What is it about?
This article examines the establishment of the most northerly cotton spinning mill in Britain, situated on the north side of the Dornoch Firth in Sutherland. It was founded in 1795 on the Skibo estate of the improving Angus laird, George Dempster, MP for the Perth Burghs. Dempster was assisted in his efforts by a group of Glasgow merchant/manufacturers, one of whom, George Mackintosh, had Highland origins. The cotton spinning mill at Spinningdale, on the north side of the Dornoch Firth in Sutherland, was founded in 1791 by George Dempster, MP for the Perth Burghs, on his Highland estate at Skibo in Sutherland. He hoped to counteract the malign effects of clearances for sheep farming, taking place in the Scottish Highlands, most notoriously on the nearby Sutherland estates in Strathnaver. Dempster was supported in his endeavours by a group of Glasgow merchant/manufacturers, one of whom, George Mackintosh, had Highland connections (he was born in Rossshire). Dempster and his supporters, who also included David Dale, the ‘father’ of the Scottish Cotton Industry, who founded the cotton mills at New Lanark, struggled to run a profitable business so far north, and so far away from markets and supplies of raw cotton via the Glasgow cotton exchange. The other problem they faced was the unwillingness of the Highland workforce to submit to long factory hours, and be confined indoors. For all these reasons, the mill at Spinningdale had a short life, but has survived as a picturesque ruin down to the present day.
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Why is it important?
Spinningdale was Britain’s most northerly cotton mill, and is a monument to Scottish enlightenment thinking, about the beneficial effects of establishing manufacturing industries in the most unpromising locations. It also provides a good example of the culture clash that could occur when Enlightenment thinking came head to head with the traditional world of Highland, Gaelic culture, with a workforce used to subsistence agriculture, and completely unused to strict factory discipline, and long hours of indoor work, regulated by the inexorable pace of the machine.
Perspectives
This subject appealed to me as an example of the tensions and conflict that can occur when modernism or ‘progress’ meets an old established traditional way of life, based on subsistence agriculture in a challenging climate and a remote location. I gave a talk at Skibo Castle in Dornoch (former Highland estate of George Dempster MP, now a luxury hotel) to a local history group, and was very struck by the powerful reaction of local people when I mentioned the Highland Clearances in my talk.
Mr ANTHONY JOHN COOKE
University of Dundee
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cotton and the Scottish Highland Cleatrances — the Development of Spinningdale 1791–1806, Textile History, January 1995, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1179/004049695793711861.
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