port henderson : past & present - Royal Commission on the Ancient ...

fishing village and which later became the crofting township. These were :
‘William bain Mackenzie, William Fraser, Murdo MacDonald, Donald Mackenzie, Alexander
Macpherson, Angus MacDonald, Roderick Mackenzie, Alexn. Campbell, Donald Mackenzie, Murdo
Mackenzie, Alexr. Macpherson, Duncan Macpherson, Alexr. Macpherson, Hector Urquhart (deleted),
James MacDonald, John MacLean, Murdo Fraser (deleted), Niel Macpherson, John Macpherson,
Murdo MacDonald, John Fraser, Kenneth MacMillan, John Campbell, Willm. MacKay on condition
of occupying the same by building their houses two and two joined and as lotted out, for the first Five
years to pay no Rent but to build their march dykes, make a <strong>port</strong> and road from the house to the same
and for the next fifteen years to pay one Guinea each of yearly rent beginning the first years payment
at Martinmas eighteen hundred and twenty and so on yearly. To be removeable by the decision of a
majority of the neighbours their fellow labourers in the place before the Proprietor or Factor for the time.
The ground must be laboured and laid regularly by draining and each man is to enclose one hundred feet
back the breadth of his front ground or each two for a yard or Garden between them.
Hector MacKenzie’
(The Murdoch Fraser from Portscounan is shown in the list above but his name has been crossed out.
Maybe he was thought to have been a possible tenant but that he had died. Other names on the list can
be seen as having registered their children from 1815 onwards, such as Duncan MacPherson and his
wife, Mary, registering Alexander in 1815 and Donald in 1819, and Neil MacPherson and his wife,
Katherine Urquhart, registering a daughter, Isabelle, in
Ruins of fishermen's houses on croft 22
1819). As stated earlier there are the remains of two rows of
cottages and these are marked on the Estate map (shown on
the A’ Sgùmán peninsular and where crofts 21, 9 and 22
were later allocated) and it is likely that all these date from
1815 when the fishing village was first set up. There were
many of these cottages (the Estate Map shows five buildings
on the peninsular, maybe eight in the first group plus three
further along and fifteen in the second group but these need not all be houses) and on the first census of
1841 26 separate households were recorded. Although this could indicate that there may have been
other cottar’s dwellings there are no non-shore buildings shown on the Estate map thus it is probable
that there were more shore-built dwellings which have long disappeared.
132 people lived in Port Henderson in 1841, about 70% of these being
adult (aged 15 and over). As has been described earlier a ‘<strong>port</strong>’ was a
cleared section of shoreline where small boats could be pulled up and
beached. These landing places were delineated by larger boulders and
presumably would need clearing when storms dislodged the stones, A former landing place
making it difficult for boats to be moored. Because of the geography of
the land more than one <strong>port</strong> was made. The roads would have been roughly cleared tracks.
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