Discover Treshnish

We have been living and farming at Treshnish since 1994. If you would like to read more about how we got here, please visit Our Story!

Here you can find more information about Treshnish, the farm, and our commitment to the environment and wildlife that surrounds us.

Some Treshnish history

Mull is peppered with scheduled monuments, such as the villages of Crackaig and Glac Gugairidh which are on the south side of Treshnish Farm, poignant reminders of the past.

Crackaig and Glac Gugairidh were not torched or destroyed during the Clearances. There is very little written history about the villages, but the population died out partially from an outbreak of typhoid – there is a ruined house about a mile away which was used for isolation.

Between the 1830’s and 1880’s, Mull’s population dropped from around 10,000 to less than 4,000. The years between were a harrowing period of great suffering and adversity as the islands experienced ten years of potato famine, the collapse of the kelp industry and the Clearances. Thousands of men, women and children were removed, often forcibly, from their homes during this period, and transported across the world, or relocated locally against their will, as sheep became the new, more lucrative, ‘tenant’.

When we first moved to Treshnish we met P who remembered coming to Crackaig as a young boy to visit an elderly man, his relative, who was the last person living here. He died in the early 1900’s. As I walked through the ruins, it felt extraordinary to recall that for a moment, we had first hand experience of an oral history linking back to a time when the village was alive over a hundred years ago.

There is very little written history, but six or seven families were forcibly removed from the two villages at Treshnish, and the rest of the settlement populations died out over time from Typhoid.

Historic Scotland come and survey the scheduled monuments every few years, it is good to know that we are looking after the sites, and don’t need to do anything else. We don’t allow cattle to graze on this part of the hill in case they knock the walls down. We control the bracken as best we can, particularly around the ruin walls. We have controlled the bracken up above the village where the village fank was and our sheep are grazing there again.