In the early 1880s the crofters of Glendale, 7 miles out from Dunvegan, demanded back their common grazing, led by John MacPherson. Five of them stood a token trial and were jailed for two months, and became known as the Glendale Martyrs; there’s a memorial in the village. The government bought the estate in 1904, and Glendale’s crofters were the only ones on its estates to stick with a scheme to buy their land over 50 years. By the mid-1950s they owned their crofts and, together, the hill grazing, as they still do. In summer you can watch tweed woven on a pedal-powered loom at Skye Weavers in Fasach, on the road to Neist Point, Skye’s most westerly point.
