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

etween 1834 and 1846 but it is recorded that he was ‘not efficient’ so he received superannuation
from 1841. It appears that the S.S.P.C.K. school closed around that time. (The next school to open in
the area was in Opinan in 1851 - see p.50).
The census for 1841 records a 60 year old Alex Torrie as a tenant and schoolmaster who lived
with Mary, presumably his wife and Margaret, John, Norman, Jessie and Roderick, presumably his
daughters and sons, aged from 25 years down to 12 years. This family is not shown on any later census
for Port Henderson.
In 1841 Charles MacLeod, a Free Church Catechist, lived somewhere in the township with his
servant but once the crofts were made it is not known where he subsequently moved.
6) Port Henderson - the Crofting Township
Sir Francis Mackenzie was an innovative laird and he had many ideas for his new crofting townships.
The creation of the crofts in Gairloch were carried out in 1845, later than elsewhere in most of the
Highlands & Islands and by 1884 most of the cleared land in the Highlands and Islands had started to
become crofting townships as a result of settlement schemes recommended by the Re<strong>port</strong> of the <strong>Royal</strong>
<strong>Commission</strong> of Inquiry into the Condition of Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands. The
Gairloch croft pattern was organised in squares rather than rectangles and the associated settlement
pattern is scattered rather than linear. Port Henderson’s pattern does not follow this strictly.
According to the Napier <strong>Commission</strong> of 1883 which looked into crofting conditions a crofter
was defined as :
‘a small tenant of land with or without a lease, who finds in the cultivation of his holding a material
<strong>port</strong>ion of his occupation, earnings, and sustenance, and who pays rent directly to the proprietor.’
After the death of Sir Francis, his younger brother, Dr. John Mackenzie, managed the Gairloch
estate from 1841. (See the appendix for information about crofting which first appeared in the booklet
Lonemore : Big Damp Meadow).
22 crofts were planned for Port
This is current, showing croft
Henderson but it is said that croft 1 boundaries, passages &
ap<strong>port</strong>ionments
was not worked, although a house was
built on the land (and there are
definite census records for 1881, 1891
and 1901 and in the Opinan Public
School Logbook of 1921 there was a
reference to a Colin Mackenzie, a
pupil, who lived at No. 1 Port
Henderson), and the peninsular part of croft 21 was retained by the Laird. This housed the salmon
fishing station and the corn drying kilns. The crofts were of varying shapes and not as regular as the
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