Untitled by CMS-H
13th June 1814 saw the Strathnaver Clearances begin on the Sutherland estates. Families were given half an hour to remove their belongings before their cottages were set on fire.
Strathnaver was part of the estate of the Countess of Sutherland and her husband the Marquis of Stafford. They had decided to "improve" their lands by turning them over to profitable sheep farming and were intent on moving their tenants to new villages built on the coast.
The evictions were undertaken by the Sutherland Estate factor, Patrick Sellar. He was ruthless in his actions, destroying homes and burning crops to force people from their land. His actions were so extreme that in April 1816 Sellar stood trial in Inverness on a variety of charges including fire raising and culpable homicide. However, he was acquitted and returned to Strathnaver where he had leased a large area of the land to farm sheep.
There are the remains of many abandoned townships throughout the Strath, the best known of these being Rossall. This is mainly thanks to Donald Macleod, a native of that township, who witnessed the clearances and wrote passionately about them. Donald was about twenty years of age when Rossall was cleared. At 11 o'clock that night he climbed a hill and counted:
"250 blazing houses. Many of the owners were my relatives and all of whom I personally knew; but whose present condition, whether in or out of the flames, I could not tell. The fire lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins. During one of those days a boat lost her way in the dense smoke as she approached the shore; but at night she was enabled to reach a landing place by the light of the flames."
He is remembered in a memorial close to the site of the settlement.
