The Colony was a
squatters' community on "commonty", or
common land
Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel.
A person who has a ...
, on one side of
Bennachie, a range of hills near
Aberdeen
Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...
, in Scotland.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century common land in the parishes of
Chapel of Garioch
Chapel of Garioch is a Hamlet (place), hamlet in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, located 4 miles (6 km) west of Inverurie. The Balquhain stone circle is nearby.
The church, St Mary's Chapel, shares a parish with Blairdaff. It was formerly under th ...
and
Oyne
Oyne is a small village in rural Aberdeenshire at the bottom of Bennachie in Scotland.
Locality
The village has limited local resources. It once had a railway station which closed 6 May 1968, and now has a daily bus service to Inverurie away ...
on the east side of Bennachie became home to a community of squatters. This settlement was known locally as the Colony. Various estimates have been made of when the colony began with some citing 1825 but according to Fagen the first documentary evidence is from 1831.
A small number of families led a
croft
Croft may refer to:
Occupations
* Croft (land), a small area of land, often with a crofter's dwelling
* Crofting, small-scale food production
* Bleachfield, an open space used for the bleaching of fabric, also called a croft
Locations In the Uni ...
ing life supplementing it by doing skilled work, such as
dyking, quarrying and knitting.
Two stones were landmarks within the colony: the Boddach Stone and the Gouk Stone.
Only the latter remains.
The size of the colony varied over time. The following table summarises census data extracted from Fagen's text.
In 1859, eight neighbouring landlords took possession of sections of Bennachie as part of their estates. This action, recognised in law from 5 March 1859, has become known as the Division of the Commonty. As a result, the population on the side of the hill began to decline. Most of the crofts were built on land claimed by Col. Charles Leslie of Balquhain and Fetternear. His son, Charles Stephen Leslie, was responsible for evicting some of the residents in 1878.
The last of the colonists, George Esson, lived on the hill until his death in May 1939. Esson was a
drystone dyker. While working on the Dunecht Estate, repairing old dykes and creating new ones, he would lodge with a Mrs Cooper at Dunecht, then walk the twenty miles back to the colony at weekends.
Visitors to Bennachie can explore the Colony, including the remains of a croft which was excavated as part of the Fetternear Research Project in 1999.
[Bogdan,N Q, Dransart, P Z, Upson-Smith, T and Trigg, J 2000 ''Bennachie Colony House Excavation 1999 An Extended Interim Report'', Lampeter: SEPP]
References
{{Squatting in Scotland
Former populated places in Scotland
Squats in the United Kingdom
Squatting in Scotland
Aberdeenshire
1939 disestablishments in Scotland