Notes on the history of Stormont
The district extending
from just north of
To the north, close to the Loch of Clunie, is a
large green mound called the Castle Hill, on which, tradition says, was erected
the Summer Palace and Hunting Seat of Kenneth MacAlpin,
who conquered the Picts and united the Scottish and Pictish kingdoms. The Danes were defeated by him in 845 in
the neighbourhood. In the 15th Century, an island in the loch was a
stronghold occupied by a gang of robbers, who
sacrilegiously carried off the pious offerings being carried by parishioners
from Alyth to Dunkeld.
Bishop Brown of the Dunkeld see succeeded in rooting
them out and later built a Castle for use as a summer residence. He died there
in 1514. The adventurer James (Admirable) Crichton is thought to have lived on
the island in the latter part of the 16th Century.
The agricultural landscape
The landscape of the district in the late 18th
Century was one of sparsely wooded rolling hills dotted with small lochs.
Fertile black loam meadows bordered the River Tay and away to the north lay
craggy hills and “large tracts of black, barren moors”. In places like Murthly, Delvin and Forneth, the elegant houses of the lairds were set in pleasant
parks, lawns and gardens.
The period that the Inches family spent in Stormont was one of great change - as the 18th Century
progressed, an Agricultural Revolution was gathering momentum, with the old
system of farming slowly being supplanted by more efficient arrangements. Under
the old 'runrig'
system, each farm was subdivided among several tenants, who would each have a
separate lease or verbal bargain, the duration of which was mostly from year to
year, at the will of the proprietor. “Under such a system,” commented the
Minister for
The reverend authors of
the 1791-99 Statistical Accounts for Caputh, Clunie,
Little Dunkeld and Kinclaven were greatly concerned
with the productivity of the land and its effects on the living standards of
the population. They remarked on the distinct improvements in agricultural
practice that they observed. One wrote that “50 years ago in Clunie little else
was to be seen but broom, furze, briers, thorns and stones”. But at the time of writing, “wet grounds are
drained, rough grounds are cleared, stone fences are built and hedges are
planted.” On the Little Dunkeld side of the river,
“an active and enterprising spirit is now beginning to discover itself among
the farmers …. meadows that yielded from 30 to 40
stone per acre of miserable bog hay and pieces of ground that produced nothing
but rushes, briars or other useless vegetables, are daily converted into the
best arable land in the country.” And all this was largely because “farms begin
to be reduced to some form and the marches to be straightened. Each man begins
to know his own [land] and to have it in his power to improve it”.
These advances came
about as proprietors attempted to improve their lands. The Society of Improvers
in the Knowledge of Agriculture in
With the consolidation
of farmland, many of the dispersed 'ferm touns' were broken up
and large numbers of people could no longer work their own plot of land. At
first, the majority of the displaced people remained on the land and became
farm labourers or farm servants. Others became tradesmen as the demand for all
kinds of products increased - weavers, stone masons, wheelwrights, millwrights,
slaters, saddlers and farriers.
Some landlords used the
displaced labour as part of their improvement schemes, collecting “weavers and
other handycrafstmen into small villages where they
are accommodated with neat dwelling houses and each of them with an acre or two
of land to afford them the benefit of a milk cow and some other comforts of
agriculture without being too much hindered by the labours of the field from a
vigorous application to their respective trades”. The writer gave no examples
of such villages in his Little Dunkeld parish, though
Stanley and Bankfoot are well-known planned villages
in Kinclaven.
But it was slow going: the
Kinclaven Account reported that more than half the parish remained unenclosed,
“a circumstance not much to the credit or profit either of the proprietors or
tenants”. In Little Dunkeld too little land was enclosed,
except for land around gentlemen’s seats, farms were unfenced and too small and
wanted for the application of marl and lime and bars to improvement such as the
feudal practice of thirlage*
and the lack of long leases still existed. Far from having their heads stuck in
ecclesiastical clouds, the writers obviously knew a thing or two about farming.
One recommended that “Everything practicable should be done in this parish for
procuring manure in a greater abundance”.
* “the old oppressive customs
of bonnage [an obligation to cut the proprietor’s
corn], thirlage [an obligation to grind corn at the
landlord’s mill] and servitudes … disgraceful to the country and to humanity …
are not yet quite abolished”.
Wood,
Water and Ice
Among the improvements were vast fir and larch
plantations on the lower ground to replace the Caledonian forests ravaged by
everyone from Neolithic farmers to iron smelters and shipbuilders. The Duke of Atholl alone planted a million trees for shelter, for
ornament, for fuel and for timber.
