Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a village in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the native home of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), author of The Silver Darlings, Highland River etc., most of whose novels are set in Dunbeath and its Strath. Dunbeath has a really rich archaeological landscape, the site of various Iron Age brochs and a very early medieval monastic site (see Alex Morrison's historical survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn wrote: "These tiny straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate beauty. In boyhood we get to know every square backyard of it. We incorporate it physically as well as our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and a periodically visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and vanishing rabbit scuts, a wealth of wild flower and small bird life, the soaring hawk, the unexpected roe, the ancient graveyard, thoughts of the folk that as soon as lived much inland in straths and hollows, the past as well as the here and now kept in a minute of day-dream." ('My Little Britain', 1941.). There is a neighborhood museum/landscape interpretation centre at the old village college.
