Small landholdings: landownership and registration - report

Footnotes

1. 'Crofting counties' means the former counties of Argyll, Caithness, Inverness, Orkney, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland and Zetland. The geographically distinct treatment of smaller rural holdings in the Highlands and Islands is a result of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1955 (re)introducing a regulatory system which specifically applied to the crofting counties and leaving suitably-sized holdings in the rest of Scotland subject to the Small Landholders (Scotland) Acts 1886 to 1931. There was also a period of distinct geographic treatment prior to the enactment of the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act 1911 across the whole of Scotland, when the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 only applied to the crofting counties.

2. Board of Agriculture for Scotland, Annual Report, 1912, p. viii.

3. The National Archives, Cabinet Papers, CAB27/105/298, Duties and procedure; BoAS Annual Report, 1914, p. ix.

4. A. Tindley, The Sutherland Estate, 1850-1920: aristocratic decline, estate management and land reform (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 260-275.

5. Within this, we have aimed to include what the Board sets aside as 'contingency', as in almost all cases (excepting the smaller schemes like Crossbankhead and Drumaghinier) the final costings, outwith the compensation claims, are estimates.

6. Often buildings were just given loans, as opposed to grants, but we have included grants to cover all eventualities.

7. This covers all loans and grant for water supplies, fencing, etc.

8. E. A. Cameron, 'An Agrarian Star Chamber: the Scottish Land Court to 1955,' in No Ordinary Court: 100 years of the Scottish Land Court (Edinburgh, 2012), pp. 21-33, 26. Relevant details for schemes in this period are detailed at 26-8. See also the judicial remarks of Lord Johnston in the Court of Session case of at 5, where he notes 'one thing which the Act wholly omits to do… is to make any direct provision for what is to happen during the transition from… a single holding fully equipped to a state of parcel holdings, for which new holders are to be found, and which have got to be equipped when these have been found.' This case was also interesting because Lord Johnston, even though he dismissed the landowner's petition as premature in the circumstances, still found the BoAS liable in expenses, no doubt sympathetic to the scheme the landowner had to contend with. He also noted this award of expenses 'might have been otherwise if the respondents [the BoAS] had not sought to take advantage of the petition in their own interest.'

9. Ibid, p. 28. This 'Lindean case' from the Scottish Borders proceeded through both the Outer House and Inner House of the Court of Session before it reached the House of Lords (the highest civil appeal court at the time). There was also further litigation relating to this scheme in Selkirkshire, which led to Lord Johnston's judicial comments about the statutory scheme as a whole referred to above, and also some less than complimentary words about the young Scottish Land Court in the Court of Session: 1914 SC 1.

10. NRS, AF83.886.

11. NRS, AF83.890.

12. NRS, AF83.889.

13. NRS, AF83.869/13.

14. NRS, AF83.869/12.

15. NRS, AF83.869/15.

16. NRS, AF869/23.

17. NRS, AF83.869/31-33.

18. NRS, AF83.870/2.

19. NRS, AF83.872/9, 10, 17, 23.

20. NRS, AF83.883/8-10.

21. NRS, AF83.884/12.

22. NRS, AF83.884/42.

23. NRS, AF83.1265/33.

24. NRS, AF83.1265/60, 61, 62, 74-83.

25. NRS, AF83.940/20, 21.

26. NRS, AF83.941/18, 24-25.

27. NRS, AF83.1175/54-58.

28. NRS, AF83.1174/20-21.

29. NRS, AF83.1189/22, 28, 35 and 36.

30. NRS, AF83.1189/61-68.

31. NRS, AF83.1190/15, 19-22, 36.

32. NRS, AF83.1476/1-9.

33. NRS, AF83.1476/49.

34. NRS, AF83.1476/74-80.