AN absentee laird has gifted 10,700 acres of his estate at Melness, Sutherland, to crofters.

Mr Michael Foljambe, 63, who lives in Nottinghamshire, had asked the 60 crofters to respond by yesterday to his offer to give them crofts and common grazing land on his estate.

The estate is centred on Melness (population 150), at the western end of the causeway which carries the north coast A836 road over the Kyle of Tongue.

Yesterday, Mr Frank Gordon, the Melness grazings clerk said: ``We have said `yes' unanimously to Mr Foljambe's generous offer. We hope that the formalities will be concluded soon, so that we will become the actual owners by the new year''.

Mr Foljambe's family have owned the 32,000-acre Melness and Hope Estate for more than 40 years. He owns land in the Midlands but has no heirs.

He inherited the land in North Sutherland on the death of his father in 1983. He will retain the non-crofting area, which has valuable fishings and shootings.

He is also passing on the mineral rights under the land-surface to the crofters and they will gain control of the shootings on the common grazings, which they have agreed to lease back to him.

Croft rents at around #4 to #5 per year have not been increased since they were fixed at that level in 1886, when the Crofters Act ended the Clearances by giving tenant crofters security of tenure over ``their'' lands for the first time.

Mr Foljambe said he had been thinking about gifting the crofting portion of his land to locals for some time.

He explained: ``It has always saddened me that children have to leave Melness as soon as the finish their schooling. There is no possibility of me living there and I think that the local community could develop its possibilities better than I can from afar.''

He added: ``For instance, there is now a better availability of public funds for development projects in rural areas, which makes community self-management more viable these days.''

The Melness crofters could model their new set-up on the ground-breaking Assynt Crofters Trust.

The 200 crofters there bought the 8000-acre estate, near Lochinver, in West Sutherland, three years ago and have embarked on a programme of improvements and diversification into electronics, hydro-power, forestry, and fish farming.

Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth visited the Assynt crofters recently and announced that he wants to hand over 250,000 acres of ``nationalised'' land involving 1400 crofts on 56 estates in the Highlands to local crofters' trusts.

The situation in Melness contrasts with the recent threat of rent increases faced by 130 crofters on the other side of the Kyle of Tongue.

Crofters on the Borgie, Tongue, and Skerray lands were told early in the autumn that Sutherland Estates wanted to raise rents.

However, earlier this month, the 74-year-old Dowager Countess of Sutherland, a direct descendant of the first duke, of Clearance infamy, stepped in to block the move by her factor Mr Christopher Whealing and her son Lord Strathnaver.

She asked them to withdraw the formal application to the Scottish Land Court for the rise, which would have been the first since 1984.