A Croft in the Hills

A Croft in the Hills

Author: Katharine Stewart

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2013-08-08

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 0857907514

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An Englishwoman and her family in the 1950s trade life in the city for a small farm near Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands in this beloved memoir. A real classic among Highland books, A Croft in the Hills captures, in simple, moving descriptions, what it was really like trying to make a living out of a hill croft fifty years ago. A couple and their young daughter, fresh from city life, immerse themselves in the practicalities of looking after sheep, cattle and hens, mending fences, baking bread, and surviving the worst that Scottish winters can throw at them. Praise for A Croft in the Hills “Katharine Stewart’s memories are, as she says herself a tale of other times, almost a glimpse of legend . . . Evocative and charming.” —Scottish Book Collector


The Making of the Crofting Community

The Making of the Crofting Community

Author: James Hunter

Publisher: Birlinn Ltd

Published: 2018-05-17

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13: 0857902865

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This book has been seminal in bringing to the fore the injustices that have been inflicted on the Highlands in the name of government and landlord – injustices often lost in the name of dry statistics and academic balance. Written by a man who has gone on to become both an award-winning historian of the Highlands and a leading figure in the public life of the region, The Making of the Crofting Community has attracted praise, inspired debate, and provoked outrage and controversy over the years. This book remains necessary to challenge standard academic interpretations of the Highland past. Having long been one of the classics of Birlinn's John Donald list, this revised and updated new edition includes a substantial new preface and an extensive reworking of the existing text.


Scottish Crofters

Scottish Crofters

Author: Susan Parman

Publisher: Cengage Learning

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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SCOTTISH CROFTERS: A HISTORICAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF A CELTIC VILLAGE focuses on Geall, a community in the Scottish Outer Hebrides. With an understanding gained from an intimate, long-term relationship with Scotland, things Scottish, and the people of the community, the author describes Geall as a human community and places it in the wider cultural, historical, economic, and sociopolitical contexts of maintaining relationships to Scotland, England and Europe. The book emphasizes the way symbols are used to interpret elements of the culture such as economy, power, mental illness, and religion by exploring the significant symbols associated with the state, the mechanisms for integrating community and state, and how people define leaders and social role.


A History of Scotland

A History of Scotland

Author: Alastair Gray

Publisher:

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 9780199170630

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This is a reissue of a popular text, for Standard Grade History exams. We have added 8 pages 'Into the Millennium' to update the text, and added exam questions under the new headings of Knowledge and Understanding and Line of Enquiry, at General and Credit levels.


Crofts and Crofting

Crofts and Crofting

Author: Katharine Stewart

Publisher: Mercat Press Books

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13:

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Originally published: s.l.: William Blackwood, 1980.


Our Wild Farming Life

Our Wild Farming Life

Author: Lynn Cassells

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2023-03-10

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1645021653

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As seen on the BBC’s This Farming Life The inspirational story of Lynbreck Croft—a regenerative Scottish farm rooted in local food, community, and the dreams of two women. Lynn and Sandra left their friends, family, and jobs in England to travel north to Scotland to find a bit of land that they could call their own. They had in mind keeping a few chickens, a kitchen garden, and renting out some camping space; instead, they fell in love with Lynbreck Croft—150 acres of opportunity and beauty, shrouded by the Cairngorms and deep in the Highlands of Scotland. But they had no money, no plan, and no experience in farming. In Our Wild Farming Life, Lynn and Sandra recount their experiences as they work out what kind of farmers they want to be, learning how to work with Highland cattle, become part of the crofting community, and understand how they can farm with nature to produce food for themselves and the people around them. “Through their journey to becoming farmers,” as The Guardian recently wrote, “it’s clear that nature and the health of the environment plays a central role in everything they do, from planting 17,500 native broadleaf trees for wood pasture to setting aside 22 hectares for rewilding.” And through efforts like these, Lynn and Sandra have been able to combine regenerative farming practices with old crofting traditions to keep their own personal values intact. Our Wild Farming Life is what happens when you follow your dreams of living on the land; a story of how two people became farmers—and how they learned to make a living from it, their way.


