land use history

The purpose of the documentary history work is to 'people' the Ben Lawers landscape. John Harrison began by looking at settlement in the nineteenth century, following families and individuals across time and the landscape. Whilst the 'big story' is emigration and abandonment, there is also clear evidence that some emigrants returned -sometime to take over their parents' tenancy, whilst emigrants' children are quite often found living with their extended families on north Lochtayside, perhaps supported by funds from their parents whom worked elsewhere.

The focus has now shifted to the seventeeth century administration. From the late sixteenth century until the 1650s the lairds were intensely involved in the daily life of the area, supervising the courts, personally collecting rents and meeting the tenants. But, thereafter, chamberlains were appointed and the lairds became more distant. By the 1680s, the cattle trade was of growing importance as both the estate and the tenants joined the rush to the cash economy.

2004 Settlement History

The documentary research, which began in July 2004, has as its core concern to 'put the people into the landscape'. To that end, several strands of investigation have been followed, using sources such as the census returns and the Breadalbane Papers in the National Archives of Scotland. Some sources yield general or statistical information; others highlight individuals, or local events or stories.

But, as Table 2 shows, abandonment is not the whole story. Some families persisted right through the period (1740-1900) and the phases of their lives can be followed as they moved within the area. In some returns, over 5% of the population are children living with adults such as grandparents or aunts and uncles; doubtless some were orphans but in some cases it would allow parents to work elsewhere and support them by remittances. Some people left the area for years, rejoining their families to support aging parents and, at the same time, putting themselves in position to continue a tenancy. That is why the age profile of the population levels out somewhat in mid life. Another interesting feature of the graph is that, as the local birth rate fell, there were always more children in the aged 5-9 group than in the 0-4 group.

Age Profile 1841-1901

There are some 3000 petitions from tenants and others, directed to the lairds or estate officials, mainly from the period 1785-1835. They ask for many diverse things, from charity to help with solving disputes. Overwhelmingly the biggest concern was access to land, reaching a crescendo as the entire tenurial system was re-organised in the 1790s. But the petitions also tell uniquely vivid personal stories. Duncan Roy Campbell 'with the beard' is recorded at Cloanlawers (Lawers) in 1687, Margdhu (Carwhin) in 1696 and at Moirlanich (Glenlochay) by 1707. He was Captain of theBreadalbane Watch and Rob Roy mentions him in a letter of 1697. Well over a century later, his descendants still mentioned their celebrated' ancestor in support of their pleas for land; he was a local hero, a relative of the Breadalbane family, and they hoped that their association with him would elicit sympathy.

At the other end of the social scale from the petitioners, the world of the lairds also changed over time. In the early 17th century Duncan Campbell exercised a close, personal supervision of the estate, holding courts, collecting rents personally, settling disputes; there was an astonishingly efficient estate bureaucracy but the laird was a vital daily presence and a key contributor to the comparatively settled state of the area. From 1655, however, as the Young Laird (John Campbell) began to exert evergreater influence, he appointed a Chamberlain to take over many of the former lairdly functions. From that time, the Campbell lairds were much less intimately involved - and spent more time in Edinburgh or even in London. Perhaps, through the petitions, the 4th earl hoped to recreate that intimate relationship - but a formal letter, written by a scribe, was a long way from the face-to-face meetings of 150 years before.

It is quite clear, then, that significant changes that we tend to associate with the later 18th century were already taking place in the way the estate was run and the relationship between chiefs and tenants on North Loch Tayside by the later 17th century. Some of those changes could be painful for those lower down the social order, of that there is no doubt. But equally tenants could be at the forefront of change, taking advantage of any prevailing conditions that might allow them to better themselves, even at the expense of their neighbours. Though the landscape of North Loch Tayside might appear calm and unchanging today, the area has an intensely dynamic history, both of its natural resources and its human inhabitants.

2005 Settlement History

This year saw completion of the project (begun last year) to use the rich documentary resources to 'put people into the landscape' of the Ben Lawers area. The broad pa.ern of se.lement for the post-medieval period now seems fairly clear. Most sites recorded in the later 18th century are .rst recorded in the late 16th or the 17th centuries. High population was already seen as problematic by the mid-18th century though decisive action by the estate administration was delayed until the 1790s.

But the subsequent decline cannot be explained by a simple model of 'clearance'. It was a complex process in which the lairds, the inhabitants and the wider world all played a part.

The power of the Campbells of Glenorchy was at its peak in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century under 'Black Duncan'. It is a shock, but perhaps not a surprise, to .nd a contract to murder amongst the records.

Important though this sort of strategy was, Duncan Campbell was primarily an administrator of astonishing efficiency, closely involved in the daily life of his extensive estates, particularly those areas around Loch Tay.

In the later 17th century, as the first earl became more engaged with Scotland's wider political world, that close personal link was broken. As he aged, however, the earl thought of himself increasingly as a highland patriarch whilst the heir rejected this heritage in favour of Greater Britain and the Grand Tour. In some ways their family arguments were a re-run of the old earl's disputes with his own father but in this case the son even wanted to abandon the ancient Glenorchy title 'being very uneasie to pronounce or remember by either a stranger or an Englishman' (GD112/39/162/16, Glenorchy to Carwhin, Nov 1692). These disagreements were the background to the father's drift into the Jacobite camp and the son's to support for the Union and the Hanoverians.

This project, provided a springboard for further work, on the documentary evidence for the specific sites surveyed or excavated during the Ben Lawers Historic Landscape Project. Croftvellich provides a good example.

Malcolm and Archibald McDiarmid were brothers. Their father had been a tenant at Croftvellich since the 1740s and, following the re-organisation of 1797 they wanted to continue in the two lowermost lots. Duncan McCallum, who had had a croft in Croftvellich for 16 years 'without sowing or planting saving Kail and Potatoes' wanted to exchange with a widow in Balnahanaid. Fierce rivalries emerge in the petitions, which they and their neighbours submitted to the earl. In 1921-2 Margaret McGibbon, almost certainly a descendant of those involved in those rivalries, was still living at Croftvellich - in the house and garden surveyed (table below) by GUARD in 2002.

Extract from Inland Revenue Survey detailing Margaret McGibbons house and garden

The work, overall, shows that the rich documentary sources for the area can be used in many different ways. For example, they can provide statistical information about settlement and abandonment. They can illustrate broad social processes - the reactions of a community under stress in the late 18th century. And they can also put personal names and human stories into the fields and ruins of this historic landscape.

John Harrison

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