand diving for scallops, oyster farming and kelp harvesting.
In addition, small-scale tourism provides a further income source for the crofter and visitors will receive a warm welcome during their stay on a working croft. Croft boxes on the side of the road sell local honey, eggs, homemade sweets and baking on an “honesty” basis.
More recently, biodiverse wildlife crofts have emerged on the Island to produce organic fruit, firewood and woodchip mulch as well as provide shelter for wildlife.
Visitors to Skye and Raasay may notice there is very limited public access to the shoreline in many of the islands’ rural locations. This can be mainly attributed to the first phase of the Highland Clearances when families were relocated from the productive interiors to the less fertile coastal margins.
Although throughout Scotland there is a right to stravaig (to wander freely), please respect the crofters whose rights to the land have been extremely hard fought and act responsibly.
When attempting to access the shoreline through a croft, it is always best practice as well as common courtesy, to ask for permission from the crofter first. If granted, keep dogs on leads and under close control at all times (crofters have a legal right to shoot dogs that are worrying livestock and owners may be prosecuted under criminal law); stay close to the fence line to minimise damage to the land; respect people’s privacy by avoiding close proximity to the croft house or garden; do not light fires; and do not trample or otherwise damage crops.
Crofting History
Before the 1745, the landless poor in the Scottish Highlands and Islands scratched out a modest lifestyle by sharing the common land. Across scattered settlements, families lived together in small townships (called bailtean), overseen by a chieftain, and were free to graze their few domestic animals and cultivate crops under the tradition known as dùthchas — an inalienable right of clansmen and women to share their hereditary land. Runrig strips (or lazy beds), the old system of tenure, can still be seen today as vertical scars running down the hillsides.
Over the coming century, a number of disastrous harvests, a decline in the lucrative kelp industry, overcrowded communities, poorly managed land and the abject poverty of tenants meant landlords, many to avoid bankruptcy, had to look elsewhere for income. This led to the breaking apart of the relationship between the land and its kin.
The Highland Clearances
The failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 had a deep and significant impact on the rural way of life in the Highlands. Those chieftains whose land did not become forfeit became landlords (lairds) and divided the land into small strips called crofts (croitean) to which the tenants would pay a rent. Absentee landlords often sub-let the land to their friends or relations. The holders of these leases were called tacksmen (duane uaisle – one who held a lease on the land and would then sub-let to tenants) and this system of sub-letting led to heavily-increased rents.
The promise of fattening their purses encouraged most lairds or tacksmen to breed sheep or turn the land into sporting estates, which called for a significant change to the existing agrarian structure. Smallholdings were to make way for large-scale single unit farms but this meant the existing poor tenants stood in the way of economic progress and posed a barrier to agricultural “improvement”.
There followed a black and bitter time in Scotland’s history. With no security of tenure, families were either relocated or forcibly evicted from their homes across the Scottish Highlands and Islands in two phases. This was called the Highland Clearances where mass depopulation of the Highlands took place.
The first phase occurred over 1760 to 1815. This involved a break-up of the bailtean and relocation of families to less productive areas, often around coastlines. The croft system was created which also gave communal access to certain parts of the land called common grazing. Some of these new areas proved extremely difficult to cultivate and many people farmed kelp or fished in order to feed their families. Poverty and hunger were so rife in the townships that there are a few areas across Skye that were locally called “Starvation Point”: Aird Bernisdale is one of them and Rudha na Goirte by Loch Dunvegan is another.
The second and most brutal phase of the clearances took place in the mid-1800s where families were forcibly, and often violently, evicted from their homes. Some left for the cities and others were put on boats that sailed to the New World. On Skye it is estimaged that 30,000 people were forced from their homes over a 40 year period between 1840 and 1880. Evidence of cleared townships can be found across Skye and Raasay. The toppled stone remains of deserted villages such as Suisnish in Strath, Rubh' an Dùnain in Minginish, Leitir Furir in Sleat, Greaulainn in Kilmuir and Hallaig on Raasay stand as forlorn testimony to this mass destruction of the Gaelic rural way of life.