On the Crofter's Trail

On the Crofter's Trail

Author: David Craig

Publisher: Birlinn

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0857905961

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In the Clearances of the 19th century, crofts - once the mainstay of Highland life in Scotland - were swept away as the land was put over to sheep grazing. Many of the people of the Highlands and islands of Scotland were forced from their homes by landowners in the Clearances. Some fled to Nova Scotia and beyond. David Craig sets out to discover how many of their stories survive in the memories of their descendants. He travels through 21 islands in Scotland and Canada, many thousands of miles of moor and glen, and presents the words of men and women of both countries as they recount the suffering of their forbears.


Clanship to Crofters' War

Clanship to Crofters' War

Author: T M Devine

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2018-02-28

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1526130823

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Received to wide acclaim when first published in the 1990s, this absorbing book remains one of the most important, influential and widely read histories of the Scottish Highlands from the end of the Jacobite Risings to the great crofters' rebellion of the 1880s. T. M. Devine argues that the Highlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the wholesale transformation of a society at a pace without parallel anywhere else in western Europe. This is an important book for all those interested in the history of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, and for students and scholars of Scottish history, social history and rural society.


Spade Among the Rushes

Spade Among the Rushes

Author: Margaret Leigh

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2017-07-27

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0857909754

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The acclaimed author of Highland Homespun recounts her experiences as a croft farmer on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands during WWII. The West Highland peninsula of Moidart, in the isolated coastal region known as the Rough Bounds, is as magical as it is remote. It was here that the celebrated author Margaret Leigh chose to pursue an independent life as a crofting farmer in the 1940s. In Spade Among the Rushes, Leigh vividly recounts her struggles to snatch land back from the wilderness as she attempts to transform a deserted croft into a home. Although far from the Blitz of the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were felt throughout the Highlands. The rationing of food and vital materials, the battles with bureaucrats who had no understanding of a crofter's needs, and even the appearance of a Nazi mine off the coast, all frustrate Margaret Leigh's efforts. But despite the hardships, the land and the people of the Highlands gave her a contentment she had never known before. This edition has a new Introduction by Katie Maclean, who knew Margaret Leigh during her time in Moidart.


Insurrection

Insurrection

Author: James Hunter

Publisher: Birlinn

Published: 2019-12-10

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1788852311

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The author of On the Other Side of Sorrow gives a detailed account of the causes and effects of the Scottish potato famine that began in 1846. When Scotland’s 1846 potato crop was wiped out by blight, the country was plunged into crisis. In the Hebrides and the West Highlands, a huge relief effort came too late to prevent starvation and death. Farther east, meanwhile, towns and villages from Aberdeen to Wick and Thurso protested the cost of the oatmeal that replaced potatoes as the people’s basic foodstuff. Oatmeal’s soaring price was blamed on the export of grain by farmers and landlords cashing in on even higher prices elsewhere. As a bitter winter gripped and families feared a repeat of the calamitous famine then ravaging Ireland, grain carts were seized, ships boarded, harbors blockaded, a jail forced open, and the military confronted. The army fired on one set of rioters. Savage sentences were imposed on others. But crowds of thousands also gained key concessions. Above all they won cheaper food. Those dramatic events have long been ignored or forgotten. Now, in James Hunter, they have their historian. The story he tells is, by turns, moving, anger-making, and inspiring. In an era of food banks and growing poverty, it is also very timely. Praise for Insurrection “Hunter never forgets that history is first of all narrative—and this book is rich in stories—or that is subject is the experience of individual men and women, creatures of flesh and blood, not abstractions. Insurrection is fascinating reading, both painful and uplifting.” —Allan Massie, the Scotsman (UK)