Land Raid

Our house is in the crofting township of Paiblesgarry, one of several such townships in the coastal district of Paible on the west coast of North Uist. Today we came across a Monument we had not noticed before - a Memorial for the men involved in the Paiblesgarry Land Raid of 1921. 

A group of local men had been promised land if they signed up to fight in the First World War. When the survivors returned they tried to claim the land but were denied. So twelve of them set off one day with spades - led by a piper - and dug up a large field for potatoes. As time went on they were confronted by the Laird of the Balranald Estate, which the men ignored. Eventually there was a court case and the men were given prison sentences. They got the land though - farms were set up as crofting land settlement schemes. 

This monument stands in a ‘Memorial Garden’, but gardens don’t really exist on North Uist, so it is just some huge boulders, and the monument has the names of the twelve men involved in the raid.