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Celebrating Life in Assynt Before the Clearances

Media release, for immediate release from Wednesday 9 November 2011

The highly successful project, Life and Death in Assynt’s Past draws to a conclusion on 12 November 2011, with a day celebrating life in Assynt before the Highland Clearances. During the day there will crafts of the pre-clearance periodfor people to join in with, followed by a ceilidh at night.

Gordon Sleight said, ‘This has been a splendid project and we have been delighted by how many people have come along and got involved in the digs themselves and in the many other events that we have run over the past three months.

‘Glenleraig was cleared of its inhabitants in 1812, so two hundred years ago, the people living in the house we excavated would have been preparing for what would turn out to be their last winter at home there. The event on Saturday 12 November is promising to be a remarkable day for imagining what life may have been like for these people.’
The daytime event on 12 November will run from 10am to 4pm in Lochinver Hall. There will be demonstrations and opportunities to try out a wide range of crafts including carding, spinning, knitting, weaving, felting, basket making and fishing net making. There will also be Gaelic songs, tattie soup, a photo show, a reconstruction of the pre-clearance longhouse which was excavated at Glenleraig and a session on some of the finds made during the dig.

In the evening, from 7.30 onward, in Drumbeg Hall, there will be a talk about the Glenleraig pre-clearance house followed by a ceilidh featuring James Graham singing Assynt Gaelic songs.

James Graham, from Lochinver, was the BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year in 2004, becoming the first Gaelic singer ever to do so, and in 2007 he won the prestigious Mod Gold Medal, the highest accolade for men’s solo singing at the Royal National Mod. He now works at An Comunn Gàidhealach as the Mod Development Manager. He studied at RSAMD in Glasgow, and for his final recital he collated all the known Gaelic songs written in or about Assynt. When he sings them in Drumbeg on 12 November this will probably be the first time they have all been performed together in Assynt.

The Life and Death in Assynt’s Past project is now into the post-excavation phase. The finds from the three digs: at a Neolithic cairn at Loch Borralan, Ledmore, an Iron Age broch at Clachtoll, and a pre-Clearance longhouse in Glenleraig, are being analysed by AOC Archaeology. The project is funded by Historic Scotland, Leader and the Lottery.

For more information and photographs, contact:

Gordon Sleight, Phone: 01571 855207, Email: [email protected]

or see the dig diary at http://www.aocarchaeology.com/ldap/