Kildonan

One of the places I wanted to visit on our recent trip to Sutherland was Kildonan kirk which lies inland from Helmsdale in the valley (or strath) of the Kildonan river. In the 18th century it stood at the centre of a group of small village communities strung along the strath known as clachans.

The settlement around the kirk can be seen in this map, dated to the early 19th century. Kirkton, as it was called, consisted of the kirk, a large manse, a mill, and a scattering of small stone-built houses.

It is of interest to me because this was the heartland of the Gunn clan, of which my mother, Helen Wilson, was a proud descendent. But, starting in 1813, the Gunns were cleared from their homes so that....

....by the middle of the century almost all their houses were destroyed, the land which they had worked being turned over to an incoming farmer who ran sheep across both lowland and hills.

This clearance, by the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, is infamous because it was particularly brutal, with many of the people deciding to leave the land of their birth to emigrate to Canada.

Many of them migrated to the Red River where life was probably as hard, if not harder than in Kirkton, but they survived and, as this plaque on the gable end of the kirk celebrates, some of their descendants thrived.

The remains of the Gunn houses are still to be found in the fields around the kirk but, sadly, we did not have time to find them. However....

....high in the hills above Kirkton we stumbled across this sheepfold. It may have been built by the sheep farmer but most of the 'improvement' sheepfolds that I have come across have been rectangular. This one is almost round in shape, which may indicate that it is older, that it was used by the Gunns to hold their cattle and sheep when, in summer, the women and children moved them into the hills and set up a temporary camp, a shieling, while the men remained in the clachan to tend to, and then harvest, the crops of potatoes, barley and oats that would carry them through the winter.