PATRICK SELLAR’S CULMAILY: A MODEL OF IMPROVEMENT

Even those historians who have ‘repeatedly put Patrick Sellar on trial’, to borrow a phrase from Ian Grimble, have conceded one aspect of his legacy, that he was ‘a great farmer.’ An important element of this reputation was his improvement of the farm at Culmaily which was his first venture into farming, initially in partnership with Estate Commissioner William Young. Leading historian of the clearances Eric Richards described ‘the stagnant lochs, the birch woods, the black peats which used to cover the land… transformed into the fine fields of Culmaily’. James Hunter described Sellar as a ‘consummate agriculturalist’ in his latest book on Sutherland, and Culmaily as ‘emblematic of what improvement could accomplish.’ An act of alchemy has been accepted by historians, even those who have characterised the wider transformation of the Sutherland estate as a failure.

Objects of wonder and delight

Shortly before Sellar’s death in 1851, estate commissioner James Loch wrote these lines to him:

Although these matters are objects of wonder and delight to us who saw it all otherwise, it is impossible to convey to strangers those feelings even if able to tell what was the condition of things before 1812. Who is the oldest man about the place who could tell me about Culmaily?

The oldest man about the place who remembered the preceding state of affairs might well have had different feelings about the changes. Loch’s question is provoking. While he included himself amongst those ‘who saw it all otherwise’, his knowledge of the workings of the estate could only have been that of a superficial observer prior to his active management role in the north commencing in 1816. His question implies a lack of knowledge, a need to find witnesses. Furthermore, it implies that the estate’s record of the whereabouts and fortunes of the 352 people removed from Culmaily in 1812 was inadequate, or non-existent. That makes hollow Loch’s later claim that the ‘utmost caution and deliberation’ had been employed in order to ‘raise the importance and increase the happiness’ of those very people.

‘Zeal for the Improvement of the Country’

Early exchanges between then estate commissioner Young and the countess of Sutherland, and her husband,