Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a town 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., a number of whose books are embeded in Dunbeath and also its Strath. Dunbeath has a very abundant archaeological landscape, the website of numerous 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 created: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate charm. In boyhood we are familiar with every square lawn of it. We encompass it literally as well as our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming pools with trout and an occasionally noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken as well as disappearing bunny scuts, a riches of wild blossom and tiny bird life, the skyrocketing hawk, the unforeseen roe, the ancient graveyard, ideas of the individual who when lived much inland in straths as well as hollows, the past and also today held in a moment of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a neighborhood museum/landscape analysis centre at the old village institution.
