The story so far…. Say hello to the 4,500 year old arrowhead

 

Work continues this year on unravelling the stories behind the old 18th century parish schoolhouse on the shore of Loch Croispol in the parish of Durness.  Over the winter Graham Bruce has explored and mapped the old dyke systems within the pre-clearance settlement of Cnocbreac around the schoolhouse.  Last summer Glasgow University archaeologists completed a dig in the schoolhouse and the school garden.  This has generated a far more detailed picture of how the building was used and renovated during its use between c. 1760 and 1861.  The finds include an inkwell, remnants of a school slate and the remains of a child’s shoe or boot.  These and other finds will be on display at the forthcoming exhibition opening in Durness on Fri 18th June for 4 days along with explanations, pictures and diagrammes.  The star of the show is of course the black chert arrowhead found in the school garden by a school pupil from Kinlochbervie who was helping with the dig last summer.  Previous survey work has shown a wealth of remains in the area lying between Balnakeil and Keoldale dating right back to the earliest settlers.  We cannot know how this arrowhead came to be in the garden.  Was it perhaps dropped by a hunting party all those millennium ago? Or perhaps shed by an injured animals in the course of a hunt in that era?  Maybe it had been found by a past schoolmaster on a local walk and then lost again in his garden.

 

Coming back to the more recent past, archival research by Graham Bruce has unearthed an intriguing story of a school which latterly had no pupils for some 19 years!  This strange turn of events was the result of a still undefined dispute between the parents and the schoolmaster which developed during the 1840s and ended up in The Court of Session.  This tale is so bizarre that it even caught the attention of the BBC last year and featured on their website back in October. 

 

The key period of focus for this work – notwithstanding the astoundingly challenging timescale which that arrowhead introduces – is 1730 till 1860.  This is a period of great change and upheaval in the Highlands and in Scotland.  The 18th century begins with the Union of Parliaments, hastened by Scotland’s brutal experience of The Darien Disaster.  The 1715 Jacobite Rising is followed in 1745 by extraordinary events which take a further drastic turn after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746.  The Clan Mackay were not Jacobites and hence not directly affected in the same ways as areas where estates were forfeited but the regional cultural and political change was significant for everyone – not least via general Wade’s roads – and then much later via the ‘destitution’ roads.  In addition not everyone might share the clan Chief’s view and it is said that Rob Donn wrote a poem indicating Jacobite sympathies.  He was then called to account by the Chief.  Since Rob Donn often composed using a dialogue between different points of view he was able to compose a last verse for that poem on his journey to give an account of himself – hence giving ’the last word’ to the anti-Jacobite camp and successfully evading significant awkwardness.

 

During the 18th century ‘Improvement and Clearance’ emerge in different spots across the north reaching a peak in the north mainland in the early decades of the 19th century.  In the same period the Mackay lands fall into the ownership of the House of Sutherland and the Country of Sutherland as we know it today emerges.  Social and legal relationships and landholdings are changing at every level of society and by the mid to late 19th century the system and pattern of landholdings we know today as the crofting system is becoming established.

 

During the 18th century sugar, chocolate, tea and coffee begin to get established as a key part of the Scottish diet.  The potato arrives in the north and is rapidly adopted in the late 18th century and the ‘swede’ is adopted on home farms.  In 1846 potato blight strikes the Highlands and Islands leading to years of privation, distress, famine relief and much increased out migration from the north west mainland via Assisted Passages.  The basics of daily food and cultivation are hence changing too throughout this period alongside changed settlement patterns. 

 

Clearly therefore the era in which the school at Loch Croispol was in operation is quite dramatic in very many ways for Mackay Country – and our study of those local stories give us a window on both local and national change in that time.

 

The forthcoming Exhibition seeks to give an account of what has been learned so far.  A highlight will be the opening talk by historian Malcolm Bangor Jones who will focus on the transition from clanship to crofting in the Durness area.  Alongside the account provided by local historian Graham Bruce, focusing on the schoolhouse itself and adjacent townships, this will be an exciting few days.  Look out for the Saturday events which include history, arts and crafts – as well as tea, coffee and sugar in the form of cakes since these items are now very firmly established in the Highland diet! 

 

Work will continue on this research till the end of the year