Like many ‘natural’ disasters, much of the destruction that engulfed Culbin in 1694 was manmade
An unlikely feature of the Scottish landscape, a desert of shifting sand, was created by a north-westerly storm of great ferocity that began blowing on 19 October 1694. It took several days for towering dunes to engulf all the fields of Culbin on the banks of the River Findhorn. The sand covered 16 farmhouses, the village and finally the laird’s mansion, by which time the entire population had fled – leaving behind 5 sq miles of featureless sand.
The devastation was made worse because the storm also changed the course of the river, making it virtually impossible to discern where anything had been.
