Deer Fence/Beach Enclosure
Beach Enclosure no 1, 27/12/2022.
Point 1 - Many families cleared from the inland-Straths of Sutherland were rehoused in new coastal communities upon land which had never before gone under the plough.
Point 2 - The Stoer grazing committee of the Assynt Crofter’s Trust are undertaking a programme of enclosure. My family will leave before they are enclosed by a deer fence.
Point 3 - “Do you think it’s supposed to keep out deer or people?” “They came up here in summer, until the landowner got rid of them. That was nearly two hundred years ago and now it’s happening again.”
Point 4 - Her heart thudded loudly in her chest. How could this have happened? She glanced hurriedly, taking in every landmark. There could be no question: in front of her was the lochan to the left of the track where it passed between the split stone; to their right, the view of the west facing corries on Ben Glass; and to their left, as it had been the whole time, the fence marching high and unceasing across the moor. “Johnny, that’s the stalkers’ track. We’ve been here before.”
Point 5 - Enclosure is often associated with improvement and clearance. It swept away open field systems of farming and common grazings, although it was welcomed by many tenant farmers. Pre-clearance the only enclosures in the landscape were stock-pens, kale yard walls and the head dyke.
Head and Dyke, 26/12/2022
Point 6 - The washing line, hack-sawed off and thrown in the driveway. The vampire with his hammer. A cow in a bog and a duck stuck to the ice.
Point 7 - The problem of the outsider. In the 17th and 18th centuries gaelic bards such as Iain Lom castigated their chiefs for becoming anglicized. In doing so they became outsiders. There is a tendency to view historical injustices, such as the clearances, as attributable to outsiders, such as absentee landowners. In early-modern Scotland communities were ‘closed’ and strangers without testificate were treated with hostility. Can an outsider ever be accepted - someone born to a place could never lift a finger and automatically be treated in a way which an incomer could only ever dream of. How does one become ‘of a place’?