By Michael Hook.
Exactly when man first
settled in south-east Sutherland is not clear, but the discovery
of Neolithic chambered cairns at various sites throughout the
parish (including Embo, Proncy, Clashmore and Cambusavie) indicate
that the area was occupied over 4000 years ago. Hut circles dating
back to the Bronze Age have been found in such diverse locations
as Camore Wood to the west of Dornoch, and at Little Torboll in
the north, while Skelbo Wood boasts the remains of an iron Age
broch The early settlers were of Celtic descent, and their
occupation of the area continued uninterrupted until the 9th
century. The most enigmatic of the early Celtic peoples were the
Picts (first mentioned by Roman historians in the 3rd century AD,
but almost certainly dating back far beyond this date), and it is
clear from local place names – Pitgrudy being an obvious example –
that these ‘painted people’ inhabited south-east Sutherland during
this period.
Considerable debate persists
as to when Christianity first came to the pagan Pict of south-east
Sutherland. Local tradition credits the Ulster monk, Finbarr
(whose name is usually abbreviated to St Barr), with converting
the inhabitants to Christianity sometime during the 6th century,
possibly around 540 AD. However, there is little substantive
evidence to support this claim, although Dornoch’s first church,
which pre-dated the Cathedral and stood at the east end of the
present day Cathedral cemetery, was known as St Barr’s Church,
while the town’s most prestigious annual fair, dating back to at
least the 16th century, also bore the saint’s name. The Diocese of
Caithness (which then included south-east Sutherland) was probably
established by King David I sometime between 1147 and 1151, and
the earliest recorded Bishop of Caithness was Andrew, a
Benedictine monk from Dunfermline, who may have sought to
establish a monastic settlement at Dornoch.
If there was an early
religious settlement at Dornoch, the lives of the monks there
would surely have been disrupted by the ‘fury of the Norsemen’,
whose raids on the northern Scottish mainland began during the
latter half of the 9th century. These Viking raiders originally
came from Norway and settled in Orkney, from where they moved
south into Caithness. It was not long before the Norse Earldom of
Orkney was firmly established, leading to increased activity in
Sutherland (the ‘southern land’ of the Earldom of Orkney). The
various tales associated with the Viking occupation of northern
Scotland would take too long to tell here, and it must suffice to
record that the Norse raiders eventually settled in south-east
Sutherland, usually on the more fertile coastal plains of the
county. Most were farmers, and this is reflected in many of the
existing place names of the area which are of Norse origin. Embo,
Skelbo and Skibo are obvious examples, the suffix ‘bo’ in each
case deriving from the Norse ‘bol’, meaning a ‘large farm on a
prime site’.
By the 12th century the
presence of the quasi-independent Earldom of Orkney was proving a
major irritant to the kings of Scotland who sought to extend their
influence beyond the Moray Firth into Sutherland and Caithness.
Indeed, the earliest mention of the name Dornoch occurs in a
mandate of King David I written some time between 1136 and 1153 at
Abernethy in which the king commands Rognvald, the Norse Earl of
Orkney, and all ‘the goodmen of Caithness’ to ‘respect and
maintain the monks and their men dwelling in Dornoch in Caithness
and their goods, and wherever they come among you, that you permit
no one to do them harm or to insult them’. There is an implicit
threat in David’s mandate which highlights the underlying tension
between the King of Scots and the most northerly inhabitants of
his mainland kingdom. This conflict between the emerging power of
the Scottish kings in alliance with the Roman Church, and the
semi-independent Earls of Orkney and Caithness, was crucial to the
emergence and development of Dornoch as an ecclesiastical centre
in the early 13th century.
