A LAND RECLAIMED:

THE HISTORY OF KNOYDART

In the first half of the 19th Century, the population of Knoydart was around 1000 – almost ten times that of today. In the 1850s, several hundred of the residents were evicted from the land as part of the Highland Clearances, and sent by ship to Canada. Further evictions followed and the population steadily declined.

The population spent the following decades at the mercy of successive landlords with little concern for the welfare of their tenants. The trajectory of Knoydart’s future changed in 1948, when seven ex-servicemen staged a land-raid and invoked the Land Settlement Act, which permitted returning servicemen to take over land that was under-used and farm it as their own. They staked a claim to 10,000 acres of hill land from Lord Brocket, the Nazi-sympathising landowner of the time. Brocket succeeded in removing them by going through the courts, but the actions of the ‘Seven Men of Knoydart’ marked the start of a different era for Knoydart. In 1997, the Knoydart Foundation was formed, and two years later the estate was bought by the community.