CULTURE
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Real-life tales |
THE STORY BEHIND… New music album, We Have Won the Land, celebrates a landmark victory in Scottish land reform in the north-west Highlands. Here, musician Rory Matheson explains how the album came about
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mid lockdown’s many challenges, as musicians, we were able to find a faint silver lining – time. Time to create, time to practice, or even time to forget about music altogether. After several years of non-stop music-making, I decided to do the latter – get away from the city for a few months and head home to Assynt. It was during this time at home, while reading the book We Have Won the Land that I had the early idea for this record. The book, written by John MacAskill, gives an in-depth account of the Assynt Crofters’ Trust’s historic and extraordinary campaign to buy back the land from foreign landowners in the early 90s. Although slightly before my time, my family were involved
in the campaign from the very beginning and are still part of the Trust today. Next year (2023) will mark 30 years since the Trust officially became owners of the North Lochinver Estate, which was later renamed the ‘North Assynt Estate’, therefore it seemed a perfect time to help celebrate – and remind people about – the outstanding achievement of the Assynt Crofters’ Trust. The parish of Assynt sits on the west coast of Sutherland in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. In 1989 the wealthy Vestey family renamed a 21,300-acre section of the parish as ‘North Lochinver Estate’ and sold it for just over £1 million to a Swedish land speculator, who in 1992 went into liquidation.
ABOVE: The village of Drumbeg on Loch Drumbeg in front of the spectacular Quinag mountain, in Assynt
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