Publication Account

Date 1995

Event ID 1016707

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016707

RCAHMS: Exploring Scotland's Heritage - The Highlands, 1995

An example of the layout of an 18th-century farming township, from which the inhabitants were moved to coastal settlements in 1814-18. The site has been preserved by the Forestry Commission as a grassy island within the surrounding forest, and is laid out with wooden walkways over the wettest areas (gumboots still advisable) and explanatory noticeboards. The site was planned and a few buildings excavated in 1962.

A few traces of prehistoric occupation were found, such as some hut circles (all outside the fenced area and now under trees) and a souterrain ssee chapter 10) near the centre, now filled in again though one or two of its lintels still show; there is a plan beside it. The remaining structures relate to the township and comprise the ruined stone walls of buildings,enclosure walls, clearance cairns and broad cultivation strips known as rigs in the ploughed 'infield'. The area now fenced is this infield of some 50 acres enclosed by a stone ring-dyke; the far larger area of common grazing outside this, where the all-important black cattle, sheep and goats were grazed in summer, is now under trees. Even within the enclosure wall only about two-thirds of the land had been ploughed. In Upper Strathnaver arable land was not continuous, and Rosal and the other contemporary settlements would have appeared as green patches in a wide expanse of brown moor.

The 1962 survey noted some twelve to fifteen exceptionally long buildings which were probably houses; this agrees well with a record of thirteen families living here in 1808. The buildings were scattered in clusters round the perimeter of the enclosure, the longhouses set on slopes with the byres at the downhill end ro assist drainage. The house excavated in 1962 had low stone walls less than 1m high, which would have been heightened in turf, and slots in the walls for the wooden crucks that supported the thatched roof. There was only one door at the junction of house and byre, and no partition between the two, a central hearth in the main room, and tne separate room with its own hearth divided off by a stone and mud partition. By the house was a separate barn with two opposed doors, a kail or stack yard, and another outbuilding. There were also several corn-drying kilns at Rosal, generally attached to barns; one has been moved and rebuilt at the carpark.

Strathnaver was cleared in 1814 and the inhabitants given new lots on the coast at Bettyhill and Farr, where they were expected to take up fishing. The agent Patrick Sellar was brought to trial on charges of brutality over their eviction, but acquitted on the evidence presented. Later accounts refer to wholesale burnings of houses in Strathnaver. The excavated buildings at Rosal were certainly not burnt; but it emerges that Rosal was part of a new sheep farm which Sellar leased himself, where he was able to leave the old ten ants of one half (including Rosal) in possession for an extra four years after 1814, so they were able to move out slowly to their new allotments.

Rosal with thirteen families was one of the largest settlements in Strathnaver, and only two were larger. Indeed of the 49 'settlements' listed in 1806 many were very small, eleven having only one or two families. It has been suggested that some of the small settlements were the result of people settling permanently on shieling grounds and starting to cultivate small patches. Such a population must have been particularly vullnerable in times of famine.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).