New project to rediscover the history of a lost Highland township

‘Lost Inverlael, Finding Balblair’ is a new community archaeology project that aims to rediscover the history of a lost highland township devastated in the Clearances.

The project will be led by Ullapool Museum, supported by a grant of £68,000 from Historic Environment Scotland alongside funding from Forestry and Land Scotland.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Inverlael clearances, a township near Ullapool in the northwest Scottish highlands. In the winter of 1819, more than fifty families were brutally evicted from their homes by landowner, George Steuart Mackenzie of Coul, to make way for more profitable sheep farms. Forced from the land their ancestors had lived and worked for generations, families faced a struggle to survive the onset of a harsh winter. Some moved to larger towns across the highlands, many made the painful decision to emigrate.

The brutal eviction of the old township of Inverlael ruptured a centuries-old community and although this painful