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The Vatersay Raiders

By (author) Ben Buxton
Genres: Local history
Format: Paperback / softback
Publisher: Birlinn General, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Imprint: Birlinn Ltd
Published: 17th Apr 2008
Dimensions: w 135mm h 192mm d 21mm
Weight: 250g
ISBN-10: 184158553X
ISBN-13: 9781841585536
Barcode No: 9781841585536
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Synopsis
All they wanted was land: land for crofting and land on which to build a house. In 1908, ten desperate men from the islands of Barra and Mingulay in the Western Isles were imprisoned for refusing to leave the island of Vatersay which they had raided, building huts and planting potatoes without permission. The case caused an outcry across Scotland, and the government eventually bought Vatersay for crofting. This book, the first about Vatersay, draws on detailed records to tell the remarkable story of the raiders: their struggle to escape from the poverty which, they claimed, the policies of the absentee landowner forced them to endure, the raiding and settlement of the island and the fraught process of dividing it up into crofts. An outline of subsequent developments in Vatersay, including the causeway, brings the account up to date. The book also documents the fascinating earlier history of Vatersay and its now-deserted neighbour Sandray. The story ranges from the intriguing monuments of prehistory to the shipwrecks and the 19th century evictions to make way for sheep-farming.

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'Lucid, fair-minded and refreshingly realistic' -- Rab Houston * BBC History Magazine * 'Deserves to be another prizewinner for the author' * The Northern Mariner *