Agriculture of Arran in the 1800s
Jim Henderson
There was much interest in Jim’s series about the Arran people who went to Canada in the Clearances, and we are delighted that he is following this with a new series of articles abouto Arran’s early agriculture.
Most people will know of the run rig farming system, used widely throughout Scotland until things began to change at the end of the 18th century. There are many places on Arran where the marks of the ‘rigs’ or long beds of ground are still visible, especially on hillsides no longer farmed. They look like broad parallel ridges, running sideways along the hill to conserve soil and moisture, much as people do the world over when farming hill land. Under this system the landowner allocated each tenant several detached portions of land called ‘rigs’ on a yearly or two-yearly basis. The selection was made by lot or by rotation, and was designed to give everyone a share of the best and worst ground. In some families the ground was shared, passing from father to son. It often led to a communal tenure system in which the rig allocation was shared between several people.
Arran’s population in the 1750s was 3646, and it was self-sufficient. A packet-boat came over from Saltcoats once a week, but people grew their own food, butchered their own meat and made their own clothes. One of the island’s attractions for visitors was the goats’ milk being produced at Cladach, for this was supposed to be good for the health. The Dukes of Hamilton, who had ruled Arran except for a brief period when the Covenanters and the Campbells took over, were content to allocate the rigs and take a small rent, regarding the system as a settled way of life rather than a business. Arran’s farms had until then been let on leases of nineteen years’ duration, with an initial payment called a grassum. These leases began to expire in 1766, the greater part of them falling out in 1772, but until then, the system followed its old ways of making a basic living from the land.
Statistics of the Islands crops and livestock recorded in 1880 by the Highland and Agriculture Society of Scotland were as follows:
Recordings of land under crops in Arran in 1855 totalled 6,079 acres Wheat, Oats and Turnips being the main crops with Grass & Hay of some 3,000 acres under rotation. Potatoes were included but only a small proportion.
Livestock was listed as 29,394 head of Horses, Milk Cows, Cattle, Calves, Sheep, Lambs and Swine.
The recorded chart was as follows:
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