History of The Ord of Caithness
From the village of Helmsdale the Great North Road climbs steadily for some three miles till it reaches the summit of the Ord, the gateway into Caithness. To the casual traveller the journey is probably in no way remarkable. The road is good and the modern car makes light of even its steepest gradient. The scene may strike him as not unlike many other parts of the Highlands. Above the road a rampart of hills rises steeply, shutting out the interior of the country completely from view, and below, the land, for the most part a waste of heather, whin and bracken, falls away to a ragged edge of headlands notched here and there by burns that plunge headlong over the rock face into the sea. To the ear comes the faint, unceasing clamour of sea-fowl, wheeling and gliding restlessly high above the headlands, or it may be the strident "goback, goback" of grouse skimming in startled haste low over the moorland. For the rest, loneliness and a great silence. Perhaps nothing very remarkable in all this; nor in the little hamlet of Navidale, derelict like most Highland crofting communities today, with its narrow "lots" of cultivated land stretching from the cliff edge up the hillside into the wilderness beyond.
The east coast of Sutherland, near Badbea
Photo by David Paterson Photography
But there was a day when Navidale mattered much to the peoples of the North. For it was here in the early 5th century that Saint Ninian, Apostle to the Picts of Scotland, established a Christian community, the authorities gave the place its name - The Saint's Dale (naomh = saint, in gaelic 'mh' sounds 'v'). These early missionaries had an unerring eye for a pleasant and strategic spot. On a fertile spit of land, flanked on either side by burns and sheltered from the harsh northerly winds, Saint Ninian built a chapel where the ancient churchyard now stands, and in a wide ranging circle around it erected a wall of turf and stone (still to be seen in places) within which fugitives from justice and injustice alike might find sanctuary from their enemies.
For centuries Navidale was a bridgehead of Christian enlightenment in a dark and turbulent land, and from it there radiated civilising influences into the glens and straths of the countryside around. Many of the place names obviously owe their origin to Christian settlements, e.g. KIldonan and Kilphedir, and bear witness to the success of this early missionary enterprise. Sir Robert Gordon, writing in the early 17th century, tells us that in 1556 the chapel was burned, probably in an outburst of reforming zeal, by an invading force from Strathnaver, and within living memory blackened stones were occasionally found when graves were being dug. All that is now to be seen are the ancient baptismal fonts.
If ever a Christian settlement were needed it was surely at Navidale. For centuries the borderland of Sutherland and Caithness was the scene of continual clan warfare. The times were rough and lawless and no doubt the resources of the sanctuary were taxed to the uttermost. The Ord itself had acquired an evil reputation which it has scarcely lived down to this day. The ancient superstition that it was fatal for a Sinclair to cross the Ord in green on a Monday harks back to 1513 and the tragic Field of Flodden, from which not one of a band of 300 Sinclairs with their Earl at their head returned. And to this day Montrose's Track is pointed out - the track followed by the great Marquis himself which was to lead him to Assynt and his shameful betrayal and to end with his savage death at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh.
Up till the early years of the 18th century the road followed a giddy course across the face of the headland some 800 feet above the sea, and many are the grim tales associated with it. The old folks tell of one wild winter's night when the coach was blown off the road and hurled on the rocks below, and history records that robbers haunted the Ord till Sir Robert Gordon, who was acting as Regent for the young Earl of Sutherland, took summary action and hanged them on gibbets erected on the summit. Even the now road has not been without its tragedies. Near the boundary mark there is to be seen the memorial to John Welsh who perished in a snowstorm in 1878, on which is inscribed the sober injunction "Be ye also ready", and nearby there are several cairns to mark the last resting place of other victims of the Ord's fury.
If one saint laboured to such good effect in Navidale another arose, no less zealous in the Christian faith. In the long -deserted hamlet of Badbea some three miles north of the Ord. John Sutherland, he was known to his generation as John Badbea, a moving spirit in the Disruption of 1843 and a man who walked humbly and lived righteously and his memory is fragrant to this day.
The Memorial, Badbea
Photo by David Paterson Photography
The traveller will not see Badbea from the road for it is perched perilously on the steep slopes of a headland, flanked by the Ousedale burn, running sheer into the sea. It takes a steady head to look over the edge of the precipice at the scene of desolation and chaos below. Huge mountains of rock, riven by some mighty force from the cliff face, rise in wild confusion from the threshing turmoil of waters, grotesque and fearsome. It is a haunting place. Above the jagged edge of cliffs small patches of land, still green, climb steeply to the heather where one can see the remains of the handful of houses strung irregularly over a mile of hillside. Many are the tales of this now deserted hamlet, of the lives lost over the cliffs and at sea, and the grim privations which had to be faced.
The weaver, whose little croft was almost part of the precipice itself, had to take the precaution of tethering his children to prevent them from going too near the cliff edge, and every light and movable article, such as the hens' basin, had to be spiked or chained to the ground. But most of all there are tales of John Badbea to whom people turned naturally in times of trouble and never failed to find solace. A monument was erected in 1911 on the site of his house by David Sutherland of New Zealand whose father was born in Badbea in 1806 and emigrated to New Zealand in 1839. Three of the four panels commemorate former inhabitants; the fourth bears the inscription:-
"Also very specially in memory of John Sutherland widely known as "John Badbea", loved for his Christian character and the charm of his personality and gifts x x x x x"
This new website by Martin and Lynn Craig is a contact and information point for descendants whose families were dispersed after the last person left Badbea in 1911.
The Clearance Village of Badbea, Caithness, Scotland.
Reference is also made to his brother Donald who was killed at Waterloo. It's a far, far cry from Badbea to Waterloo. Badbea, desolate and remote from the resorts of man, clinging to the brow of a rock-grit coast, and the Field of Waterloo, famed the world over for one of the decisive battles of history. How could it possibly come about that Donald found his way from one to the other? The imagination stumbles at the thought.
The view out to the Moray Firth
Photo by David Paterson Photography
The thatched roofs have long since fallen in at Badbea and the walls are crumbling. The green places carved by generations of men out of the barren hillside are slowly yielding to the invading wilderness of heather and whin. The only living thing that bears witness to the men and women who once lived there is a root of rhubarb tenaciously alive in John Badbea's garden.
Navidale and Badbea on either side of the Ord, the doorway and vestibule leading into Caithness, may be among the desolate places of the earth but to those who know something of their story they are indeed holy ground.
Reference
H. Stewart Mackintosh. March, 1954
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