Bettyhill: what's in a name?

When I first travelled along the north coast, Bettyhill seemed a very odd name for a Highland village. Melvich, Thurso and Tongue meant little to me, but somehow they sounded as though they belonged. Bettyhill was suspiciously familiar. I soon heard an explanation which appealed to me enormously. Families evicted from Strathnaver and settled around Farr had supposedly called their new home Betty’s Hill in bitter recognition of Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, later Duchess. Someone quite so grand reduced to plain Betty by the people her estate had displaced. As insults go, it seemed admirably economical. I accepted it.

Then, while researching my book, I came across an estate map dated 1810. Amongst the fields and boundaries beside the River Naver was Betty Hill. The label offered no explanation, just a name identifying a piece of ground. Unfortunately for my explanation, the major Strathnaver clearances of 1814 and 1819 were still ahead. If the families arriving afterwards had invented the name, how had it got onto the map before them? I had enjoyed the story considerably more before somebody put a date beside it. There was more. An estate survey from 1810 described a tenant called Campbell draining and improving his small holding at Betty Hill.

Here was somebody already working the land beneath that name. An October 1812 newspaper advertisement then listed Bettyhill amongst the coastal places where tenants facing dispossession could receive smaller allotments. The name was already in use while the estate was arranging where people might go. I had allowed the arrival of displaced families and the naming of their destination to become the same event. Campbell’s holding and the advertisement helped pull them apart. That leaves the origin tantalisingly open. The Gaelic name, Am Blàran Odhar, means “the brown field”.

I also remember seeing “Beatty Hill” on an earlier map, although I’m damned if I can find it again. Perhaps an older spelling offers a clue, but I cannot promote a missing map into an answer. Elizabeth may still have an earlier connection with the name. What I no longer accept is the neat explanation that arrivals from the later clearances invented it as an insult. I now tell guests the story I first believed, followed by the map that caught me out. Bettyhill has become a much better conversation since it stopped being such an easy answer.

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