Authors: Kirsty Gunn
One could say then, he might have said, that all he was doing, John Roderick Callum Sutherland, was making good that mark. Going to the factor, fixing for himself that bold appointment – to suggest that the great Duke of Sutherland’s men might be better off were they to let him manage this bit of unproductive hill. It was where the shepherds came through annually for the Lairg run, he would have told them, and where there could easily break out skirmishes and thefts of the Duke’s livestock, and could develop even various ways against him and those that worked for him that could turn into a kind of vendetta, a civil war. That there could be raids against the estate lodgings, and into the neighbouring estates even, and so animals continually would be killed and taken – but that if John Roderick Callum might keep this thin strip of land that was no more than a path, really (and he might have used that expression, even, ‘no more than a path’), between Lairg and Rogart, where it was so bleak and wasted away that nothing could come of it, but bleak and wasted enough that it could be the scene, too, of a kind of a civil war …
He could then keep the peace.
And this, he said to the factor, at no cost. No favour. For look at the land! What could you do with that sort of land! ‘Bleak and wasted’ were the words used in the paragraph above but he could have just as easily used them.
So then the factor had taken back his proposal to the estate and it had been agreed – that indeed this man Sutherland would be best to keep the strip for himself, that he could buy it even, in time, as he earned it, from the Sutherland Estates, that the local people might know that he was in a separate dwelling, amongst the great and the good, perched between the boundaries of their lands like a kind of peacekeeper and known to be
respected. Not that he was a man whose loyalties could be bought. For now that he had this thin strip of his own between the estate hills he was an independent landowner himself, with similar interests at stake as to the very rich and powerful, but because he was one of the people, too, who were his friends, so he could control them. This is how the Sutherland factor could figure it, and his laird: that if scoundrels were to rise up on the drove they’d rise up against this one man and not themselves, not against the life they’d made for themselves, the style that had been created. If it came to blows, was the thinking in the estate office, the people would damage the Sutherland, the John Roderick Callum, and not destroy anything of the history and sense of privilege that all the big landowners in the Highlands were trying to establish at that time, giving some glitter and swish of the grand cities and grand ideas of Europe to these bleak hills.
So they thought they were using him. So he let them so think. This John Roderick Sutherland of Sutherland. So he let them continue to think.
For his Urlar was down, the foundations already established. Free land. The stones upon the foundations of his grandfather’s croft now set in a square – the longhouse of his grandfather extended.
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And month by month, year upon year, the first Callum, Sutherland of the parish of Rogart, built upon that square of stone.
The Sutherland family would have originally been tenant farmers (later called crofters) who were, over the years, able to purchase the small piece of land they farmed, and in time, extend it – at first by lease, from the Sutherland Estates tack, and then, through ownership.
This practice, of building up land piecemeal – through lease then
purchase
– is more common than many popular Highland histories would have us believe. See in particular Sir John Sinclair’s
General View of the Agriculture of the Northern Counties
(Edinburgh, 1814); G. and P. Anderson, ‘Guide to the Highlands and Islands – Agricultural Intelligence’,
Rossshire
Quarterly Report (
Farmer’s Magazine
, 1815); J. Barron’s ‘The
Northern
Highlands – Agricultural Intelligence’, Ross-shire Quarterly Report (
Farmer’s Magazine,
1820); and J. Anderson, ‘Essay on the Present State of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland’ (Constable, 1816). More recently, Eric Richards’ and Monica Clough’s
Cromartie: Highland Life
1650–1914
(Aberdeen University Press, 1989) provides a comprehensive study on land and social mobility in a neighbouring area, using, in particular, the case study of the MacDonalds of Strathpeffer.
Crofting, a system of landholding unique to the Highlands and islands of Scotland, need not be the cramped, post-Clearances condition of life it is all too often portrayed as being but can offer an independence of state and sense of flexibility and options that, according to writers and
historians such as Ian Carter were not available to the indentured factory worker or servant. Indeed, he writes, this so-called peasant class in fact enjoyed autonomy and a sense of control over their means and end not experienced by many of us today – see in particular his book
Farmlife in Northeast Scotland
for a detailed record of life as it was lived over the period from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century.
As we may see, by following on from this story of an autonomous peasant class, with its own particular mores and values, crofting is still a system of landholding in use today that goes against and liberates certain social and class inhibitors. That’s because a croft is not, as many people think, a house but instead a small agricultural landholding which is normally held in tenancy and which may or may not have buildings or a house associated with it and can then, in time, be bought. Much croft land today is now independently owned because the former tenants have bought that land. There is no control over changes in ownership of croft land, although there is a statutory obligation to advise the C rofters Commission, and every change in the tenancy of a croft is regulated by the Commission whose written consent is required for every proposed assignation.
Assignation is a term used in crofting to describe the permanent
transfer
of a tenancy from one person to another. In a normal year three to four hundred croft tenancies are assigned. In more than half of these the current crofter passes the croft to a member of their family and the majority of the remaining tenancies are transferred to people already known to the crofter.
This is only the beginning of a process that is often complicated and private, wrought with families’ and communities’ and the individual’s interests. There is, therefore, something almost fictional about the whole idea. It is like no other version of land ownership – and the land itself is seen in a different way as a result of its processes and history.
