THE Isle of Skye is celebrating 100 years since the "remarkable" planned repopulation of the Minginish peninsula and the impact it still has on communities to this day.
In the mid-1800s, the area was substantially cleared to make way for sheep farming with the population dipping dramatically.
In the settlement of Bracadale, official census statistics show that the population dropped from around 2100 people in 1821 to just 800 by 1911.
What happened next?
Richard Hendry, who lives in the township of Fiscavaig, is chair of the Minginish Centenary Project.
He told the National: “In the area this project is focusing on, Minginish, those clearances meant there were possibly only two or three families left in the area as it had been substantially given over to sheep farming.”
However, in 1919, the Land Settlement Act allowed the UK Government to purchase land and create settlements in areas that had previously been depopulated.
“There were a number of projects but the biggest one was in Minginish and a lot of land was bought from the MacLeods of Dunvegan.
“The land was then offered to families with some involvement in the First World War. At that time some of them were living in Lewis and Harris and they had been moved from productive land to smaller holdings of a much poorer quality.
“There were 68 new holdings created and roughly 400 people came across, including a small number from Skye itself. That happened from 1923 into 1924 with various bits of support and incentive to help them settle.”
What does the project aim to do?
The centenary project is celebrating 100 years of resettlement in the area with a specific focus on those who arrived here but also on how the population has changed and grown over the period.
The ultimate goal is to create a permanent archive as a record of resettlement in the area and to build a permanent memorial cairn for those who arrived.
Hendry continued: “The families that moved over here wanted to be able to create sustainable communities which is a remarkable achievement, was the largest type of project at that time and those communities have persisted.
“It’s because these places exist and with new infrastructure that the population is rising again and we have a great group of small communities across the townships of Fiscavaig, Portnalong, Fernilea and Satran.
As well as commemorating what came before, the project also wants to help people discover something new.
There’s already an archive centre on Portree which helped to uncover historical photographs of those who settled as far back as the 1920s.
Some film from the 1950s and 60s was also discovered as well as records of sheep stock clubs.
“The challenge is to take all this and make it available into a permanent record”, Hendry added.
The project has already organised a number of chances for people to get together and share their memories and bring in artefacts of their own as well as a celebratory ceilidh.
It will culminate next year with a series of events between June 3 and 8.
A family connection
For Hendry and his family, the story is as personal as it is interesting.
“My wife’s mother's family were among those who resettled in Satran from Harris. So she grew up here and then although my wife didn’t grow up here, she visited relatives every year.
“I’ve been coming here for 40-odd years and we were so keen to live here that we ended up moving permanently in 2012.
“It’s an area we are deeply invested in. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”
