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= The Highland Clearances in Scotland = Having studied "The Highland Clearances" we will be visiting the site of a real village while we are on our week's residential visit, whose tenants were evicted around 200 years ago. In class, we built model 'black houses' from clay and made our thatched roofs from wood and grasses. We took them outside and made our 'highland' village where the crofters and cottars would have lived and farmed.



Our Headteacher played the part of The Countess Elizabeth of Sutherland and our teacher played Patrick Sellar, her tacksman. They both served us with an eviction notice and we had to leave our houses behind. We then had to stand and watch while The Countess ordered our houses to be burned and Mr Sellar set them on fire.



We all stood and watched our properties burn. We pleaded for them to stop. We stood and held on to each other and shouted and screamed as the houses we had worked so hard to build all went up in smoke.



Eventually, all that was left were our derelict houses. We had to all walk away and leave them in ruins, so now we know what it might have felt like for the real crofters and cottars who were evicted during the Highland Clearances.

=Can you help us?= The Highland Clearances took place in northern Scotland (The Highlands) between 1799 and 1830, but the lead up to them happening started much earlier.

Can you make a timeline of events starting from the rise of Protestantism, through the Jacobite Rebellion and on to the middle of the 19th century?


 * 1690** - Protestantism started to become popular in Scotland. Most Highlanders were Catholic.
 * 1742** - Britain had to fight in lots of wars between 1742 and 1815. Lots of Highlanders joined the British army.
 * 1745** - The Jacobite Rebellion fought to place Catholic Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne of England. The French supported.