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GRAZINGS
Shielings
Hill and marginal grazings
Droving
Clearance for livestock
Sheep, shelters etc
main image Pre-clearance township, Rossal, Sutherland
Clearance was the process whereby landowners removed established occupants from lands to make way for incoming sheep-farming tenants. The movement was at its height in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Rossal, on the Sutherland estates, was the site of one such clearance. In the early years of the 19th century it had had a population of 78, in 13 families. Clearance took place between 1814 and 1818.

The site today still shows traces of the former settlement and has been partly excavated. A ring dyke encloses it, within which there are traces of a number of buildings (mostly long-houses as here) and cultivated plots. The site is now surrounded by commercial forestry.


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