by David Jarman      

The romantic era brought with it a passion for creating paths and indeed networks of ‘walks’ leading to scenic features, notably riverbanks, waterfalls and belvederes.  These showed off the extent and natural beauties of landowners’ properties, and can be seen as status symbols confirming that the owners were au fait with the spirit of the times.  They also of course provided exclusive and appealing recreational opportunities for owners’ families and guests – stimulating appetites and conversation.  They would suggest aesthetic appreciation, encouraging leisure pursuits from sketching, watercolours, and philosophising to poetry and of course wooing.

Making such paths was in those days very cheap, and would provide employment during the off-season.  All the land was grazed and any woodland exploited, so that the terrain would have been easier to cut through than now;  some paths may have upgraded animal and human trods.  Paths would be surfaced and drained where necessary to afford dry, mud-free passage.  Footbridges and railings might be basic or more ornamental.  On grander estates, the scene was commonly improved with grottoes, pavilions and towers, whether functional or follies.  And path-making went hand-in-hand with landscaping, creating or restoring woodlands, and lining the walks with ornamental plantings.  Regrettably, these majored on the invasive rhododendron ponticum, valued for its hardiness, and perhaps providing gamebird cover (many ‘pheasantries’ are mapped).

Amenity paths in the Highlands – sporting and permanent estates

While the path-making craze manifested widely across southern Scotland, England, and indeed parts of Europe, in the Highlands the picture is confused by the advent of the sporting estates.  Many of these created extensive systems of “stalkers’ paths” (then known as pony paths) – see blogpost on that subject – many of which will have served recreational purposes as well.  But a few of these estates also created path networks purely for recreational and aesthetic enjoyment – notably Sir John Fowler’s at Braemore, where today only fragments survive in Corrieshalloch Gorge (with its viewpoint footbridge).  Bear in mind that these amenity paths were only enjoyed for the few months of the ‘Highland Season’ and were primarily for the entertainment of guests staying for lengthy periods.

This blogpost addresses a rather different category of path-making, on the permanently-inhabited estates of the more fertile parts of the Highlands, and in particular the cultivated fringes on the Old Red Sandstone around the Moray Firth.  These paths were, by contrast, intended for year-round use, by the owners’ households, day visitors, and staying guests.  Indeed, travellers’ journals often record requests to visit houses and their grounds, which could of course be explored via these designed paths – the rural equivalent of applying to see a private art collection in a city.  All part of upholding one’s position in society – or especially, making a name if a parvenu.

The emergence of the estates – Roy’s Map

Roy’s great map of ~1750 strikingly depicts a nascent pattern of improved estates around these shores, the Big Hoose often already having an emparked nucleus within a core of rectangular tree-framed fields – a curiously colonial effect, with stockaded ‘plantations’ dotting a still-open landscape.  Rather surprisingly, this pattern is better developed around the Cromarty Firth than along the south side of the Moray Firth, where there is nothing of substance between the great estate of Culloden and Brodie, and a void west of Inverness save for Bunchrew.  This is despite the greater distance from the Cromarty Firth lands to Inverness as Highland capital, and the lack of a through road – possibly access was easier by sea, or land quality was more favourable (less sandy), or perhaps this was simply a quirk of clan/ownership history ?