Gress Raiders Monument

About

One of three memorials on this tour commemorating the land raiders. The memorials stand at Aignish, Balallan, and here at Gress. The Gress memorial, the most northerly of the three, was designed by Will McLean and built by Jim Crawford, a local stonemason. It stands on a low hill surrounded by earthworks in the form of trenches and waves, a reminder of the First World War and the promises made to those who survived the conflict.

After having fought and faced the horrors of the First World War, crofters returned to Lewis to make good the promise of land and homes made to them by the government. However, they found none and, in their place, farms whose ownership was supported by the island’s new proprietor, Lord Leverhulme. These returning ex-service men were denied crofting land and their condition increased the tensions within the community and highlighted the problems of land usage.

Some of the largest raids took place in Gress in 1919. The resultant battles saw the raiders take and withdraw from the land several times under duress of arrest and pressure from Lord Leverhulme. The raiders determination eventually won and in 1922 the Board of Agriculture took over the farms and divided them into over 100 new crofts, establishing crofting communities which, which thanks to will of men like the raiders, survive to this day. If you look at an Ordnance Survey map of the area you can see the long, slender strips of farmland created as part of this scheme.

This memorial is dedicated to those who risked imprisonment in their struggle against an oppressive system of land use and ultimately paved the way for reforms to Scottish law.