As part of their policy of
subjugating unruly regions, the kings of Scotland ‘planted’
powerful families loyal to the king in areas they sought to bring
under their control. At the start of the 13th century much of
south-east Sutherland, including the Parish of Dornoch, was
granted to Hugh Freskin, who was of Flemish descent. The Freskins
had previously been given land in Moray, and Hugh had adopted the
surname de Moravia, or, in its Anglicised form, Murray. Finally,
around 1211, Hugh granted the coastal strip of Sutherland
stretching from Skelbo to Invershin to his kinsman, Gilbert de
Moravia, who was then Archdeacon of Moray. In 1224 Gilbert was
made Bishop of Caithness. One of Gilbert’s two immediate
predecessors had been maimed, the other murdered, by the local
populace at Halkirk, where the seat of the bishopric had
originally been established. Understandably, Gilbert swiftly moved
the seat of the diocese from Halkirk to Dornoch, where he could
count on the support of his powerful relatives in Moray and at
Golspie, where his kinsman, the future 1st Earl of Sutherland
resided. Gilbert spent the rest of his life building Dornoch
Cathedral: the first service was held there in 1239, six years
before Gilbert’s death. Gilbert was the last pre-Reformation
Scotsman to be canonised, and his Cathedral remains today as a
lasting tribute to the achievements of a remarkable man.
Despite the visible and
powerful presence of the Church in south-east Sutherland, the area
was not to enjoy a peaceful future. The following five centuries
saw prolonged and bloody disputes between the various families and
clans inhabiting the area. The Gordon earls of Huntly seized
control of the Earldom of Sutherland during the 16th century after
a bitter struggle, while the Mackays of Strathnaver, the
Sutherlands of Duffus, the Earls of Caithness and the Murrays of
Dornoch all took advantage of the anarchy which prevailed to
pursue personal vendettas which, whenever it suited the warring
parties, occasionally mirrored national disputes. In 1570, as a
result of one such dispute, the town and cathedral of Dornoch were
burned by the Mackays, the cathedral not being fully restored
until the 1830s. In 1746, Jacobite forces engaged in an orgy of
looting and burning before finally being defeated by a local
militia force at Little Ferry, the day before Culloden. Even in
relatively peaceful times, the local inhabitants, many of whom
depended on farming to make a living, regularly faced starvation
through famine.
The notorious Sutherland
Clearances of the early 19th century saw an attempt by the area’s
major landowners, the Countess of Sutherland and her husband, the
future 1st Duke, to place their vast estates on a much firmer
economic footing. These improvements included the introduction of
sheep farming on an unprecedented scale, which meant that, in
order to make way for the sheep, hundreds of local families were
forcibly cleared from land farmed by their ancestors for
generations and resettled elsewhere in Sutherland. Many chose to
leave Sutherland altogether, and although the Parish of Dornoch
suffered less than other areas, the memory of the Clearances still
arouses bitter controversy even today. By this time, the town of
Dornoch, which had been created a Royal Burgh in 1628 in a
hopelessly optimistic attempt to encourage foreign trade, had
fallen into serious economic decline. One visitor described the
town in the early 19th century as ‘the most wretched of all
Scotland’s Royal Burghs’, a view shared by many contemporary
observers.
The improvement in the
fortunes of the parish and burgh can be traced directly to the
latter half of the 19th century, when central government passed
legislation empowering local authorities to raise finance directly
from the inhabitants through the rating system. The money raised
was used to improve and develop education, health, sanitation,
policing and roads: no longer would the parish be so dependent on
the goodwill and largesse of the Dukes of Sutherland. The coming
of the railways to the Highlands and the gradual improvement in
road transport meant that south-east Sutherland became more
accessible to wealthy visitors from the south, who appreciated the
fine scenery, spectacular beaches and invigorating air of the
region. In 1877 Dornoch Town Council granted permission to the
Sutherland Golfing Society to play golf on the town’s links. This
was the start of a long – and mutually beneficial – association
between the town and the game of golf. Today golf still forms the
mainstay of the parish’s thriving tourist industry. With the
advent of the motor car in the early part of the 20th century and
a new rail link opened in 1902 between the main Highland line at
the Mound and the town of Dornoch, the area became even more
accessible. Improvements in the transport network have continued
throughout the century, and visitors from all over the world now
regularly fly into Inverness Airport before continuing their
journey to Sutherland by road.
Tourism has generated wealth, particularly
for the burgh, and the improvements in the appearance of the town
and in the overall standard of living in the area owe much to the
increasing numbers of visitors who flock into the parish every
summer. Many visitors return year after year, while others, who
become so enamoured with the beauty and tranquillity of the area,
choose to move here permanently. These new residents are simply
following a pattern set thousands of years ago when the first
Stone Age settlers moved into the area. Celtic, Pictish, Scottish
and Flemish migrants followed; all have left their mark on the
parish, all have contributed in some way to making Dornoch what it
is today.
