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GREAT material progress
has been made in this parish within the last twenty years, as
testified by the neat and handsome farm houses and offices
everywhere to be found.
Nearly the whole
parish belongs to the Earls of Moray, who rounded off their
possession some years ago by the acquisition of Bracklich. It is now
a silent quiescent parish, though atone time torn by warfare.
The bounds of the old
lordship of Petty cannot now be distinctly defined. After the
forfeiture of that Earl of Douglas who married the heiress of the
Dunbar Earls of Moray, the lands were in continuous dispute.
Mackintoshes, Ogilvies, the Little Earl of Moray of the Stuart line,
all contended. These disputes are so well known that it would be
superfluous to give any account here, suffice it to say that the
Mackintoshes were ultimately expelled, and have not a foot of its
land other than a distinct place of sepulchre within the old church
of Petty. What Mackintosh reminiscences the Parish has? Halhill,
where so many Ogilvies were slaughtered; Termit, where in 1609, the
biggest Clan Chattan muster ever took place. Connage then
comprehended almost the whole of the Parish, lying between the long
hollow whence water flows west to the bay of Castle Stuart, and east
to the burn or ditch dividing Campbelltown on the one side, and the
sea on the other. As this great hollow in winter and floods, before
drainage works were known, filled with water it sometimes gave
Connage the appearance of a long island, and is indeed sometimes
described as an island.
I desire to refer,
being little known in history, to that part of Petty, lying at its
south or west, and adjoining Inverness, known as Alturlies.
This small estate,
long the property of the Culloden family, was Templar ground, and
given off in feu about three hundred years ago. The first owners of
whom I have note were named Wincester. After Mackintoshes and
Cuthberts, the estate was divided into two portions, and the
distinction of halves is still kept up in the titles. In 1687, John
Cuthbert of Alturlies sold the estate in halves, one half to George
Cumming, the other to Robert Rose. Some time thereafter, Cumming
sold his half of the property and superiority to John Forbes of
Culloden, about 1727. Robert Rose's family possessed the other half,
until 1757, when the Rose half was sold judicially to William Fraser
of Balnain. Balnain, shortly after the purchase, feued his half to
Culloden, and the latter family thus hold half of Alturlies direct
of the Crown and the other half of Balnain's heirs. The old feu was
eight merks for the whole, and the estate, including small fishings,
though so small, had the high valuation of £301 14s, Scots. The
estate presents many opportunities for being opened up and developed
in form of villas, and for boating and yachting and fishing
purposes, whereby the people of Inverness could almost at their own
doors obtain all they have now to seek for in summer and autumn at
considerable distances.
It is to be hoped
that Castle Stuart, so long uninhabited though restored, will, like
its neighbour of Dalcross, be again regularly inhabited, and its old
amenities revived, restored, and augmented. |
