📌 Furnace, Argyll & Bute
★★★
In the early 1700s, most of Scotland’s population lived in small, self-sufficient and rural communities, surviving largely on a meagre diet of dairy products from cattle and locally-grown crops. Then from around 1750 to 1850 came The Clearances: landowners “improving” the productivity of the land by replacing people with sheep, driving tenants onto tiny crofts or even to emigration. Townships dwindled but, amazingly, Auchindrain survived until 1967 when the final family moved away. Only a year later the remains of the scattered settlement re-opened as an open-air museum with over a dozen buildings, today surviving in various states from rubble to fully restored cottages. A slick visitor experience is delivered by a portable tablet which you carry around the site, equipped with map, GPS system and info about each house and area of the township; we were also given an informal tour by the museum’s cat, Liath, who followed us into each of the buildings. It’s a genuinely thought-provoking connection to another era; catch the place on a quiet morning and it almost feels as the inhabitants have only just left.
🌍 Location
📌 By the A83 2 mi north of Furnace
🧭 O.S. Grid Reference: NN 030031
🛰️ GPS coordinates: 56.179542,-5.176232
🚌 Bus stops at museum entrance
🚗 Car park
📝 Key info
⌚ Daily (visitor centre: April to September)
🎫 £12 adult / £6 child from April to September; reduced rate from November to March
