‘Castle government’: The Psychologies of Land Management in Northern Scotland, c. 1830–90

Abstract

By 1861, the Sutherland estates were the largest landed estates in western Europe. Covering over one million acres in the county of Sutherland and bolstered by a private family fortune, the Sutherland estates and the ducal family that owned them were one of the great patrician establishments of Victorian Britain. They were, however, haunted by their reputation as clearance landlords, a reputation that intruded on their rarefied London existence, and more pressingly, on relations between them, their estate managers and the crofting and cottar population in the north of Scotland. This essay explores a number of key themes in relation to the drivers and philosophies of estate ownership and management in post-clearance Sutherland.