Rosal was a township in

Strathnaver Strathnaver or Strath Naver () is the fertile strath of the River Naver, a famous salmon river that flows from Loch Naver to the north coast of Scotland. The term has a broader use as the name of an ancient province also known as the Mackay Co ...

, Sutherland, in the

Scottish Highlands The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Scots language, Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gae ...

that was deserted after its residents were evicted during the

Highland Clearances The Highland Clearances ( , the "eviction of the Gaels") were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, mostly in two phases from 1750 to 1860. The first phase resulted from Scottish Agricultural R ...

of the early 19th century.

Town

Rosal consists of approximately , enclosed by a ring dyke on the east side the

River Naver Naver (; stylized as NAVER) is a South Korean online platform operated by the Naver Corporation. The company's products include a search engine, email hosting, blogs, maps, and mobile payment. History Naver was the first Korean web provider ...

, across a bridge from Syre. Written records of the settlement go back to 1269, but an iron age

souterrain ''Souterrain'' (from French ', meaning "subterrain", is a name given by archaeologists to a type of underground structure associated mainly with the European Atlantic Iron Age. These structures appear to have been brought northwards from Gaul d ...

was found in the middle of the town, suggesting that it had been occupied for much longer. Before the clearance it was the largest of 49 townships in Strathnaver. An archeological survey conducted in 1962 found the remains of 70 buildings including

longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from lumber, timber and ...

byre dwelling A byre-dwelling (" byre"+ "dwelling") is a farmhouse in which the living quarters are combined with the livestock and/or grain barn under the same roof. In the latter case, the building is also called a housebarn in American English. This kind o ...

s, barns,

outhouse An outhouse — known variously across the English-speaking world otherwise as bog, dunny, long-drop, or privy — is a small structure, separate from a main building, which covers a toilet. This is typically either a pit latrine or a bucket ...

s and corn-drying

kiln A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or Chemical Changes, chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects m ...

Clearance

In 1813 Patrick Sellar, a

factor Factor (Latin, ) may refer to: Commerce * Factor (agent), a person who acts for, notably a mercantile and colonial agent * Factor (Scotland), a person or firm managing a Scottish estate * Factors of production, such a factor is a resource used ...

(land manager) to

Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland (''née'' Sutherland; 24 May 176529 January 1839), also ''suo jure'' 19th Countess of Sutherland, was a Scottish noblewoman who married into the Leveson-Gower family, best remembered for her involv ...

, obtained the lease for a "new sheep farm" which consisted of many townships in Strathnaver, and the existing tenants were told that they would have to leave their homes and the farmland that provided their livelihood. The residents did organise a competing bid for the tenancy, but they were not successful. Rosal became completely deserted by 1818.

Legacy

Rosal is well known in part because one of the evicted residents, Donald MacLeod, wrote a series of letters about his experiences to the ''Edinburgh Chronicle'' newspaper in 1840, which were published as a book titled ''Gloomy Memories''. A

cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...

was built across the river from Rosal in memory of MacLeod known as the ''Gloomy Memories Memorial''. In 1962, Horace Fairhurst, an archeologist from

Glasgow University The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in post-nominals; ) is a public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ...

conducted an excavation at Rosal; three years later in 1965 the site was declared a

historic monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical ...

. It is currently owned and maintained by

Forestry and Land Scotland Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) () is an executive agency responsible for managing and promoting Scotland's national forest estate: land, predominantly covered in forest, owned by the Scottish Government on behalf of the nation. It was formed o ...

, and is a tourist attraction with wooden walkways erected for visitors.

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite web , url=https://canmore.org.uk/site/5682/rosal , title=Rosal , website=Canmore.org.uk , publisher=Historic Environment Scotland , access-date=26 April 2024 {{cite web , url=http://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/SM2510 , title=Rosal,deserted township,Naver Forest,Strathnaver , publisher=Historic Environment Scotland , access-date=26 April 2024 {{cite web , url=https://nscft.org/rosal/ , title=Rosal , publisher=North Sutherland Community Forest Trust , access-date=26 April 2024 {{cite web , url=https://forestryandland.gov.scot/learn/heritage/visit-heritage-sites/rosal , title=Rosal , publisher=

, access-date=26 April 2024 {{Cite news , last=Hunter , first=Jim , date=28 July 2021 , newspaper=Press and Journal , title=Community ownership in the Highlands and Islands helps to right historical wrongs , url=https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/opinion/columnists/3341800/rosal-sutherland-community-buyout-ownership-jim-hunter-opinion/ {{Cite news , first=Caroline , last=McMorran , date=19 January 2023 , title=North Sutherland Community Forest Trust puts focus back on Rosal clearance village , newspaper=The Northern Times , url=https://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/north-sutherland-community-forest-trust-puts-focus-back-on-r-339536/ {{Cite news , first=Susan , last=Swarbrick , date=19 October 2019 , title=Vanishing places: Five Scottish locations that have disappeared , url=https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/17978650.vanishing-places-scottish-locations-disappeared/ , newspaper=The Herald {{cite book , url=https://electricscotland.com/history/gloomy.htm , title=Gloomy Memories, An Account of the Highland Clearances , first=Donald , last=MacLeod , year=1892 , location=Glasgow , publisher=Archibald Sinclair {{Cite journal , last=Fairhurst , first=Horace , date=30 November 1969 , title=Rosal: a deserted township in Strath Naver, Sutherland , url=https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/8730 , journal=Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland , language=en , volume=100 , pages=135–169 , doi=10.9750/PSAS.100.135.169 , issn=2056-743X {{Cite book , last=Skinner , first=June Sawyers , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=55ZaYPD-g10C&dq=rosal+strathnaver&pg=PA512 , title=Maverick Guide to Scotland , publisher=Pelican Publishing , isbn=978-1-4556-0866-9 , publication-date=1999 , pages=512 {{cite web , url=https://www.britainexpress.com/scotland/Highlands/Sutherland/gloomy-memories.htm , title=Gloomy Memories Memorial, Strathnaver , website=BritainExpress.com , access-date=26 April 2024 Villages in Highland (council area) Ruins in Highland (council area) Former populated places in Scotland

Town

Clearance

Legacy

See also

References