Qualla: Crieff

Crieff: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every October, the fields and hillsides around Crieff would turn black with cattle. Some thirty thousand of them, driven from as far away as Caithness and the Outer Hebrides, gathered for the Michaelmas Tryst, the great autumn sale where Highland drovers met Lowland buyers and the price of British beef was, in effect, set. This was Crieff at its peak as a droving town, the central node in a continent-spanning cattle trade. Then in 1716, after the Battle of Sheriffmuir, 350 Highlanders returning from defeat burned most of the town to the ground. Crieff has been rebuilding itself, in one way or another, ever since.

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Crieff: The October Tryst

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For centuries Highlanders came to Crieff to sell their black cattle, whose meat and hides were sought by the growing urban populations of Lowland Scotland and the north of England. The town acted as the gathering point. In October 1714, Rob Roy MacGregor and his followers came do...

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Crieff: Bonnie Prince Charlie's War Council

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the 1745 rising the Highlanders wanted to fire the town again, reportedly saying she should be a braw toun gin she haed anither sing. The Duke of Perth, a friend of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, talked them out of it. In February 1746 the Jacobite army was quartered around Cri...

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Crieff: The Hydro Years

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the 19th century Crieff reinvented itself as a fashionable Highland destination. Wealthy Edinburgh and Glasgow businessmen built country retreats here. Many of them came for the hydropathic establishment, opened in 1868, which still operates as the Crieff Hydro. Crieff Town Ha...

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Crieff: Whisky, Glass, and a Very Old Library

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Modern Crieff is known for whisky and glass. The Glenturret Distillery, just north of the town, claims to be one of Scotland's oldest working distilleries. The Caithness Glass Visitor Centre brings tourists in to watch glass being blown. A few miles south-east stands Innerpeffray...

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Crieff: Notable Crieffies

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ewan McGregor was born here in 1971. His uncle is the actor Denis Lawson, who grew up in Crieff and was for a long time the more famous of the two. Neil Paterson, who lived in Crieff until his death in 1995, won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Room at the Top. David Jac...

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