Dunbeath
Dunbeath is a village in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the birthplace of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), writer of The Silver Darlings, Highland River etc., many of whose stories are set in Dunbeath and also its Strath. Dunbeath has a very abundant archaeological landscape, the website of many Iron Age brochs and also an early middle ages reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological study, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn wrote: "These little straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate charm. In boyhood we are familiar with every square yard of it. We include it physically and our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, swimming pools with trout as well as a sometimes visible salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and also disappearing rabbit scuts, a riches of wild flower and also little bird life, the rising hawk, the unforeseen roe, the ancient graveyard, ideas of the folk that when lived far inland in straths and also hollows, the past and the here and now kept in a moment of day-dream." ('My Little Britain', 1941.). There is an area museum/landscape analysis centre at the old village school.