By Ian Cooper from his excellent series Records of a Bygone Age published in The Stronsay Limpet and republished here with kind permission.
Another milestone in the history of farm and field boundaries in Stronsay was marked by the formation of the Crofters Commission and the subsequent passing of the Crofters Holdings Act in June 1886. Its main outcome was to provide security of tenure for crofters and the right to succession of tenure for their family. It also gave crofters the right to be compensated for their own improvements to the croft at the termination of a tenancy.
Although the Act stopped short of granting the automatic right to additional land for the expansion of their crofts the Commission did seem to have some sympathy to those crofters whose holdings were too small to support themselves and their families. Representatives of the Crofters Commission met in Stronsay in December 1892 where evidence was heard from both crofters and landowners as to how they would be affected by the implementation of the Act and what outcome they sought. The findings of the Commissioners were eventually finalised in 1896, with areas of land taken off the farms of Airy, Holland, Housebay and the Bu being allocated to a number of the nearby small crofts, crofts which had originally been part of the relevant estates.
Although still rented from their landlords, it was thought that this extra ground should be enough land for these crofters to earn a comfortable living and bring up their families. While there was no longer a compulsion to help out on the parent farm at busy times of the year, there was certainly still an expectation that this would happen although the crofters would now be compensated for their labour.
The land taken off Holland to extend the crofts seemed to be almost a throwback to the runrig system where, apparently in an effort to ensure that the tenants had land of equal quality, the three original large fields were divided into 15 long narrow strips with crofts being allocated fields bounded on either side by a neighbour’s field. Over the years this has proved to be a very cumbersome arrangement both for cropping and grazing the fields and this method of allocation has again highlighted just how inconvenient the old runrig system was.
More changes were to come in 1912 when further land was taken from the Housebay Estate, firstly to enlarge some of the original crofts and then further land set aside to form the new crofts of Russland, Briarlea and Sunnyside. There was apparently enough land allocated for a fourth new croft but there were no takers so this land was to remain with Housebay. These original nine crofts and the three newly formed crofts were also each allocated a 1/12th share of 65 acres of common grazing on what was known as the ‘Crofters’ Hill’, an area which still remains the only common grazing ground in Stronsay.
Looking more closely at the Housebay land allocation for a moment, before the Crofters Commission allocations of land all the crofts in that area lay outside the Housebay march dyke. This dyke marked the boundary between the Housebay Estate and the adjoining Balfour Estate, stretching for more than 3 km (2 miles) from the Crook Sand between Housebay and Holland across the island to Graverend between Housebay and Kirbuster. When the allocation of land inside this boundary was made to in 1896, more than a kilometre of this 1.5 metre high dyke was actually taken down, the stones carted to the new boundary and the dyke rebuilt there – quite a mammoth task when you consider there would have been close on 1½ tons of stone in every metre. When the next allocation of fields from within the Housebay boundary was made in 1912, the dyke remained where it was and still stands today!
All these holdings, whether enlarged or newly formed, were still leased from the Laird, with Cleat, Housebay, Dishes and Midgarth owned by the Traills, Rothiesholm owned by the Sutherlands, Airy owned by the Feas and nearly all of the rest of the island owned by Colonel William Balfour. A typical lease of the time would have been for between 14 and 19 years, with rules laid down for the acceptance of house and buildings at the commencement of the lease and regarding their condition at the end. Other stipulations included the right and liberty of the tenant to take seaweed from the shore to apply as manure to the land, ‘said seaweed to be taken only when not required for the manufacture of kelp.’ The tenant was still expected to make kelp, the value of which was offset against the rent at a price determined by the laird, usually at a rate very much in the laird’s favour. Although the lands had twice undergone a process of planking or squaring by this time, the laird still reserved the power to straighten marches and exchange ground with neighbouring proprietors or tenants. Also reserved for the laird was the right to any game, including rabbits, on the lands. The tenant was also required to manage the lands ‘according to the most approved rules of modern good husbandry’ and in particular to ‘adopt not less than a five shift system of rotation of cropping, and never take two white crops in succession.’ Where the land leased was wet some leases also stipulated the need for the tenant to ‘thoroughly drain at his own expense all the wet parts of said lands, the drains to be made with the common ditching spade three feet deep and coupled with stones at the bottom and filled with stones to eighteen inches of the surface and the whole to be covered with turf’ for which work the tenant would be recompensed at the rate of 2/- per chain (10p per 20 metres).
By the early 1920s, with the lairds hitting hard times due to high taxes and government legislation, many of the farms and crofts were sold off at a price in the region of 15 – 20 years rent, almost invariably to the sitting tenant. With kelp rights often attached to the purchase, this helped many of the smaller farms and crofts survive the depression of the 1920s relatively unscathed.
As time passed farm produce prices fell in real terms and this, together with expectations of a better standard of living, meant that farmers needed more land and stock to remain viable, resulting in many of these smaller crofts being bought by their neighbours and these in turn being bought by their neighbours as we see a gradual return to ownership of land not dissimilar to that of the lairds of old. If we look back to the 1950s there would have been around 80 individual working farms and crofts in Stronsay but today that same land is owned or rented and run by only around 15 separate businesses. Sadly as these farms get ever larger, mechanisation and economies of scale means the rural population supported by farming gets ever smaller.
We also see some difference in the landscape as boundaries between small fields are removed to make larger fields and some areas of the island are no longer farmed, being left instead to go to waste while government support payments go to their owners as some strange form of compensation for their neglect.
But what of the flag fences, ditches and dry-stone dykes of the article title? A few good examples of flag fences are still to be seen but, as time passes, most are gradually seeing the flagstones broken, leaning over or fallen flat, with no new flag fence being built for at least 150 years. Many of the ditches too have silted up or been trampled in by stock although some have been cleaned out, now protected by a fence to continue fulfilling their original purpose. Many of these dry stone dykes are still maintained, often as a labour of love and through a sense of pride in seeing the toil of previous generations preserved, but this task is getting more and more difficult as the stones deteriorate and foundations subside. Many others, sadly, are simply left to the ravages of time and the attentions of straying livestock, gradually being flattened to the ground never to be rebuilt.
It must be 150 years since any length of new dyke was built in Stronsay but some good dykers are still around as can be seen by the recent work at the water tanks above the village and the wall of the new cemetery, both funded by large companies or organisations and undoubtedly well in excess of the ‘6d a fathom’ cost of erection of many of the original dykes. We must accept that many of the flag fences, ditches and dry-stone dykes of old are now gone for ever but should still look with pleasure, pride and understanding at what is left of those features of our heritage.
