Join Timespan’s Digital Heritage Curator, Jacquie Aitken, and local historian and crofter, Esther Macdonald, for a live tour of a Pre-Clearances Settlement in the river valley of Kildonan, in East Sutherland, in 1813. The old farming township has been digitally reconstructed using archaeological and archival evidence and includes longhouses and outbuildings, corn-drying kiln, illicit whisky still and rig and furrow cultivation. Learn about the farming sub-tenants and their ways of life and how this was abruptly brought to an end by the Empire building landowners at the time of the Highland Clearances. Find out what happened to the displaced people from Kildonan and the rise of the crofting community and land league movement. We’ll also be looking at the use of natural resources and environmental sustainability before and after the Clearances.