Small landholdings: landownership and registration - report

2. Methods and Approach

2.1 In order to construct a narrative of how small landholdings were established (usually collectively as multiple units on planned schemes) and the ways in which their ownership changed over time, the team undertook a detailed archival search into schemes from 1911. The archives were predominantly those of the Board of Agriculture for Scotland [BoAS], the Scottish Land Court [SLC] and other government agencies, along with some relevant private estates archives.

The full archival list is in the Archival Bibliography (6.2).

2.2. A great deal of archival material survives, documenting in some detail the establishment of schemes both pre-WWI and post-WWI. However given the time constraints on the project, seven case studies were selected, offering a chronological and geographical spread. This was made easier by the fact that the archival records are organised by scheme. These consist of files, of varying length and detail, which contain all correspondence, reports, memorandums, legal documentation and mapping associated with each scheme. Most of the emphasis lies on the negotiation leading up to the creation of each scheme, and the selection of the small landholders. Once this has been completed, the use of records then reduces dramatically.

The case study schemes, along with the date which an archival record begins, are:

Pre-1914 schemes:

• Kinninghall, Hawick (October 1912)
• Crossbankhead, Dumfriesshire (September 1912)
• Bennicarrigan, Arran (October 1912)
• Shedog, Kilmory, Arran (December 1913)

Post-1918 schemes:

• Grassmillees, Ayrshire (March 1920)
• Springbank, Arran (December 1920)
• Drimaghinier, Arran (February 1927)

2.3 Initial demand for the 1911 Act came principally from the Highlands and Islands, which struggled economically and demographically with endemic land hunger and poverty. Despite the pressures of the radical Liberal government of the day, as well as rioting and agitation in many parts of the crofting counties, the creation of schemes between 1911 and 1914 was slow. This is reflected in the archival record.

2.4. Unsurprisingly, the pace of establishing new schemes picked up dramatically from c. 1917, as the political pressures around the settling of ex-servicemen grew. There are detailed archival records for applicants for the schemes, and in the immediate post-war period, ex-servicemen of all types were prioritised, with sometimes negative effects on the actual management and use of the new landholdings. The records begin to thin out from the late 1920s, and by the late 1930s, when assessing candidates for new schemes or to replace SLHs who had relinquished their tenancies, the importance of being an ex-serviceman was quietly dropped as being irrelevant.

2.5. Overall, the scale of the archival record reduces dramatically from the late 1920s, with only patchy records for each scheme after that date, normally recording only any disputes or resignations of tenancies, although these are not systematically recorded either. The latest archival material is focussed around the late 1930s, with a very small amount in the 1960s, but this is not linear or complete.

2.6. The project leader identified and scoped the existing archival material underpinning this project and the postgraduate research assistant worked in the archives, photographing and summarising the identified files and schemes.

2.7. Any legal points were then identified and referred to the legal consultant on the project for clarification and expansion.

2.8. The project lead then undertook a full analysis of the archival findings and mapped them across the aims and objectives outlined in the Introduction, and wrote them up under Findings (3), Legal processes (4), and Conclusions (5). This was supported by a small but important selection of literature, some legal and some historical (see Bibliography 6.3. for the full list).