Durness

Durness stretches across Scotland’s far northwestern coast, a large and sparsely populated parish between Loch Eriboll and Cape Wrath, about 120 miles north of Inverness. Its people live in dispersed townships, including Eriboll, Smoo, Durine, Balnakeil and Keoldale. A down-faulted wedge of softer Durness Group carbonate rock gives the district flatter ground and lime-rich soils than the surrounding gneiss and sandstone country, producing a comparatively fertile coastal setting.

The caves near Smoo contain some of the area’s deepest traces of activity. Finds from the eighth to eleventh centuries include fish bones, marine shells, plant remains and iron slag, as well as boat nails, pointing to food processing and vessel repair in a sheltered inlet. Neolithic and Iron Age material, together with later Norse and medieval objects, shows that people returned to this coast across long periods. The name Durness may derive from a Norse term for a deer or animal headland, although Gaelic and Norse explanations remain uncertain.

Balnakeil belonged to the bishopric of Caithness, and its ruined church was built by monks from Dornoch in the thirteenth century. The wider parish formed part of Dùthaich MhicAoidh, the land of Clan Mackay. In the nineteenth century, Highland Clearances began here in 1809 and continued across much of the parish, as families were moved from their townships to make room for sheep.