Achany is a hamlet in Sutherland

Sutherland

Sutherland is a registration county, lieutenancy area and historic administrative county of Scotland. It is now within the Highland local government area. In Gaelic the area is referred to according to its traditional areas: Dùthaich 'IcAoidh , Asainte , and Cataibh...

 in the Scottish council area of Highland, Scotland. It lies off the B864 road to the south of the southeastern point of Loch Shin

Loch Shin

Loch Shin is a loch in the Scottish North West Highlands. To the south is the small town of Lairg. The loch is the largest in Sutherland, runs from the north-west to the south-east and is 17 miles long....

 and south of Lairg

Lairg

Lairg is a village in Sutherland, Highland, Scotland. It has a population of about 700and is situated at the south-eastern end of Lairg is a village in [[Sutherland]], [[Highland |Highland]], [[Scotland]]...

. The hamlet, which includes the Achany Glen (or Achany Forest), is also home to a Category B Listed building, Achany House, and a wind farm

Wind farm

A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electric power. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other...

 development that garners a community benefit fund.

Geography

Achany Glen is a mixed conifer forest of mixed broadleaf native woodland that lies to the west of the Shin Falls Visitor Centre. It contains many small glades, characterized by alders and birch coppice

Coppicing

Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which takes advantage of the fact that many trees make new growth from the stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, young tree stems are repeatedly cut down to near ground level...

, as well as wood sorrel

Oxalis

Oxalis is by far the largest genus in the wood-sorrel family Oxalidaceae: of the approximately 900 known species in the Oxalidaceae, 800 belong here...

 and moss. A trail spur, the salmon leap viewpoint, is located on the glen's Riverside Walk.

Energy

Construction of an onshore wind farm began in April 2009 and was completed in 2010, generating 38 Megawatts through 19 turbines. The Achany Wind Farm Community Benefit Fund was launched in early 2010, provided by SSE

SSE

-Computing:*Server-sent events, a technology to push content to web clients*Simple Sharing Extensions, a specification that extends RSS from unidirectional to bidirectional information flows*SPARQL Syntax Expressions*Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition...

, the wind farm's developer, and managed by the Scottish Community Foundation, a registered grant-making charity.

Culture

The hamlet contains Achany House, a Category B listed building dating from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. At least three renovations were subsequently made, the first in the mid-nineteenth century, another in the mid-later nineteenth century, and yet another in the late nineteenth century. In 1840, the house was purchased by Sir James Matheson who added two bayed wings containing the lavish living room and dining room. Matheson's nephew added an upper floor in 1878 and an extension at the rear in 1885. In 1948, it was purchased by the Ministry of Agriculture (UK) and served as an agricultural college under the North of Scotland College of Agriculture from November 1953 until it became a hotel. Today, it is a private dwelling.

A tourist information office had been located between Achany Forest and the Falls of Shin

Shin Falls

-References:...

. It was bought by Mohammed Al Fayed in 2002 and converted into the most northerly outpost of Harrods

Harrods

Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...

.