Why did Plocaig Die?

Plocaig is a deserted village a kilometre to the northeast of Sanna. It's tempting to call it another of the 'Clearance Villages', a reference to the removal of villagers during the late 18th and early 19th centuries by landowners anxious to use the land commercially to run sheep - but it isn't.

From this picture, we know that Plocaig was still alive during the early 20th century - the picture comes from Catriona MacMillan's collection (see more on the West Ardnamurchan Vintage Photograph site here), and is dated 1932.

It seems most likely that Plocaig was abandoned over a period of years through an accident of geography. At a time when Sanna lost a high percentage of its population, Plocaig lacked the one thing Sanna had - a road - and, to make things worse, it was on the other side of a stream, the Sanna Burn.

Isolated, its population dependent on two industries - keeping sheep and fishing - which required good communications, people began to move away. As with so many such villages, it would have been the young who left first, drawn to the prospect of work in the cities down south, so the population became steadily older and older until it finally died out.

Walking amongst the ruined buildings, it's easy to imagine what the place was like at its height. The flat area in front of the neat row of houses would have been where the children played. There's a neat harbour where the fishing boats would have been pulled up. There's plenty of grazing for animals, a marsh with long grass for thatching, peat aplenty for the fires, and the remains of woodland. But it would have been a bitterly hard life: little wonder that those who could, left.