Auchtavan is a rare survival of a traditional Highland clachan or fermtoun. Small communities like these were homes to countless generations in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution. Most of these settlements have disappeared and their houses and now only a scatter of stones in the countryside.Auchtavan is Gaelic for ‘the field of the two kids’. Traditionally, the rental paid for the land to the laird of Invercauld was two young goats.

Why here?

Auchtavan is located at the head of Glen Feardar (the ‘glen of high water’), some 450 metres above sea level and looking cross the River Dee to Lochnagar. The lands around the Dee are very fertile and good for agriculture. Even this high up on the mountainside the farmers could grow corn and raise livestock.

Who lived here?

People farmed here for at least two hundred years before the last occupant left in the mid-1900s. In 1861, William and Margory McHardy were living here with their seven children, a ploughman and two farm servants. Life at Auchtavan would never have been easy, and eventually everyone would have left to find jobs in the towns. Many people emigrated to find new opportunities in places like America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.