Kildavie

Bertie and I took a walk down to the deserted settlement of Kildavie in the morning. Set at the end of a small glen, it faces north-west and looks out to sea some distance away. I know this area quite well as I spent some time helping with an archaeological dig during 2014 and 2015. It is thought that Kildavie could date as far back as the 8th century and the last documented evidence for people living here is a marriage record dating from January 1785, followed by the baptismal record in December 1785 of the first child born to this same couple.
It seems that Kildavie was more or less abandoned after this, for what reason nobody is sure, but it is too early for the Highland Clearances. There were epidemics of infectious diseases such as smallpox and records show that there was a particularly cold period in the ten years leading up to 1785. Perhaps crops failed too badly, making living here impossible and the New World beckoned.
I would love to have a time machine which would enable me to travel back three hundred years or so and observe for a day the way of life here.