Common Grazings

‘Common grazings are areas of land used by a number of crofters and others who hold a right to graze stock on that land.  There are over 1000 common grazings covering over 500,000ha across Scotland’. The Crofting Commission website covers the following: Regulated Common Grazings, Election of Grazings Committees, creating a new common grazing and Common Grazings Registration.

Also see the Crofting Commissions leaflet on Common Grazings.

‘The Crofting Register is a free-to-search, public register of crofts, common grazings, and land held runrig. 'Runrig' means land that is divided into strips that belong to different people.
Like the Land Register, the Crofting Register is map-based. It shows defined extents of land and property on the Ordnance Survey map. It also contains information on the tenant or owner-occupier crofter on the land, as well as the landlord and/or the landowner of the registered land.’

Crofters’ Common Grazings in Scotland – an article by James R. Coull (The Agricultural History Review, 1968), giving a detailed description of common grazings across Scotland in the 1960s.  Published by the British Agricultural History Society.

The views of one Grazings Committee from Sleat, Isle of Skye, about how the Crofting System could be reformed to meet current needs – Self Regulation of the Current Crofting System to meet the Modern Need, a discussion document raised on behalf of the Sleat General Grazings Committee.

The film 'Grazing on the Edge' captures the experiences of Common Graziers, Young Crofters, government agencies and advisors in working common grazings land in unique High Nature Value Landscapes.  It was made was made by researchers from the James Hutton Institute together with Skye graziers and young crofters shot on the Trotternish ridge and other parts of Skye between 2015 and 2016 and is an excellent introduction to Common Grazings. (from SRUC)