Crofters rebel
The potato famine of the 1840s, overpopulation and the effect of the Napoleonic wars (as well as cheaper imports) on the kelp industry led to mass poverty and starvation amongst the communities of the Highlands and Islands. Those crofters who managed to avoid eviction and remain on the land became angry at the injustice of society: hunger, misery, penury, deplorable living conditions and the continuous erosion of their common land for sheep were exacerbated by escalating rents and crofters felt less valued by their lairds than the domestic animal.
Towards the 1880s, crofters united to make a stand against victimisation in what is known as the Hebridean Land Revolt. They occupied land without permission, refused to pay rent, blocked roads, ripped down sheep fencing and attacked Government officials, leading to a military intervention. Skye played a major part in this revolt with noted events such as the Battle of the Braes in 1882 and the Glendale Land Revolt taking place the following year.
The infamous Major William Fraser, who owned the Kilmuir Estate in the mid-1800s, was well-known for his part in the eviction of many poor tenants during the Highland Clearances. His decorative Romanesque tower (named locally as Captain Fraser’s Folly) still stands to the south of Uig overlooking the harbour. It is to here his tenants would go to pay rent. His attempts to evict a family from Staffin during a rent strike in 1884 led to an excessive show of force by the Navy which failed to break up the strike and the Home Secretary at the time, ordered the military home.
The rebellion across the Highlands reached Westminster. The Highland Land League gained seats in Parliament and recommendations from the Napier Committee, who recognised the extreme hardship of the Highlanders, led to the passing of the Crofters Holdings Act of 1886 (the “Magna Cara of the Gaeldom”). This statute finally gave crofters back the right to secure tenure, the right to succession, the right to fair rent, the right to arbitration against rent increases, and compensation for improvements.
The 19th century croft
By today’s Western standards, life on a Skye croft in the mid-19th century would have been harsh and brutal for most, especially in the winter.
Families would live in close-knit groups, or townships. These communities would include a number of two-roomed dwelling-houses (taigh-dùbh) and larger townships could contain a cèilidh house, a communal barn; a mill; a weaving house; and a blacksmith. Buildings were fashioned from any available materials. Walls were built with unmortared stone; roof structures were made from wood and sometimes driftwood; windows were tiny to keep out the cold and winter storms; interior floors were made of hard earth; and roofs would be thatched with straw or heather, although on Skye they were mainly thatched with reeds or rush.
Inside, the walls would be blackened with soot. The fireplace mainly sat in the middle of the room, with an overhanging pot supported by a slabhraidh (a metal hook and chain), and fuelled by peat. Drying meats would be hung from the thatch. Furnishing was sparse and wooden and the interior may be lit with a cruigsean (crusie lamp) filled with fish oil.
Through the main door was the “but” (outer room) of the house. Here the fireplace and kitchen were situated and this is where the family also slept, often with some of the domestic animals. The “ben” (inner room) was a place to entertain guests and sometimes made an extra bedroom for bigger families. Hence the Scottish name for a wee rural Scottish cottage, But and Ben.
Townships preserved the traditional sense of community and belonging and much of the day-to-day living took place outside in a mutually-advantageous social system. Men would build, fish, mend nets, make heather ropes, farm for kelp, tend livestock and cast peat. Women could typically spend their time cooking, looking after children, spinning, sewing, carrying water from the well and generally working hard on the croft. Some of the tasks could be done together in the ben room and outside.
An example of a communal task was beating the homespun tweed. The women of the community would get together across a table to soften and shrink the material by hand. This was called waulking (luadh) and many songs (òran-luaidh) were composed and sung during the waulking to help alleviate the monotony of the work.
The cèilidh house was used by the community as a place to gather for a chat, relax, hear stories from visitors, play music together and dance.
There are some wonderful examples of well-preserved thatched croft houses on Skye including dwelling-houses in Lùib, Kilmuir and Waternish. The Museum of Island Life in the far north of the Trotternish Peninsula showcases a beautifully preserved 19th century township and a great glimpse into the era’s domestic island life.