Highland Clearances
(Above image is a capture of a Clearance House ruin at Glen Almond in Perthshire.) The term Highland Clearances refers to an unhappy period of Scotland’s history when large numbers of tenant farmers and their families were evicted, in many cases forcibly, from their homes and land in order to make way for ranch style sheep farming, an activity considered more profitable by the major land owners of the day. By way of background, much of the land in Scotland’s Highlands and Islands was (as it still is) owned by a small number of aristocrats and others. Until commencement of the Clearances in the mid- 18 th century the productive land was rented out to large numbers of tenants who lived in very basic accommodation and farmed their (relatively small) portion of land on a subsistence basis. The tenants had no effective protection in law and were totally beholden to the landlords. During the period 1750-1860 large numbers of the tenants were evicted and the land converte...