Nature Connections

The highlands are now relatively empty with only about 20% of Scotland’s population living in the region, looking at the bleakness of the landscape it is easy to imagine that this was always the case. However, some of the sites I photograph, Aoneadh Mor for example, were forcibly cleared of their tenant farmers in the nineteenth century to make way for more profitable sheep. The result of these, often brutal, ‘clearances’ was a reduction in the population from about 50% of Scotland’s total to 20%. Mary Cameron's eyewitness account of Aoneadh Mor's forced evictions reached a rapt British readership via the magazine "Good Words", and had an enormous impact on developing unease at what had been done in the name of progress. "The hissing of the fire on the flag of the hearth as they were drowning it reach my heart", she said, "The aged woman, the mother of my husband was then alive, weak and lame. James carried her on his back, in a creel." On the ridge of Sithean na Raiplach, refugees destined for Glasgow and the colonies turned for a last look. "The houses were already stripped. The bleat of the big sheep was on the mountain." Aoneadh Mor, the village of the Cameron highlanders, was cleared to make way for sheep