Sollas
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![]() Struan cottage. A traditional thatched cottage in Sollas, seen in 2002 and since restored. | |
Location within the Outer Hebrides | |
Language | Scottish Gaelic English |
OS grid reference | NF812747 |
Civil parish | |
Council area | |
Lieutenancy area | |
Country | Scotland |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | ISLE OF NORTH UIST |
Postcode district | HS6 |
Dialling code | 01876 |
Police | Scotland |
Fire | Scottish |
Ambulance | Scottish |
UK Parliament | |
Scottish Parliament | |
Sollas (Scottish Gaelic : Solas) is a small crofting township on the northern coast of the island of North Uist, Scotland.
From Sollas, the road that heads towards Bayhead is known as the Committee Road. It is called this as it was organised by a committee charged with providing relief to the Highland Potato Famine in the 1840s. The Battle of Sollas took place in 1849 during the time of the Highland Clearances. [1] [2] [3]
In 1849, Lord Macdonald decided to evict between 600 and 700 people from Sollas. At the time the people were suffering from several years of potato famine. The notices of ejection were served on the tenants on 15 May 1849. They asked for a delay in order to use their cattle and other effects to their best advantage, but were given no answer. Many of them were soon turned out of their houses and their property seized. It was now the month of July and far too late for them to set out for Canada as the cold winter would be setting in when they arrived, with no means to provide against it and therefore they rebelled. As a result the principal Sheriff-Substitute by the surname of Colqhoun along with his officers and a strong body of police left Inverness and headed for Sollas on North Uist to eject the tenants from their homes. As the tenant's homes were demolished they began to throw stones at the men carrying out this work who were then driven from the houses and had to retire behind the police for shelter. Volleys of stones and other missiles followed. The police then charged at them in two divisions and there were some cuts and bruises on both sides, but the demolition work then went on uninterrupted. Among the incidents of eviction mentioned by historian Alexander Mackenzie was that of an old woman who attacked an officer with her stick, knocking off his hat, but she was then carried out by two police officers. Four of the men were later charged with deforcing the officers and were each sentenced to four months imprisonment at the Inverness Court of Justiciary. The following year the whole district was completely cleared of the remaining inhabitants. [4]
The Battle of Sollas is featured in the novel The False Men by Mhairead MacLeod. [5]
Today, the village of Sollas has a local supermarket and the old school building has been turned into a community centre - Taigh Sgire Sholais. [6] [7] Every July, the residents of Sollas host a series of events known as Sollas Week. Sollas is situated in the parish of North Uist, [8] and the people are almost entirely Protestant.
Northern & Scottish Airways inaugurated services to Sollas in February 1936, using beach and the machair (on which it laid out two grass runways, a hangar and a fuel depot). Services continued until British European Airways retired its De Havilland Rapides in the 1950s. The beach at Tràigh Ear continues to be used infrequently by light aircraft. [11] [12] Highland Aviation uses the beach for its beach landing training course, along with Traigh Mhòr beach at Barra (the site of Barra Airport). [13]
The Hebrides are a Scottish archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The islands fall into two main groups, based on their proximity to the mainland: the Inner and Outer Hebrides.
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.
The Outer Hebrides or Western Isles, sometimes known as Na h-Innse Gall or the Long Isle/Long Island, is an island chain off the west coast of mainland Scotland. The islands are geographically coextensive with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland. They form part of the archipelago of the Hebrides, separated from the Scottish mainland and from the Inner Hebrides by the waters of the Minch, the Little Minch, and the Sea of the Hebrides. Scottish Gaelic is the predominant spoken language, although in a few areas English speakers form a majority.
North Uist is an island and community in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
South Uist is the second-largest island of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. At the 2011 census, it had a usually resident population of 1,754: a decrease of 64 since 2001. The island, in common with the rest of the Hebrides, is one of the last remaining strongholds of the Gaelic language in Scotland. South Uist's inhabitants are known in Gaelic as Deasaich (Southerners). The population is about 90% Roman Catholic.
Barra is an island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, and the second southernmost inhabited island there, after the adjacent island of Vatersay to which it is connected by a short causeway. The island is named after Saint Finbarr of Cork.
Eriskay, from the Old Norse for "Eric's Isle", is an island and community council area of the Outer Hebrides in northern Scotland with a population of 143, as of the 2011 census. It lies between South Uist and Barra and is connected to South Uist by a causeway which was opened in 2001. In the same year Ceann a' Ghàraidh in Eriskay became the ferry terminal for travelling between South Uist and Barra. The Caledonian MacBrayne vehicular ferry travels between Eriskay and Ardmore in Barra. The crossing takes around 40 minutes.
Great Bernera, often known just as Bernera, is an island and community in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. With an area of just over 21 square kilometres, it is the thirty-fourth largest Scottish island.
Berneray is an island and community in the Sound of Harris, Scotland. It is one of fifteen inhabited islands in the Outer Hebrides. It is famed for its rich and colourful history which has attracted much tourism. It lies within the South Lewis, Harris and North Uist National Scenic Area, one of 40 such areas in Scotland which are defined so as to identify areas of exceptional scenery and to ensure its protection from inappropriate development.
A machair is a fertile low-lying grassy plain found on part of the northwest coastlines of Ireland and Scotland, in particular the Outer Hebrides. The best examples are found on North and South Uist, Harris and Lewis.
Calgary is a hamlet on the northwest coast of the Isle of Mull, in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, United Kingdom. The hamlet is within the parish of Kilninian and Kilmore. It was the origin of the name of Fort Calgary in Canada, which became the city of Calgary, Alberta.
The Minch, also called North Minch, is a strait in north-west Scotland, separating the north-west Highlands and the northern Inner Hebrides from Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides. It was known as Skotlandsfjörð in Old Norse.
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.
Little Bernera is a small island situated off the west coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.
Ardroil is a village on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Ardroil is within the parish of Uig.
Breacleit is the central village on Great Bernera in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Breaclete is within the parish of Uig. Although the village name comes from a geographical feature rather than a steading it is generally believed to be an ancient settlement. The oldest building in the village is the thatched water mill by the shore of Loch Risay which was restored in the 1990s. It was formerly a tiny crofting and fishing settlement of just 12 crofts surrounding the natural harbour of Loch Beag but crofting has now ceased and holiday homes have taken over. The earliest clearly mapped reference is on Murdoch MacKenzie's first Admiralty chart surveyed in 1748. In 1851 J.M. MacKenzie, the Chamberlain to the estate owner Sir James Matheson, proposed that all the tenants of the village were to be evicted and sent to North America on the emigrant ship the SS Marquis of Stafford. This plan was not fully carried through however but it still had a great effect on the village leaving it with a population of just three families. This population was later supplemented through evictions elsewhere notably the clearances of Hacklete and Barragloum villages in the south of Great Bernera.
The flora and fauna of the Outer Hebrides in north west Scotland comprises a unique and diverse ecosystem. A long archipelago, set on the eastern shores of the Atlantic Ocean, it attracts a wide variety of seabirds, and thanks to the Gulf Stream a climate more mild than might be expected at this latitude. Because it is on the Gulf Stream, it also occasionally gets exotic visitors.
Inverness-shire is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. Covering much of the Highlands and Outer Hebrides, it is Scotland's largest county, though one of the smallest in population, with 67,733 people or 1.34% of the Scottish population.
Orosay is a small uninhabited tidal island in the Sound of Barra lying at the north end of Traigh Mhòr, the "big beach" on the north east coast of Barra. It is one of ten islands in the Sound of Barra, a Site of Community Importance for conservation in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. It is about 30 hectares in extent and the highest point is 38 metres (125 ft).