The man who shaped the Highlands

ALEXANDER Nimmo was a 23-year-old schoolmaster when he embarked on a career change that was to see him become one of Scotland's foremost engineers and surveyors.

Under the guidance of his mentor Thomas Telford, he helped shape the Highlands at a time of revolutionary change and later became revered for his engineering innovations in Ireland.

Next week, Nimmo's journal of a ground-breaking survey, which is being published for the first time, will be launched by the University of the Highlands and Islands to highlight his place in engineering history.

It comes during the 200th anniversary of Nimmo's election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of his appointment as engineer to the Commission for the Bogs of Ireland.

In 1806, while still rector of Inverness Royal Academy, Nimmo was commissioned, on Telford's recommendation, to complete a survey of the boundaries of Inverness-shire.

The Highlands were undergoing radical change at that time. After the Jacobite uprisings in the 18th century the clan system was fading, thousands of people were emigrating and land was being cleared for sheep farming.

At the start of the 19th century, Telford was commissioned to survey the Highlands and Islands and devise improvements to internal communications and coastal facilities.

In 1802, he said that 3,000 people had left during one year and three times that amount were due to emigrate in the coming year.

As a result, a parliamentary commission for making roads and building bridges in the Highlands and a commission for the Caledonian Canal were appointed. Nimmo's survey was incorporated in Aaron Arrowsmith's authoritative map of Scotland the following year.

His "perambulation", as he called it, began on 20 May, 1806 and finished on 1 August. He drew information from old maps and charters, shepherds, farmers, estate factors and landowners.

Nimmo also used the old military routes, but was not impressed with General George Wade who built 240 miles of roads.

"General Wade was no engineer", he wrote. In his journal, Nimmo commented on changing land patterns that had seen cattle replaced by sheep to allow landlords to cash in on the soaring demand for wool.

"Hence we may account for that species of policy which induces the sheep farmer to remove as many small tenants as he can," he wrote.

Writing of a visit to Lord Lovat at Beaufort Castle, near Inverness, he describes a map he was shown of Glenstrathfarrar. He wrote: "Several places are marked on the map and surveys which by the introduction of sheep are now uninhabited."

Other entries describe the emergence of villages.At Ballachullish, he mentions slate quarries employing nearly 300 people, and Kingussie, he notes, had a post office and woollen mill and some buildings that "may even be styled elegant".

He records Kingussie as being the only village between Dunkeld and the Moray Firth and "affords a pleasing anticipation of what the Highlands of Scotland may become when once laid open with good roads and the industry of the people directed to useful and valuable purposes".

Nimmo, who was born in Fife, went on to complete comprehensive surveys, maps and reports on the Iveragh peninsula of County Kerry and Connemara, County Galway, under the Famine Relief Act. He died in Dublin in 1832.

The book's editor, Professor Nol P Wilkins, from the National University of Ireland in Galway, said Nimmo became the most influential person undertaking famine relief works and engineering development in the western part of Ireland.