Dunning Parish Historical Society in Perthshire Scotland has local Dunning history data including dunning village census and grave yard geneaology records Dunning history society logo text

Crossroads and Characters

Crossroads pic18

18. THE TENANT FARMERS.

A century ago most of the land in Dunning parish was still divided among the great land-owners. In many cases, the land was rented to tenant farmers. This family, the Youngs, farmed a tract called Findony belonging to Lord Rollo. Their photograph, probably the oldest in the book, dates to the 1870's.

By this time, vast changes had taken place in agriculture.

Larger landowners found it more profitable to turn tenant farms into large grazing areas for sheep. The wool market was on the rise for Scots. For a century after the union with England in 1707, Scotland had been restricted in its wool production.

In the 19th century in the smaller hill-farms of Dunning, leases were not renewed and tenants gave way to sheep. Some years later, larger tenant farmers like the Youngs were replaced by independent farmers. The Youngs never owned the farm they worked; their successors did buy it in 1927.

Harsh as the rental system may have been for farmers, at least they were never restricted from making manure piles. A not untypical lease for a resident of the village of Dunning, where cows, pigs and poultry were at one time the most numerous inhabitants, stated that the lessor 'shall not have liberty to erect any tanworks, Butchers Shambles, Candleworks, Heckling houses or other noxious and dangerous works upon the ground hereby feued, nor shall they be allowed to lay out any Dunghills upon the front street passing by their said property, without permission of the owners of Duncrub.'

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