Loch Rumsdale and Rumsdale sheep farm holdings

[Christina Baldwin]

Hello,

http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/pmap.html?I:300500|939500|10|Rumsdale (http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/pmap.html?I:300500|939500|10|Rumsdale)
I have put a link on here that I would like more information on. On opening the link it shows land deep in the heart of Caithness. It may be necessary to pan the map a little toward Loch Rumsdale. The locality I am wanting more information on is the large stone square that is easily visible - that I have checked against an Ordnance map 1872 that identifies this place as Rumsdale. Has any reader been in there (say for fishing) and seen this Rumsdale sheep holding and would anyone know if there are dwelling (ruined croft etc) remains there. John McLeod was a shepherd at Rumsdale for over 40 years & he & his wife Christina had 11 or 12 children all shown in the Halkirk birth records as being born at Rumsdale. I am trying to establish if they lived out here or possibly they may have lived at the shepherds house at Dalnawillan. But it seems to me that if the birth records say Rumsdale then this stone holdings would be where the dwelling was.
Second question please. The map shows many long straight lines on the hills - are those the remains of peat diggings? Again if they are I suppose that would indicate human habitation out there for many years - perhaps another clue that the place was the locality where the McLeod family lived. If they are not peat diggings then what would they be?
Thanks for any light able to be shed on the matter (or even any photos from a walking trip out there). Christina

[Stefan]

There is a house in Halkirk called Rumsdale.

I can't find the stone square on your link nor can I identify Loch Rumsdale. There is a Loch Rimsdale on google maps but in a different location to your map.
Can you link to a closer map of the stone square?

[spittalhill]

If you look up www.geograph.org.uk and enter Rumsdale in the search box a photograph of Rumsdale bridge should come up. You can also enter Dalnawillan, Glutt etc to find photos of neighbouring areas.

[Christina Baldwin]

Thank you for the time you took to reply to my query Stefan and Spittalhill. Much appreciated. I will try to give better directions as the map I used wont go any closer on a selected link. I will try to send an attachment file from Google Earth with a picture of the enclosure - which doesnt show the straight marks on the hills but shows what I am looking for anyway. Google Earth isnt great in this case (which is why I sent the other map initially as this part of Caithness in Google is covered in a dark film and is very hard to see). The Rimsdale Google brings up is not the Rumsdale I want and Google Earth doesn't recognise Loch Rumsdale. The other link you suggested Spittalhill has the name right but no images.
But I will try to give better direction to my original map which is a much better aerial map than Google Earth in this case. There is a fork in the stream - one stream goes downhill and the other is flowing back to the source. If you follow the stream (the track goes above it) upstream (or West) toward the source a short way by panning the map, the square enclosure is on the North side of the stream and the track joins it again. Loch Rumsdale is a small oval Loch nearby. I hope this is a bit clearer this time. Best regards Christina
New Zealand

[spittalhill]

Hi Christine, I think your ancestors would definitely have lived at Rumsdale, rather than Dalnawillan. There was another farm, Dalganachan, between Rumsdale and Dalnawillan. It is at the junction of the "road" to Glutt and that to Rumsdale. It is beside the bridge over Rumsdale Water which is on the Geograph photo I referenced in my earlier post.

[Christina Baldwin]

Aha SpittalHill - I see what you mean. That is very useful information you have provided. Thank you. I did not have Dalganachan on my radar so wasn't aware if its existence. I have now made a better job of following up your original link and found some good photos of the area near Rumsdale including some deserted house at Dalganachan. I have also looked it up on the 1871 Ordnance map and I see there are sheepfolds etc marked at Dalganachan, so, as you said, it was clearly a sheepfarm between Rumsdale and Dalnawillan.
I will just have to hope one of these wonderful keen people who cycle round taking photos for the geograph project go in to Rumsdale sometime and post some photos. Big thanks again for your help. Christina

[Christina Baldwin]

Hello me again
Re the lines on the landscape that show up around Rumsdale in the aerial map in my first post in this thread - are they peat diggings?
Thanks Christina

[Rosemary Skea]

I would think that the lines on the hillside are just features of the landscape. Peat is dug from flat boggy areas and certainly not in long strips down a hill. As a child in Shetland, one of the summer tasks was to go to the peat hill and help with filling trailers of the dried peat for transport home. Now oil and gas heating has meant the demise of the "peat hill". Looking at the surrounding area, these may have been furrows ripped for potential forestry plantings at some time.

Rosemary


Hello me again
Re the lines on the landscape that show up around Rumsdale in the aerial map in my first post in this thread - are they peat diggings?
Thanks Christina

[grandma]

Re lines in the hill - they are grouse ditches (that's what we call them anyway). Men from the estates were employed to go out and dig ditches to let the water run off the hill so that the heather could flourish and so too the grouse, which were then shot. Scottish Natural Heritage are now blocking up these drains in some areas to allow the boggy conditions to prevail again. Hope this is of help to you.

[Christina Baldwin]

Thanks Grandma and Rosemary for your replies. Yes I think the grouse ditches sounds right. That is most interesting. I did wonder about the idea that they could be forestry lines but there are so many of them and they have clearly never been planted even though other trees are planted in the vicinity. I have found a few old reports on the Internet written by the hunting fraternity and they were certainly very 'obsessed' with taking huge bags of grouse and would go to extraordinary lengths and spare no expense to do so. The land at Rumsdale must have been quite boggy in the first place judging by the number of ditches. It must have been very difficult to farm sheep out there (being an ex sheep farmer myself). The bogs must have caused misery for the sheep's feet - that need looking after even in good conditions. Probably caused misery for the shepherd's feet too I'll be bound.
Greetings & thanks
Christina, New Zealand