July 9th 1763

New town planning in the 18th Century

To many landowners this was felt to be both a loss and a challenge. If the displaced workers could be settled in a village on the landowner’s land it would serve a dual purpose. By promoting rural industries such as spinning and weaving, the workers would be offered a means of employment and would at the same time provide a market for the increased production coming from the farms. Acting on these principles something like one hundred planned villages were founded in Scotland with varying success.

It was perhaps natural that after the 45’ the Commissioners of the Annexed Estates should also use their powers to found planned villages, generally on Greenfield sites. One such settlement was the village of Strelitz (named after Queen Charlotte of Strelitz, wife of George 3rd), near to the present village of Burrelton. The estates of Stobhall and Cargill which had belonged to the Drummonds were confiscated after the Jacobite rebellion and in 1763, at the conclusion of the seven year war, land was taken to form what was hoped would be a model village - in this case a model agricultural village for returned soldiers. There were to be eighty dwelling houses, “built in a commodious manner after a regular plan, forming a spacious street ninety feet broad watered by a small stream which runs along the side of the street. To each house is annexed a good garden with about three acres of land properly enclosed with hedge and ditch and sheltered by strips of planting.”  As an encouragement and a reward to the soldiery the houses were made over at a mere quit rent.

Like almost all such villages set up by the Commissioners the venture was a failure. Though it seemed to be an imaginative scheme many of the returned soldiers were either unwilling or unfitted for such work and soon drifted away. When later the lands were returned to the ownership of the Drummond family, the crofts quickly disappeared or were incorporated into larger farms. Today nothing remains of the village but the names Strelitz Farm and Strelitz Wood.

One of the few examples of a successful village set up by the Commissioners in Perthshire was that of Kinloch Rannoch. But even here the returning soldiers who had been enjoined to behave “honestly and industriously”  to their neighbours also brought with them the less than welcome legacy of venereal disease!