The Agricultural Revolution Changing life on the farms of Britain

On your whiteboards List all the benefits of the agricultural revolution

Learning objective To gain an understanding of the Highland Clearances

Highland Clearances

Highland Clearances People in the north of Scotland in the early 1800s lived a very simple way of life. The economy was not greatly developed and farmers lived in small houses called crofts. Most of the land in northern Scotland was owned by English aristocratic landlords who would extract as much tax from the crofters as possible, force them to work long hours processing kelp to use as fertilizer or tending to their personal land and gradually reduced the size of each family’s holdings. Highlanders still had a clan structure in place where they gave their allegiance to a local chief who represented them and they resented their foreign landlords. The Scots spoke Gaelic. When these English landlords realized that the crofters were causing them far too much trouble and they could make more money from industrialized sheep farming they forced the local people off their land by attacking them and burning their houses. These Scots either joined the British army or emigrated to different places in the expanding British Empire.

Croft

Croft

Inside a croft

Collecting and processing kelp

Highland clearances

Highland Clearances: 1792 the year of the sheep

Highland clearances task Use the BBC website on the Highland Clearances (link on the website) to make a presentation on A3 paper Use a combination of drawings and text to show: 1) What life was like in 1800 on a croft? 2) What happened in Glenmorven in 1814? How did life change on the croft? 3) What happened to the residents of Glenmorven in 1821 who were forced off their land?

BBC website