Coire Dùbh: The Lost Village of Sutherland

The Scottish Highlands are a land of beauty, mystery, and sorrow. Among the rolling hills and deep lochs, there are places where time has stood still, where the past lingers like the mist that clings to the moors at dawn. Coire Dùbh was one such place. It was never a grand settlement, never marked on the great maps of the world, but for those who lived there, it was everything. It was home.

Now, there is almost nothing left of Coire Dùbh. No houses, no voices, no laughter carried on the wind. Only the land remains, silent and knowing, hiding its memories beneath layers of heather and stone. For those who search, a few traces can still be found—old walls, buried under moss, a collapsed chimney that once sent smoke curling into the Highland air. But the people are long gone. Driven away not by war or famine, but by greed and cruelty.

The last fires of Coire Dùbh were extinguished in the early 19th century, during the darkest days of the Highland Clearances. It was then that the laird, eager for profit, decided that sheep were of greater value than the families who had lived on his land for generations. And so, Coire Dùbh was wiped from history. But for those who remember, its spirit still lingers.

A Village in the Highlands

Coire Dùbh was nestled in a glen near Loch Assynt, in the wild heart of Sutherland. It was a small village, barely more than a cluster of whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs, their chimneys puffing out smoke on cold mornings. A narrow, winding path led from the village down to the loch, where the water shimmered in the light of the setting sun. Children played on its shores, their laughter echoing across the stillness.

The people of Coire Dùbh were crofters—hardworking men and women who tended small plots of land, raised cattle, and fished the loch. Life was simple but good. The seasons shaped their days: lambing in the spring, peat-cutting in the summer, the gathering of the harvest in autumn, and long winter nights by the fire, telling stories in the flickering candlelight.

The village church stood at the highest point of the glen, its stone walls weathered by centuries of Highland wind and rain. On Sundays, families would walk the rough path to worship, the minister’s voice carrying over the hills as he preached in the old Gaelic tongue.

The land was not easy, but it was home. And to those who lived there, no other place in the world could compare.

The Day the Fires Went Out

The letters came first—formal, printed words from the laird’s factor, telling the people that they must leave. Some could not read them, but they knew what they meant. There had been rumors, whispers carried from one glen to another. Other villages had already been emptied. Families scattered. Cottages burned. Now, it was Coire Dùbh’s turn.

The laird wanted the land for sheep. The crofters were in the way. And so, on a cold morning in April 1816, the eviction began.

The factor arrived with a group of men, armed with iron rods and torches. They gave the villagers little time to gather their belongings. Some tried to resist, but what could they do against men with fire in their hands?

One by one, the cottages were emptied. Then the thatch was set alight. Smoke curled into the sky as flames took hold, crackling and spitting, eating away at the homes that had stood for generations. The people could do nothing but watch as everything they had ever known was reduced to ash.

An old woman—widowed, frail, her hands twisted with age—stood on the hillside as her house burned. She did not cry. She did not beg. She simply whispered, “They will have their sheep, but they will never have our souls.”

By nightfall, Coire Dùbh was gone.

The Raven’s Nest and the Minister’s Study

Years later, a woman who had been a child on the day of the eviction returned to the glen. She had left Scotland, as so many others had, and built a new life across the sea. But something had called her back, an ache in her heart, a longing for the land of her birth.

She found nothing of Coire Dùbh. The village was gone, swallowed by time and silence. But when she came to the place where the minister’s house had once stood, she saw something that filled her with sorrow.

“I saw the raven’s nest in your old home,” she wrote, “and dogs kennelled in the minister’s study.”

Her words captured the full weight of the tragedy. The village had not only been emptied, it had been forgotten. Even the house of God had been repurposed for the new world. Where there had once been hymns and prayers, there was now only the barking of animals.

The Land Remembers

The laird and his sheep are long gone now. The great estates have changed hands many times, and the names of those who ordered the evictions have faded from memory. But the land has not forgotten.

Adaped From: Sinclair, J. (1890). Scenes and stories of the north of Scotland. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.