Badbea Village by pat40

Photography • Abstract • posted on Oct 22, 2013

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Description

Badbea Village, Toward the end of the 18th century tenant farmers were evicted from their homes across the Scottish highlands to make way for sheep farming. From 1792 onwards, displaced families began to arrive in Badbea, a small area of rough, steeply sloping land, squeezed between the high drystone wall of the sheep enclosures and the precipitous cliffs of Berriedale above the North Sea. Many of the families were from nearby Ousdale, where landowner Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster had evicted them from their crofts in order to introduce sheep. Others came from the villages of Auchencraig, on the Langwell Estate and Kildonan.[2] When the families arrived they were given small plots to farm, but had to clear the land, hack out the plots from the steep slopes, and build their own houses from the stones they found.[2][3] In 1814 the estate was sold to James Home, by which time there were 80 inhabitants.[4] During the late 19th century the main employment of herring fishing was discontinued by the then Laird, Donald Home, in favour of salmon fishing and the population declined as the families moved away to seek a better life. One of the inhabitants, Alexander Sutherland, had emigrated to New Zealand as early as 1838