This revolution of 'improvement' helped shape the landscape we accept today as the Scottish countryside. But it also swept aside a traditional way of life, causing immense upheaval and trauma for rural dwellers, many of whom moved to the new towns and cities or emigrated. In the later eighteenth century the simple act of losing land and becoming landless was much more significant for large numbers of people in Lowland society than it was for those in the Gaelic- speaking Highlands of Scotland. The Lowland Clearances also set in train the trend of depopulation which continues to affect Scotland to this day.

The Lowland Clearances: Scotland’s Silent Revolution 1760–1830

History

Aitchison, Peter

Europe

Birlinn

For eight years Lough and his family laboured in Ohio before returning home to Scotland - where they first had to settle the debts they had left unpaid as they dashed for the Atlantic crossing, before building up a successful coastal trading business. The Loughs experienced tragedy and pain in the First World War and its aftermath. James was distraught when first his wife and then three of his four sons perished. Yet throughout, Lough clung to a personal creed based on the principles of thrift, hard work and personal advancement. He was, in his own words, 'The Noblest Work of God', an honest man with a simple but profound view of right and wrong. In 1928 Lough returned to America where he helped in the compilation of a family tribute to John Craig. Like Lough, Craig was a self-made man. He had backed Lincoln in the Civil War, had made a fortune during Reconstruction, and then lost it again in speculative ventures, before establishing a shipyard on the Great Lakes. In 1908 he was approached to run for President of the United States on the Republican ticket, before standing aside for the eventual winner, William Taft. James Lough received a copy of the Craig book Episodes of my Life in late 1928 and, unknown to his own family, he then wrote down his own long and remarkable life story which he sent back to his kin in America. It lay forgotten there until a chance encounter drew the document back to Scotland and to Lough's great-great grandson, Peter Aitchison. The two works are now combined in a single volume along with a detailed commentary which brings the story up to date - the Loughs went back to fishing in Scotland while the Craigs moved to Long Beach, where they struck oil and are now one of the most successful and celebrated families in California. For the first time in eight decades the two branches of the same family are brought together in a unique book, richly illustrated with period and contemporary photographs. The Noblest Work of God was the basis of a major BBC Radio programme for transmission in December 2004.

The Noblest Work of God: The Memoirs of James Lough, Master Mariner, Eyemouth, Berwickshire and John Craig, Shipbuilder, Toledo, Ohio

Biographies & Memoirs

Regional U.S.

Birlinn Ltd.

189 men drowned in a single afternoon in Scotland's worst fishing disaster. It decimated the coastal community of Eyemouth where the effects of Black Friday are felt yet, some 120 years on. This book tells the story of Eyemouth.

Black Friday

Birlinn Publishers

Black Friday is the astonishing true story of a coastal community that lost 189 men in a single afternoon. Britain's worst fishing disaster decimated the coastal community of Eyemouth, yet is an almost forgotten part of the past. One hundred and twenty-five years on, this is the story of that storm, told through the accounts of fishermen at sea caught up in the maelstrom, of their families waiting anxiously for news, and of its historical context. At its heart is a gripping narrative of survival and high adventure when Eyemouth was the centre of a massive smuggling ring. Author Peter Aitchison does more than simply spin a good yarn: as a direct descendant, his account of how these fishermen plied their trade, led their lives and met their fate in the 1880s is an insightful and compelling read. Previously published as: Children of the Sea.

Black Friday: The Eyemouth Fishing Disaster of 1881

One hundred and eighty-nine men drowned in a single afternoon in Scotland's worst fishing disaster. It is a forgotten part of the nation's past, yet it happened just a hundred and twenty years ago. It decimated the coastal community of Eyemouth where the effects of Black Friday are felt to this day.Children of the Sea is the remarkable story of a village on the margins of the sea and at the edge of the country. It is a tale of survival through the wars of independence and the witch-hunts of the seventeenth century; of danger and high jinks when Eyemouth was the centre of a massive smuggling ring; and above all of the hope and tragedy of fishing and of battles with the minister. It is a story of a people who fought to survive, and whose voice can now be heard, from tales handed down through the generations.

Children of the Sea: The Story of the Eyemouth Disaster

Tuckwell Press, Ltd.

Arising out of research for an acclaimed BBC Scotland series broadcast in 2003, this book addresses the phenomenon of the Lowland, as opposed to the Highland, Clearances. Covering the events that were known at the time and have been referred to by historians since as "The Age of Improvement," this book shows how what actually took place was a wholesale revolution in agriculture. Detailed is how over the course of two generations the very structures of Lowland society were ripped apart-thousands of people were uprooted and hundreds of tiny settlements were destroyed, eradicating an entire social stratum and changing Scotland forever. These Lowland Clearances paved the way for the events that would later sweep through Highland Scotland, and the book contends that they should be called the Scottish Clearances.

The Lowland Clearances: Scotland's Silent Revolution, 1760-1830

Cassell, Andrew

Origin

The Highland Clearances are a well-documented episode in Scotland’s past but they were not unique. The process began in the Scottish Lowlands nearly a century before, when tens of thousands of people – significantly more than were later exiled form the Highlands – were moved from the land by estate owners who replaced them with livestock or enclosed fields of crops. These Clearances undeniably shaped the appearance of the Scottish landscape as it is today as they swept aside a traditional way of life, causing immense upheaval for rural dwellers, many of whom moved to the new towns and cities or emigrated. Based on pioneering historical research, this book tells the story of the Lowland Clearances, establishing them as a wider part of the process of Clearance which affected the whole country and changed the face of Scotland forever.

The Lowland Clearances: Scotland's Silent Revolution 1760 - 1830

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Books by Aitchison, Peter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Aitchison, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Lowland Clearances: Scotland’s Silent Revolution 1760–1830

The Noblest Work of God: The Memoirs of James Lough, Master Mariner, Eyemouth, Berwickshire and John Craig, Shipbuilder, Toledo, Ohio

Black Friday

Black Friday: The Eyemouth Fishing Disaster of 1881

Children of the Sea: The Story of the Eyemouth Disaster

The Lowland Clearances: Scotland's Silent Revolution, 1760-1830

Black Friday: The Eyemouth Fishing Disaster of 1881

The Lowland Clearances: Scotland's Silent Revolution 1760 - 1830