Plockton or Am Ploc (Gaelic) is a very sheltered village lying on the shores of Loch Carron overlooking the mountains of Applecross. It was a ‘planned’ village hence it’s grid like pattern and similar sized housing stock much like Ullapool to the North.
There are constrasting opinions as to why Sir Hugh Innes the landowner built the village. Some sources say it was to provide housing for people working in the booming herring industry in 1800’s while other sources claim it was to clear crofters from inland settlements in order to make way for more profitable sheep.
Whatever the reasoning was, when the herring fishing industry collapsed and the potatoe famine occured in 1846, the village became know as ‘Baile na Bochdainn’ - ‘the village of the poor’.
More recently the village was used as a backdrop in the film - The Wicker Man and was the setting for Hamish Macbeth, a BBC TV series in 1990’s about a police constable living and working in a small Highland village with his wee West Highland Terrier dog - ‘Wee Jock’. Finally there’s an excellent take-away/chip shop just up from the slipway by the pontoons called Grumpy’s.
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