Place:Evanton, Ross and Cromarty, Scotland

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Evanton (Scottish Gaelic: Baile Eòghainn or Am Baile Ùr) is a large village in Easter Ross, in the Highland Council Area of Scotland. It lies between the river Sgitheach and the Allt Graad, and is 24 kilometres (15 mi) north of the city of Inverness, some 6.5 km (4.0 mi) south-west of Alness, and 10 km (6.2 mi) north-east of Dingwall. The village has a dozen or so streets, the main one being Balconie Street (B817). It has been described by analysts at Highland Council as a "commuting settlement", because most of the inhabitants work in other areas of Easter Ross and the greater Inverness area.[2]

The current town was founded in the early nineteenth century by Alexander Fraser of Inchcoulter/Balconie who named it after his son Evan, but the core of the village buildings date from the Victorian era. The new village was partly a convenient way of absorbing the numbers of people in the parish who were being evicted to make way for sheep, a process which was part of the historical phenomenon known as the Highland Clearances. By the 1840s, the process meant that Evanton had a population of 500 people, more than a quarter of the population of the parish, which was 1800.

History

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In Kiltearn there had been a settlement, an old ferm toun known as Drummond (Drumainn), near the location of Evanton, and several lordly residences, such as Foulis, Novar and Balconie Castle. In 1806 Alexander Fraser, who had made his money through slave plantations in the West Indies, paid (through his wife's uncle Evan Baillie) £4500 for an instalment on the purchase of the Inchcoulter estate (a.k.a. Balconie). Having bought the estate Alexander Fraser put in place the grid formation of the new village (adjacent to the old village of Drummond), which he named Evanton after his son Evan Baillie Fraser (who had been named after his great uncle). He further named the initial parallel streets – one after his estate (Balconie), and 3 after plantations with which he had close connections, namely Camden, Livera and Hermitage: • Camden: In 1813, Alexander Fraser and John Stewart, both of Crossing Square London, had purchased the Camden estate in Trinidad from the failed Boldero banking concern. There were 210 slaves in 1813 – including a creole boy Davy Campbell, aged 7, who worked in the grass gang; by 1836 85 slaves remained. • Livera/Levera: In 1835 there were 94 slaves in Levera (sic), Grenada. Alexander Fraser unsuccessfully claimed compensation for both Levera and Camden Estates upon emancipation – most of the money going instead to his wife’s Baillie cousins. • Hermitage: Alexander Fraser managed this plantation for the Baillies who had bought it in 1765. In 1836 there were 149 slaves in Hermitage, Grenada.^[1]

To this day, in the words of one historian, Evanton "remains today an attractive example of a well planned, regularly laid out estate village". The Reverend Thomas Munro expressed similar sentiments in the 1840s, when he wrote that "the village was built on a waste of land, and differs from all others in the country by its regular and neat appearance". The village suffered from the severe famine that plagued the Highlands in the 1840s. There was a riot in the village in 1846, because the authorities continued to export grain despite the failure of the previous year's potato crop; similar riots occurred in Rosemarkie, Balintraid and Avoch. In 1847, there was near starvation in the village, and the villagers managed to maintain themselves on turnips. However, the village population recovered; by the beginnings of the First World War, Evanton had taken much of its current physical shape, and at this point in time contained businesses as diverse as a tobacconist and a bicycle shop, both of which have subsequently disappeared.

In the 20th century, the village enjoyed a variety of fortunes. The distillery closed in 1926 (see below) and one of the most important historical locations in Easter Ross, Balconie Castle, was demolished in 1965. It had been an old seat of the Earls of Ross, but by the 1960s the owner could not afford to repair the dry rot. There was a RAF airfield constructed near Evanton in 1922, on Alness Bay. It was first known as the "Novar Base", because of its location on the Novar Estates, then later as HMS Fieldfare. It was serviced from Leuchars, and was used by the aircraft from the nearby Home Fleet base of Invergordon. The largest aircraft to have landed there was a USAAF B17. On Empire Day, 1939, RAF bases all over the United Kingdom were opened to the public, and the Evanton Aerodrome was the most northerly location to participate, attracting 9,000 visitors. In 1956, the airfield served as one of the launch bases of the GENETRIX program, to send stratospheric balloons carrying high resolution cameras over the Soviet Union. Of the 516 balloons launched from the five bases, 103 were launched from Evanton, of which 60 were successful, and 43 failed soon after launch, or gone stray, the base closed in the 1970's. However, the subsequent oil boom caused radical expansion of the village. It has been growing steadily ever since.

For further information of a genealogical nature, see the parish of Kiltearn.