C O N T E X T 1 1 0 : J U LY 2 0 0 9 15 agriculture to sheep farming and then to sporting estates. Large public or organisational land owners also now feature, with the likes of the Forestry Commission (the largest landowner), the National Trust for Scotland and the RSPB (the eighth largest) owning large tracts of land. The largest private landowner is Duke of Buccleuch (270,900 acres). Such ownership patterns can have an impact on historic buildings. The result can be many unoccupied buildings, and a landowner who is disinclined to do anything about it.The same can apply to a large estate that might have two farm units: only one is needed, and the other left to rot rather than sell it off to a restoring purchaser. Peripherality has its impact. The island of Stroma in the Pentland Firth was the last place to be depopulated on a community scale in the UK. In the mid-1960s, the island’s population was removed following a severe winter storm that left it isolated for weeks. The then Caithness County Council did not have a policy of supporting island communities, so the solution was to get rid of the problem. Today, Stroma is a virtual ghost landscape, with many of the properties forlornly used as sheep shelters for the island’s only residents, an Australian sheep farmer and his family. A total cultural landscape is at risk. Another significant problem is the loss of vernacular buildings through unintentional policy actions. Some local authorities in rural Scotland have responded to the real concern of houses in the countryside (a process once described as ‘sneezing little boxes across the landscape’) by introducing a one-for-one policy. In order to build your new house, you need to find an old one to demolish. As most vernacular buildings are not listed, and therefore have no statutory protection, they become the target for aficionados of the non-descript bungalow. Usually the replacement is architecturally eclectic, and its size and form are more in conformity with the ego of the builder than with the landscape it sits in. This has resulted in a significant change to the cultural landscape is some areas, especially at the local level. Even without this direct policy, old cottages and croft houses are seen as a land bank, not as a heritage resource. In Caithness, heritage consultant Andrew Wright Terry Levinthal is director of the Scottish Civic Trust. recently carried out a survey of redundant buildings on behalf of the North Highland Initiative. In his travels, Wright clocked over 1,300 buildings that were suffering from varying degrees of dereliction. Only five per cent of these were listed, and so given some sort of protection or management opportunity.The rest are left to their own fates. The irony of this is that affordable rural housing is a huge issue in Scotland. The housing need is largely for single or small-family units, not the five-bedroom executive bungalows pushed off the back of a lorry on to a levelled site.The adaptive repair and rehabilitation of small historic properties offers an excellent means of providing local cheap housing or other accommodation. However, there is a lack of understanding of the potential that the rural heritage has in meeting wider government policy objectives. Those who wish to undertake a project can find unforeseen obstacles in their path. I acquired a property in the Central Highlands as a second home in the late 1990s. The building, which was unlisted, formed part of a row of former Pauper’s Cottages built in the 1850s (so found on the first edition Ordnance Survey maps). Made from granite and slate to a traditional pattern, it had been on the market for over two years without a sniff of local interest. A planning application was made for a modest kitchen extension. Following best practice, I prepared a design and conservation statement that outlined the historic interest of the property and how I was responding to it. This resulted in an archaeological survey and recording condition being attached to the consent on the basis that it appeared on the first edition Ordnance Survey maps. If I had not told the planning authority in the first place, this never would have happened. For someone who did not know how to deal with this, it would have added about £1,000 to the bill as a consultant archaeologist would have been brought in. After undertaking a host of repairs and improvements (and importing a plumber from over two hours away due to a local skills shortage), we found ourselves in the Scottish Land Court, as the local crofter argued that our garden was part of the common grazings (together with the entire township, I might add), despite the fact that the land had been fenced off since 1961. Common sense won the day, and the garden is indeed ours. But if I had not been able to take on these issues myself, the project would have been very complex, very expensive and very off-putting. It would have been simpler to have bulldozed the lot and pushed a kit house off a lorry. Much of rural life is about survival. Heritage matters to rural communities.We need to be more positive and proactive about the rural heritage of Scotland, and get away from the municipal attitude of ‘if it isn’t listed, it doesn’t matter’. A more integrated approach is needed: one that looks beyond the regulations and towards the opportunities that historic rural buildings of all types provide. A blackhouse at Tiree Balemartine
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