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Clynelish & Brora Distillery

The Duke of Sutherland

The journey to Brora leads you into a region steeped in Scots history. George Granville Levison-Gower was the second Marquis of Stafford as well as the first Duke of Sutherland.

A Londoner, he came from a coal mine-owning family and married into the Sutherlands who owned most of the land in this area. When he inherited his father's estates in England he became the wealthiest landowner in Great Britain at the time.

In 1814, with the help of his Commissioner, James Loch and Factor, Patrick Sellar, the Duke set about 'improving' his Sutherland estate mainly by removing the native inhabitants to make way for his latest money-earning venture, sheep.
In what became known as the Clearances, five thousand men, women and children, a third of the population of Sutherland, were compelled to immigrate, mainly to Canada, or to try and eke out a living from the impoverished coastal land to which they were confined.

However, the Duke also had a positive impact on the area; road and bridge building along the East coast, setting up a fishing industry including boat building, fish curing and coopering and other industrial developments along the coast.

After his death in 1833, a monument was commissioned in his memory. The monument itself, sculpted by Sir Francis Chantrey and completed in 1837, towers 100feet above the top of Ben Bhraggie. The ‘Mannie on the hill’ is one of the Highlands best-known landmarks.