Scotland's richest man helps out Clearances museum

A business owned by Danish billionaire - and Scotland's richest man - Anders Holch Polvsen has helped save the revamp of a Highlands museum.

Strathnaver Museum in Bettyhill, Sutherland, explores the histories of the local Clan Mackay, agricultural life and the Highland Clearances, a period of history which saw families removed from land where they had lived for generations.

But a £2.3m refurbishment and conservation programme at the property was put at risk after a complex and historic legal problem with its deeds was uncovered.

Mr Holch Polvsen's business Wildland Limited, a land conservation and tourism business which manages three Highland estates, provided the museum's directors with an interest-free unsecured loan of more than £600,000.

The money helped overcome financial pressures while the legal wrangle was resolved with sheriff court officers.

The refurbishment was also able to carry on unaffected and the museum remains on track to reopen in March next year.

Strathnaver Museum was established in the early 1960s.

Tom Mackay, chairman of Strathnaver Museum, said: “The museum’s trustees had been unaware that a clerical oversight made decades ago meant the title to the museum was still registered in the names of its original community trustees and not that of Strathnaver Museum Ltd.

"I am enormously grateful for the support of fellow trustees who have managed to resolve the title issue so quickly and to the full satisfaction of legal officers and our core funders."

Tim Kirkwood, chief executive of Wildland, added: “It’s clear that for almost 60 years generations of the Strathnaver Museum team had been working hard to realise a vison that was ahead of its time, to create a museum to enable the people of the area to tell their own story."

Mr Holch Povlsen is Scotland's richest man and biggest private landowner, owning 220,000 acres of land.

His personal fortune increased by £500m in the past year to £6.5bn, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.

The notorious Highland Clearances saw people removed from large areas of land, including in Sutherland.

Starting in the late 18th Century and running into the 19th Century, it saw townships occupied by generations of families cleared to make way for large-scale sheep farming and the rearing of deer.

Landowners were seeking to "improve" their estates in line with the industrial revolution.

In some cases people who had lived on the land for generations left voluntarily, while others were forcibly evicted and their homes burned and demolished.