Proof that the country
was well-wooded in former times was provided in the spring of 1790 after the
river breached the green Inch below Inchtuthel and 2
large oak trees were uncovered. Frequent changes of course by the
By regular floodings, the
In those days, the river
often froze over in the winter. It froze in 1739-40 for 6 weeks when it was
recorded that “loaded carts passed & repassed on
the ice”. 1739 had a poor summer and the crop did not ripen properly. The price
of oatmeal doubled, to £1 per boll (at a time when wages were only 6d per
week). The following season was “as mild as the former had been severe; the
crop was uncommonly fertile” and the price of meal halved.
Temperature records were
kept in Caputh in the years from 1783 to1792. They
show that the coldest year of the period was 1791-92 when the summer
temperature reached 60°F and the winter minimum was 17°F (-8°C). In Clunie that
January, “neither man nor horse could venture abroad without having their feet
secured with iron”.
In bad years when the
crops failed, the parishes would provide assistance to those worst affected.
They all possessed mortification funds established by their wealthy heritors and these were used to help the poorest families
in the parish. In 1740, the year the river froze, the most indigent poor were
given 6d a week; those that were able to beg only received 2d a week. The
Government sometimes gave a helping hand. After a bad year in 1782, when the
price of meal again rose to £1 per boll, £12 was taken from the parish funds for
distribution and the Government also sent 10 bolls, 1 firlot
& 1 peck of meal to be distributed. “By these means a temporary relief was
afforded to many of the industrious poor.”
Weaving
Despite such occasional
setbacks, agricultural productivity was rapidly rising. For example, 4000 bolls
of barley were exported from the district in the 1790s compared to the 1760s,
when only 1500 bolls were sold outside.
Notwithstanding the
improvements, most small tenants remained poor “except they are weavers, in
which case they live very comfortably”. This remark calls for some explanation,
and the writer of the Kinclaven Account supplies it. He describes the farms as
generally small, of 20 to 50 arable acres. An exception was Innernytie
Farm, where the Inches family lived. Its rent was about £125 per annum,
indicating a size of around 120 acres. He goes on to say that a considerable
number of farmers, to make ends meet, were also weavers. “Each of them has a
loom or two in the corner of the house….They employ themselves at the weaving
business, chiefly during winter”, making coarse cloth
for the
Living Standards and Health
Activities associated
with the linen industry seem to have contributed to an improvement in living
standards, though not as much as that achieved by the more enterprising larger
farmers. These “extensive farmers” adopted a style of living that was
characterised by elegance and luxury: “Many new houses have been built and old
houses allowed to go to ruin, for six or seven years past. Five farm houses are
two stories high, with slate roofs. A taste for cleanliness, and even some
degree of elegance, with respect to the articles of lodging, household
furniture and dress, is beginning to display itself. Instead of mean dirty
hovels, built with stones without cement, dwelling houses are now built by good
masons with mortar, cast on the outside with lime, and neatly finished within.”
Evidently, many houses
were built without chimneys leading to the comment that people had weak eyes
from the smoke in their homes. However, and no reason is advanced for this
happy state of dental perfection, they have “fine teeth, even to old age”.
Among other health problems, smallpox, once a terrible scourge, had evidently
been controlled through inoculation, so that in Clunie, only one person died
from the disease during the period. The minister thought the other scourge,
consumption was caught during flax processing: “Spinning, which is the
employment of the young women during the winter months, is justly reckoned the
occasion of consumptions among them, by the waste of saliva requisite in the
laborious exercise.” The same writer also thought that worms in children were
“the effect of living too much on potatoes [introduced some 22 years earlier],
which they prefer to oat meal”.
The Statistics
One of the briefs of the
writers of the Statistical Accounts was to compile population statistics,
including births, marriages and deaths, the numbers engaged in each occupation
and to note any trends they might discern. In Caputh,
which was fairly typical, there were 456 inhabited houses, giving an occupancy of over 4 people per house. 312 were employed
as servants, 130 as weavers, 106 as farmers, 24 as masons, 12 as shoemakers and
8 were boatmen. Of the 44 proprietors or landholders in the parish, only 4 of
the greater and 7 of the smaller proprietors were consistently or occasionally
resident: several others live in neighbouring parishes. Many, it seems, were
absentee landlords.
The Rev William Innerarity was highly critical
of previous incumbents, noting that “It is a subject of regret, that the
session records of country parishes have been generally kept in a manner so
slovenly and negligent, that it is now almost impossible to form a just
estimate of their population a century ago, or even less….With respect to the
following lists [of births, marriages and deaths] taken from the
parish-register, it is to be remarked 1. That many children in distant parts of
the parish, not being baptized by the minister, are neglected to be registered
by the parents. 2. That many of the inhabitants bury in other parishes and
never pay the tax imposed by act of Parliament in 1783, which being unpopular,
is not collected in some places. No accurate conclusion can be drawn from these
lists of [births, marriages and deaths]”.
Roads
On the subject of
transport, it is surprising to learn that there was not a single bridge across
the