Tinker Tents and the Unseen Life of the 19th Century Scottish Woods

In the late 19th century, long before the tourist boom reshaped the Scottish Highlands and well ahead of the annual August arrival of well-heeled sportsmen, a quieter, often unspoken migration took place each year: the arrival of tinker families and their tented camps in secluded Highland woods. This article explores the largely unseen and frequently misunderstood world of these seasonal visitors to Stratheden, a typical Highland parish. Here, the wooded straths and hidden hollows became temporary homes to nomadic tinworkers, horse dealers, and their large, resilient families—carrying on a tradition as old as the heathered hills themselves, and often in quiet conflict with the settled society surrounding them.

Though their visits predated both the glamour of the grouse season and the leisure pursuits of Victorian tourists, their presence left a deeper mark on local memory. The tinker way of life, a blend of transience, barter economy, and fiercely maintained clan identity, offered a parallel culture rooted in survival—and it unfolded just beyond the croft lines, in the smoke of morning fires rising through the trees.