Publication Account
Date 1995
Event ID 1016706
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016706
Small groups of ruined croft houses and outbuildings are dispersed at intervals along the diffrop for a distance of some 2km. The path leads to a monumental stone pillar set on the ruins of one longhouse. This was erected in 1911 by Donald Sutherland from New Zealand, in memory of his father Alexander Sutherland, who was born at Badbea in 1806 and left for New Zealand in 1839. It also bears the names of some other early inhabitants. The history of the settlement is obscure, but traditionally it as founded by tenants evicted in some of the earliest clearances. People from Langwell in Caithness are said to have arrived in about 1793, followed by others from Berriedale and Ousedale. Some stayed temporarily before accepting free passages to America, others permanently. The site is very exposed, though not infertile, and the population gradually left for other parts.
The crofthouses are strung out along the flattish ground on the cliff top, each with its own patch of cultivated ground still showing as grassy islands in the heather. The separate crofts which now seem so typical to us, contrast with the older layout at Rosal (no. 29), where the houses were grouped round the common infield. The buildings are very similar, with longhouses set running down the slope, the lower end a byre, and other small structures, barns, stables and kailyards arranged haphazardly. The houses may originally have had central hearths, but latterly at least they had chimneys in the gable walls, as seen in the building south of the monument. The large slabs in its gable were to reduce the weight on the tintel over the hearth.
Most of the other crofts lie north of the monument and were once linked by a track. In 1871 the settlement was described by the Ordnance Survey as 'district of some six crofts of a few acres each'; by then it had perhaps already diminished. Originally there were rather more houses, bur it is difficult to reconcile the surviving remains with traditions that there were some 28 families at Badbea in the early 19th century, and some 60 to 100 people living there in 1847.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).
