Archaeology and the Bennachie Colony: Excavation of Two 19th-Century Crofts

On the lower slopes of Bennachie, beneath stands of conifer plantations, lie the ruins of the Colony. While the granite tor of Mither Tap crowned with a Pictish hill fort tends to draw the eyes of visitors to the hill, the attentive observer will notice other signs of past activity here as well. A short walk from the Bennachie visitor centre, the remains of tumbled-down dry-stone walls and linear banks of earth and stone peek out at times over waist-high bracken and the detritus of modern forestry plantations. These are the remains of more recent settlement features, mainly cottages and outbuildings spread through a landscape of former fields, gardens and track ways.

We know from historical records that the Colony was settled on the commonty of Bennachie early in the nineteenth century in a context of agricultural ‘improvement’ and increasing itinerancy, where high rents and rationalized farming practices produced a surplus population of landless wage-labourers. By the middle of the nineteenth century there were somewhere between 50 and 70 ‘squatters’ farming the hill’s marginal lower slopes and selling their labour to neighbouring communities, notably as stone dykers. In 1859 the land was controversially divided between neighbouring landed estates, leading to the eventual eviction of some of the colonists and the erosion of community ties; by the end of 1880s most of the crofts were abandoned (Carter, 1983; Fagen, 2011)...