By the time of the late 1700s, then, the foundation that had borne no more than a little bothy sitting at the foot of the long hills and offering shelter, a grey mark on the hill, was a substantial dwelling place. And as the old century turned into the new it was built upon again, the longhouse that it had been was further extended. As a thin tune from a ceilidh
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rising up into the air becomes many-stranded with the voices that contribute towards it, and continuous, so did the House take on rooms and a central stair and develop qualities around the original building, as Callum’s son John Callum added to the central portion, developed the original and made it more substantial, a dwelling place of many parts.
Thus was the House established enough by the mid-1800s that if you’d been a shepherd then, by the next generation, you’d not have stayed with the family as in the past
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but in a separate part of the house now – for The Grey House, as it was now called, was large enough to have
accommodation
within it for those who would come and take lessons here in
the winter – and indeed John Callum, or ‘Old John’ as he became known, was the first to make within the house a ‘Music Room’ and to conduct formal lessons there. Indeed, though the House had a musical history in this respect, of a place for teaching and learning piobaireachd, it was only at this time that arrangements were made for what became known as a full School of Piping – though the same shepherds whose fathers and grandfathers used to arrive at the House every winter were there, too, for the music and companionship and shelter. Coming into the kitchen still for the broth
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made by John’s wife Elizabeth just as John Roderick’s wife, Elizabeth Mary, used to make it for them three generations before.
And by now it was 1870, 1880 … The House had the date 1878 carved above the door when Callum’s son had added on the handsome front to the original part of the building.
‘You’ve done fair for yourself, and no rogue either – for you could have been so …’ – this is marked down in a history paper referenced from the Golspie Library, dated 1882, and the subject of the paper ‘John Callum Sutherland and Land Management’.
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For by now these records don’t just itemise the open facts of one man offering shelter the way he did when it was required, a family history there, in a son following the traditions and practice of his father and grandfather, and great-grandfather. But they also take into account the way the hard-won good fortune of the family was allowed to spread around those he knew – that the benefit of good husbandry, increased yields and income might come to be of advantage to the region in general.
In this, this branch of the Sutherlands bears something in common with certain families further north and along the east coast who benefited from the herring
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at a similar time of the country’s history – a similar
atmosphere of good fortune come out of a past of hardship. For the money was not simply kept but tithed again, we must come to
understand
, in the same way it had been used in the past. A tithe not so much a payment as investment, so as to put back into development that which would be of advantage to all – in roads, and shelters, byres and pens. It is a cost, then, that is levied but that comes back upon the community in good – not simply taken by one individual and thereby held. So here’s the House increasing in its place upon the hill, and the standard of fare and lodging for the men also therefore increasing – but there is, too, the
additional
benefit that becomes economic. For by offering certain sheep to the shepherds to raise as their own, returning to them the same methods of husbandry as the Sutherlands themselves had earlier had the advantage of and thereby raising their rural prospects beyond subsistence to greater stability and prosperity, in turn the payments to The Grey House may also be increased. It was in just the same way as in the past the old
Callum
would keep back certain sheep that otherwise would have foundered on the run south, down to the North of England, and further, some of them, holding back one or two of the black cattle that were destined for the Midlands and London even. So, as in those days,
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John Callum now would let some of his own animals go to a shepherd who would take an interest in increasing the wellbeing of his flock, or would hold back stock that was otherwise in poor condition, not fit for the run south with the others yet young enough, and then return these animals to the men when they passed back again, heading home – well-fed and cared for in that interim, some put to the tup, the lambs increased in number and in size. All telling of, as is shown in these papers, in the histories and letters kept in local libraries, in Golspie and elsewhere, a sense of enablement that was extended beyond the gables of the House, beyond the Sutherlands’ own land and livestock.
Livelihood and prosperity extended well beyond those four square marks of stone upon the hill.
The foundations of The Grey House were established as far back as the early eighteenth century or before, when a simple ‘blackhouse’ or ‘
longhouse
’, as these buildings were first called, was built on the original southfacing site and life would have been set out as a simple routine whereby domestic needs were answered by the peat fire burning in the grate and sleeping quarters arranged so as to accommodate a large family all
occupying
the same room.
Meals were straightforward, consisting mainly of oatmeal and dairy products – cheese and butter from the family’s cow and a few sheep and goats – some simple greens provided by the kitchen garden,
supplemented
sometimes by meat when possible or when occasion demanded it.
Because the Sutherland family have always been musicians – even from before the time of ‘The House’ being known as a stop-over place for
crofters
and shepherds – there would have been a social aspect to the domestic arrangements of their home, even when it was little more than a couple of rooms attached to a byre. This arrangement would have seen space made available around the fire for the singing of canntaireachd and outdoors on the flat for the playing of pipes for ceilidhs or musical nights – this when the weather was fine – and for this reason, the original ‘longhouse’ would have been slightly larger than usual (as the original foundations show) and the area around it arranged in such a way as to accommodate a number of guests when they arrived for the music. Later, when the House was
firmly established within the ‘corridor’ region of Sutherland, effectively connecting a pathway through the difficult terrain between Ben Mhorvaig and Luath, the House was given over more and more to visitors – who were accommodated for a night or more in an extra room built on at the far end of the House. The kitchen was now set up as a dining area that would take eight or more adults, and the fire and grate areas were made more of a feature of the room. Family records show three large kettles from this time as well as four iron dishes, or casseroles – all denoting a significant increase in domestic activity – and there are still exisiting two skillets from this period and an early remnant of a tablecloth, that has been worked with a beautiful tatted trim.