Insh Community Holdings is a charity (SCO49955) representing the interests of Insh, a village near Kingussie in the Cairngorms National Park.
In 2022 we managed to purchase from Forestry and Land Scotland a land - full details on this page; the woodland is actively maintain via woodland in line with a management plan.
House names - unsure of where a house is when you get a delivery to the wrong address - here is a handy map with the current housenames.
History of Insh Community Holdings
To begin at the beginning.
It is winter, a brilliant starlit night, the earth snow-glinting white. Most houses in the village are in darkness but in one the lights shine out through wide windows, voices and music echo through the crisp still air.
A Hogmanay Party is in full swing and most of the village population is there. Conversations ebb and flow and one group of semi-sober citizens begin to talk about the village having no common meeting ground, no focal point, no real centre, in fact nothing except ourselves, the chapel and the phone box. Even the Post Office was gone!
What to do? What could be for everyone in the village, could engage everyone. Slowly the idea evolved that the neglected plantation at the west end of the village, an important windbreak for the village, and the unused field could be a great community project. A starting principle was a wish to preserve the historical value of the land, the old strip crofting idea which went back to the founding of Insh in 1828 by Sir George MacPherson-Grant of Ballindalloch.
A self-appointed steering committee of five perhaps not-so-wise citizens was tasked with moving the idea along - in alphabetical order Willie Anderson, Eddie Fraser, the late Ian Grant, Raymond Green, and Les Street then RSPB Warden.
Our first task was to establish the boundaries and ownership of the land, whether it was even possible to gain access. With invaluable support from the late Miss Jane Williamnson, then a Community Councillor, approaches to the Forestry Commission and to the Crofters Commission clarified the position and in the Spring 1999 the land-owners, the Forestry Commission, agreed, on certain conditions, to grant us a grazing licence on the field on the usual crofting conditions. For example, removing all stock from the land for one month a year. This was for a peppercorn rent. They granted us rent free access to the forest on condition that we did not do any tree felling ourselves. We also had to be properly constituted with a formal constitution and a management plan.
This was a big challenge but the steering committee drew up a constitution which was adopted at a public meeting on the 24 May 1999. The same five were appointed as a Management Committee.
The Constitution (an extract)
1 NAME The name of the association shall be Insh Community Holdings (ICH)
2 OBJECTS To acquire, develop, preserve and work the Forest Enterprise grazings and woodland in Insh Village (Map Appendix 1) for the benefit and enjoyment of the whole community of Insh.
3 MEMBERSHIP Membership of the Association shall be open to all residents of, and those working in, the village of INSH. Members of the Association shall share equally in the costs of, and the benefits accruing from, the work of the Association. Members shall not be permitted to acquire unfair/unequal shares of the benefits of the Association. Members shall be allowed to ‘trade’ internally their skills and benefits with other members of the Association.
If anyone wishes to read the whole document it is readily available.
Then the work really started. A bank account was opened but we had no money of course so fund raising was critical. The woodland, which had not been managed for many years, was very dense, almost impenetrable. A narrow path from the B970 to the Buie road was formed by snedding lower branches and by December 2001 the Forestry Commission had started tree felling to widen the path. The stumps were a problem and an anonymous and very generous supporter paid for a stump grinder to clear the way. Two small bridges were required to complete the path, one of which still remains, crossing the burn to the field.
The surface of the path remained poor in places and in February 2010 the Cairngorm Outdoor Access Trust (COAT) offered to upgrade the path. We had some disagreements with COAT about usage but eventually the work, including three new bridges, was completed by February 2011.
Fences around the field were repaired with re-cycled material from a major Glen Feshie fence-clearing operation and eventually made stockproof. The grazing licence was renewed each year but the removal of stock each year posed an obvious problem. We learned about crofting rules, the souming and stock control etc..
Work on upgrading the Buie Road (now the Badenoch Way) was paused because it had become included in a much wider Badenoch paths project.
There were setbacks of course – many trees were lost during several winter storms (although that did us firewood) and the Great Fire burned much of the field but stopped just short of the woodland notably among others (the grass grew back greener).
Overall, progress was slow but steady and our long-term objective to gain ownership seemed impossibly distant at times. However, as we all know, and thanks to the work of many people over the intervening years it has become a reality.
But here we are today. Hooray!
Words and pictures below supplied by Raymond