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.