Camuscross Community Steering Group was set up in February 2007 to develop various projects for community benefits. It is working on affordable house sites, a network of heritage paths with interpretation, and hoping to build a local shop and cafe. [5] The group has been researching local history and has collected a number of place names from local people. [6] It publishes a newsletter called An Lianag – after the name of the green in the middle of the village, which is where the crofters traditionally met to discuss township matters. [5]
The Steering Group organise the Camuscross Crofting Olympics, an afternoon of serious and not-so-serious competitions in August. [7]
It became a community company, becoming incorporated on 22 December 2008, with the name of Camuscross Community Initiative. When the company decided to add the neighbouring crofting township to its area of benefit, it became Camuscross & Duisdale Initiative.
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
North Uist is an island and community in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
The first Highland Land League emerged as a distinct political force in Scotland during the 1880s, with its power base in the country's Highlands and Islands. It was known also as the Highland Land Law Reform Association and the Crofters' Party. It was consciously modelled on the Irish Land League.
The West Highland Free Press was founded in the Scottish Highlands in 1972 as a left-wing weekly newspaper, but with the principal objective of providing its immediate circulation area with the service which a local paper is expected to provide. It is based at Broadford on the Isle of Skye, covering Skye, Wester Ross and the Outer Hebrides.
Crofting is a form of land tenure and small-scale food production particular to the Scottish Highlands, the islands of Scotland, and formerly on the Isle of Man. Within the 19th-century townships, individual crofts were established on the better land, and a large area of poorer-quality hill ground was shared by all the crofters of the township for grazing of their livestock.
The Highland Potato Famine was a period of 19th-century Highland and Scottish history over which the agricultural communities of the Hebrides and the western Scottish Highlands saw their potato crop repeatedly devastated by potato blight. It was part of the wider food crisis facing Northern Europe caused by potato blight during the mid-1840s, whose most famous manifestation is the Great Irish Famine, but compared with its Irish counterpart, it was much less extensive and took many fewer lives as prompt and major charitable efforts by the rest of the United Kingdom ensured relatively little starvation. The terms on which charitable relief was given, however, led to destitution and malnutrition amongst its recipients. A government enquiry could suggest no short-term solution other than reduction of the population of the area at risk by emigration to Canada or Australia. Highland landlords organised and paid for the emigration of more than 16,000 of their tenants and a significant but unknown number paid for their own passage. Evidence suggests that the majority of Highlanders who permanently left the famine-struck regions emigrated, rather than moving to other parts of Scotland. It is estimated that about a third of the population of the western Scottish Highlands emigrated between 1841 and 1861.
A croft is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable, and usually, but not always, with a crofter's dwelling thereon. A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a tenant farmer, especially in rural areas.
Coigach is a peninsula north of Ullapool, in Wester Ross in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. The area consists of a traditional crofting and fishing community of a couple of hundred houses located between mountain and shore on a peninsula looking over the Summer Isles and the sea. The main settlement is Achiltibuie. Like its northerly neighbour, Assynt in Sutherland, Coigach has mountains which rise sharply from quiet, lochan-studded moorland, and a highly indented rocky coast with many islands, bays and headlands. The highest summit is Ben Mor Coigach at 743 metres; the distinctive profile of Stac Pollaidh is the other main peak within Coigach. The scenic qualities of Coigach, along with neighbouring Assynt, have led to the area being designated as the Assynt-Coigach National Scenic Area, one of 40 such areas in Scotland.
Isleornsay is a village lying off the main Armadale to Sleat road on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It overlooks, but is not upon, the island of Ornsay. The island itself shelters one of the best natural harbours in southern Skye. The location was exploited from the 18th century or earlier by the MacDonalds who owned this part of Skye.
Tarskavaig is a crofting village on the west coast of Sleat on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It sits in a glen which meets Tarskavaig Bay and lies opposite the Isles of Eigg, Rum and Canna. It is often said that Tarskavaig has the best view of the Cuillin in Skye.
Clan Macdonald of Sleat, sometimes known as Clan Donald North and in Gaelic Clann Ùisdein[kʰl̪ˠan̪ˠ ˈuːʃtʲɛɲ], is a Scottish clan and a branch of Clan Donald — one of the largest Scottish clans. The founder of the Macdonalds of Sleat was Ùisdean, or Hugh, a 6th great-grandson of Somerled, a 12th-century Lord of the Isles. The clan is known in Gaelic as Clann Ùisdein, and its chief's Gaelic designation is Mac Ùisdein, in reference to the clan's founder. Both the clan and its clan chief are recognised by the Lord Lyon King of Arms, who is the heraldic authority in Scotland.
Boreraig is a deserted township in Strath Swordale on the north shore of Loch Eishort in the parish of Strath, Isle of Skye, Scotland.
Camustianavaig is a crofting township on the island of Skye in Scotland. It is located on the shores of the Sound of Raasay, 5 kilometres southeast of Portree. The Lòn Bàn watercourse flows from Loch Fada to "An Eas Mhòr" below which it is named "Allt Ósglan" and discharges into the sea at Camas Tianabhaig. The stream forms the boundary between the township and Conordan to the south. Ósglan itself is the land on the right bank of Allt Ósglan.
The Isle of Skye, or simply Skye, is the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate from a mountainous hub dominated by the Cuillin, the rocky slopes of which provide some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in the country. Although Sgitheanach has been suggested to describe a winged shape, no definitive agreement exists as to the name's origins.
Harlosh is a settlement on the island of Skye off the west coast of Scotland. The settlement is on a peninsula of the same name.
Drumfearn is a small crofting township, lying at the head of the Sleat peninsula, at the head of Loch Eishort, on the isle of Skye in the Highalnds of Scotland and is in the Scottish council area of Highland.
Glendale is a community-owned estate on the north-western coastline of the Duirinish peninsula on the island of Skye and is in the Scottish council area of Highland. The estate encompasses the small crofting townships of Skinidin, Colbost, Fasach, Glasphein, Holmisdale, Lephin, Hamaraverin, Borrodale, Milovaig and Waterstein, Feriniquarrie, Totaig, Glasphein, Hamara, and others
Ferindonald or Ferrindonald is a crofting township, located on the east coast of the Sleat peninsula, lying on the A851 road, in the Isle of Skye, Scottish Highlands and is in the Scottish council area of Highland.
Lochalsh is a district of mainland Scotland that is currently part of the Highland council area. The Lochalsh district covers all of the mainland either side of Loch Alsh - and of Loch Duich - between Loch Carron and Loch Hourn, ie. from Stromeferry in the north on Loch Carron down to Corran on Loch Hourn and as (south-)west as Kintail. It was sometimes more narrowly defined as just being the hilly peninsula that lies between Loch Carron and Loch Alsh. The main settlement is Kyle of Lochalsh, located at the entrance to Loch Alsh, opposite the village of Kyleakin on the adjacent island of Skye. A ferry used to connect the two settlements but was replaced by the Skye Bridge in 1995.
Margaret Hope MacPherson was a Scottish crofter, politician, author, and activist. During her later life, she was known as the "First Lady of Crofting".
