The wee Tin Church at Syre in Strathnaver is well cared for. To say it is miles from anywhere is a minor statement, indeed it is an isolated community of a few crofts. Despite its basic, but practical, corrugated iron exterior the interior is surprisingly trim and no doubt the pride of todays parishioners, warm and welcoming….
The tragedy is when one looks at the War Memorial outside the church. Population here was never high, and the male population perhaps the lesser proportion of this remote community. Yet so many names are recorded for those who were enlisted to fight in both the 1st and 2nd World Wars…never to return to their homeland.
1914 was the year of the first loss in those conflicts….yet in 1814 the Duke of Sutherland was responsible for an even earlier tragedy….The Highland Clearances started right here in Strathnaver. Sutherlands Estate Factor, a William Sellars showed no mercy in evicting the tenant crofters from their homes. Once the occupants were forced out, the crofts were burnt, having wood and heather thatch roofs destruction was complete. Return was impossible. Many were shipped abroad to New Zealand and the Americas.
The foundations of one such croft can be found at Grumbeg. This was the home of a Henny Munro a war widow of the Napoleonic Campaigns. 1819 was the year when Sellars turned the Henny and all her possessions out and whilst she watched and no doubt pleaded her croft was set alight…..
The deeper tragedy is that many men from Strathnaver were enlisted on empty promises to fight in the conflicts of the early 1800’s on the understanding that their crofts were safe. So sad that those so willing to fight for their country should be so badly deceived.
Why…well all this was to make way for the Duke of Sutherland to become the biggest Sheep Farmer, not just in Scotland but the whole of Britain. Sheep farming is still the industry of today. ….
Drive thru Strathnaver today and sheep will most likely be your only companions, a peaceful Scottish Glen that hides a darker past…
16th May
© David Oakes 2014
DAVID OAKES - IMAGES. 