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'Or has it come to this,
that this dying landscape belongs
to the dead, the crofters and fighters
and fishermen whose larochs
sink into the bracken
by Loch Assynt and Loch Crocach?
to men trampled under the hoofs of sheep
and driven by deer to
the ends of the earth - to men whose loyalty
was so great it accepted their own betrayal
by their own chiefs and whose descendants now
are kept in their place
by English businessmen and the indifference
of a remote and ignorant goverment.
Norman MacCaig - A man in Assynt
The following extract is from the 1799 Statistical Account written, for this parish, by the very verbose Rev William MacKenzie. One wonders what his sermons were like. Those cleared from their homes would, no doubt, have been interested in the casual way in which their futures were determined by sale and casual gifts from 1660 onwards:
'The parish is situated on the W.N.W. coast of Scotland, within the county of Sutherland .... three rivers and several considerable rivulets interesect the road atwixt Assint and Dornoch .... and when rashly attempted, the consequence seldom fails to prove fatal.... On the North it is divided from the parish of Edrachilis by a great arm of the sea caled Kilis .... The great and long track from Oldney to Unapool is called by the general name of Shish-a-chilish; there are several farms on it, and safe harbours also.
In general, the climate is rainy, as much so at least as in any tract of equal extent on the WNW coast of North Britain. The rain continues not only for hours, nut often for days; nay, for weeks .... However, that the air here is healthful will easily be admitted, as it is a fact well known that people from South Britain, and from the Isle of Man, have lived comfortable here; and at this very time, natives if the East and West Indies reside in this parish, enjoying perfect health, acquiring a health and habit of constitution of body almost equally robust as that of the natives.
The property of this parish has perhaps undergone as few changes as any. Tradition, and even documents declare that it was a forest of the ancient Thanes of Sutherland .... In 1660, or about that time, this parish and its superiority became the property of the Earl of Seaforth who made it over to a younger son of his family, whose successors possessed it for three or four generations. Thereafter it was purchased by Lady Strathnaver, who gave it as a present to her Noble and no less deserving grandson, the late William Earl of Sutherland, father of the present Right Honourable Countess of Sutherland, married to Earl Gower, heir apparent to the Marquis of Stafford.'
Assynt, in north west Sutherland, was one of the first areas to be cleared for sheep by Patrick Sellar on behalf of the then Marquess of Stafford (later Duke of Sutherland). It was achieved not by burnings but by encouraging local tacksmen to take on the sheep runs, at rents more than they could afford, and, as part of the deal, to clear the people. Their traditional influence over their kin allowed this to happen peacefully and this betrayal marked a crucial point in the breakdown of the old order.
The image, an engraving by Thom, after a painting by Fleming, is from the 1850s, shows the ruins (now considerably more ruined) of Ardvreck (or Ardvraick) Castle on Loch Assynt with Ben Gharbh towering behind.
Population
| 1831 | 3161 |  |
| 1841 | 3178 | |
| 1851 | 2989 | |
| 1881 | 2781 | |
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