Rannoch

The village of Kinloch Rannoch was created in the period after the '45. It is a nomenclatural oddity. Kinloch means the head of the loch whereas this village is at the foot. Similarly, a good general rule is that a river originates in the loch that bears its name. Not so with the Tummel which one would expect to be called the Rannoch. Redcoats built roads from Tummel Bridge and round the side of Schiehallion. The river was bridged adjacent to the new settlement. Initially this was to be populated by retired soldiers who would act as long term insurance against further rebellions, but their habits - picked up in a thousand European estaminets, bierhaufs, and alehouses - militated against the bucolic rhythms of a croft and so Rannoch people were given leases for their own few acres for the first time.

The factors encouraged the linen industry by building little mills. Craftsmen moved in to keep the machinery in repair. This brought cash into the community and gave more economic power to the women who did the work. Lime burning was introduced to reduce the natural acidity of the soil and grow more crops, particularly the potato.

At one time the Commissioners intended to drive a road across Rannoch moor to Glencoe and thus make Kinloch Rannoch the hub of the Highlands. Two hundred and fifty years later, the road is still occasionally mooted. The redcoats built themselves a barracks at the head of the loch and continued their road westwards for a few miles. They were even put to work in a futile attempt to drain parts of the moor and make it cultivable. Today the scars are still visible.

The man best remembered in Rannoch from this time was Dugald Buchanan. He was from Balquhidder and won the job of schoolmaster at Kinloch in 1764. Today a memorial stands in the centre of the village to commemorate the impact that he made upon the people. He was 'affable, free, and jocular...a severe disciplinarian, feared, but at the same time beloved.' He was a great religious poet in Gaelic as well as a teacher and preacher and in the ten short years before he was carried off by fever he brought about a moral and religious transformation of the people. The soil would have been fallow. Their culture had been turned upside down and they were waiting for something to fill the void but they were fortunate in having a man of the quality of Buchanan to introduce them to the morality and beliefs of the rest of the nation

The Pedlar's Stone by the hotel complex on the north shore of the loch was where the packman's load slipped when he rested it upon the stone and he was strangled by a strap. These men used to trudge round the Highlands carrying knives, needles, mirror, ribbons, salt, spices and anything else they thought might sell. They peddled luxuries and the necessities of life that the land and the estate craftsmen could not manufacture. Later they carried chapbooks, precursors of the paperback, which told vivid stories with religious morals, or simply vivid stories which were avidly devoured by the Highland people once education had reached the remoter glens.

The pedlar was also greatly valued as a source of information and news. The more he could produce the greater his welcome and his sales. He brought knowledge of the nation fresh from Edinburgh or London. He also brought news and gossip, if they are not interchangeable terms, from the neighbouring estates and clachans. He would be welcomed at the mansion house of the laird with a dram and would glean what he could for dissemination round the townships. The doings of the family in the Big House was a subject of absorbing interest to the tenantry.

On the north side of the loch, the slios min - the smooth slope - the soil was more fertile and faced south to the sun. Here and out into Rannoch Moor the land was held by the Menzies but he seems to have had but the loosest control over its people. The king more than once ordered him to curb the brigands and outlaws, usually MacGregors, who infested the area. Menzies clansmen were rare in Rannoch. Most of the inhabitants of the north side of the loch were Camerons and Macdonalds who had spilled across the moor from their own clan lands. The remarkable remoteness of Rannoch from its neighbours was shown when the Menzies failed to notice that his land was being squatted upon by these outsiders who were paying their rents to their own chiefs. In reality the lord of the land was always the man who could protect or intimidate the people and, far from the rule of law, the contents of treasured charter chests were sometimes of only academic interest.