A snow-covered Buck of Cabrach
Dufftown, the perfect historic base for exploring the Cabrach region
Our Hidden History series and associated set of podcasts usually tend to focus on a visible place, person or object allowing us to dig a little deeper. But my journey this time, to the Cabrach in the country’s north east, focuses on an episode from our history that has been hidden for many generations. That history will now reach a wider audience thanks to the efforts of the Cabrach Trust, who aim to tell the story of the area’s connections to the production of whisky through a new and ambitious project. On the banks of the Deveron at the northern edge of the Cairngorms National Park sit the hauntingly empty buildings and farmlands around the Cabrach, once home to a community of almost 1,000 people who eked out a hard existence through farming, sometimes with illicit whiskymaking on the side.