Qualla: Fyrish Monument

Fyrish Monument: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Maclennan, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sir Hector Munro is said to have rolled the stones back down the hill at the end of each working day. His labourers would carry them up again the next morning, and he would pay them for the additional hours. The story may be apocryphal but it captures something essential about the Fyrish Monument: it is a folly built not for vanity but to keep people fed during the Highland Clearances, when the population of Easter Ross was being pushed off the land they had worked for centuries. The folly stands in the shape of the Gate of Negapatam, a port in southern India that Munro had captured for the British in 1781.

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Image: David Maclennan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fyrish Monument: The General and the Port

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Taylor, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sir Hector Munro, 8th of Novar, was a Highland laird who made his name in India. A career soldier in the East India Company's armies, he commanded the Indian troops at the Battle of Buxar in 1764 and later served as commander-in-chief at Madras. In 1781, late in his Indian career...

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Image: Ian Taylor | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fyrish Monument: Work for the Cleared

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dorcas Sinclair, CC BY-SA 2.0. The monument went up in 1782, at a moment when the surrounding parishes were beginning to feel the early waves of what would become the Highland Clearances. Landlords across the Highlands were moving people off arable ground to make way for sheep, and the small tenant farmers and...

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Image: Dorcas Sinclair | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fyrish Monument: The View from the Top

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark McLaren, CC BY-SA 2.0. Fyrish Hill rises to 453 metres above sea level - not high by Highland standards, but high enough to dominate the lower country between Alness and Evanton, and high enough to be seen from almost anywhere in the parishes of Kiltearn and Alness. The monument is visible across the C...

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Image: Mark McLaren | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fyrish Monument: What Endures

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ben Clarke, CC BY-SA 4.0. Folly is a word that gets applied to monuments like this, and it carries a tone of dismissal that the Fyrish Monument does not quite deserve. The structure is now a Category B listed building - protected under Scottish heritage law as a building of regional importance. It has las...

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Image: Ben Clarke | CC BY-SA 4.0