Where was Atinlia/Attinlia in Moray?

[Morvenwalker]

I was going to suggest you write to Rothiemurchus Estate but if you put Attilia Rothiemurchus into a search engine you will find present day information. Rothiemurchus is just outside Aviemore.
 I also think most of the estate is in Inverness shire shire

[Morvenwalker]

With reference to my last  post the web address was attinlia.blogspot.com  There is a photo of the property and it seems to be on the Dorback estate.

[Forfarian]

Got it. http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=57.2490&lon=-3.9302&layers=5&b=1

I looked at the transcription of the 1841 census at https://www.freecen.org.uk/cgi/search.pl and worked my way through until I found a family at Aitinlea.

Then I found the places I recognised from having been in the area, and followed the census enumerator's route along the left bank of the River Dulnain on the first edition of the six-inch Ordnance Survey map.

It's a bit trickier to find it on a modern map, but it's north-north-west of Garbh-mheall Beag and on the other bank of the river. I am pretty sure that this http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/274320 is it. If you click on the map you will see a larger-scale map which shows some ruins at about the right place.

Noting that the burn north-west of it is named as Allt-an-t-Seilich, I wonder whether the name Attenlia (or however you care to spell it) is a garbled version of that, written down by people who did not speak Gaelic. It means something like 'burn of the willow'.

Howzat?

PS This is indeed in the part of the combined parish of Duthil and Rothiemurchus which is in the county of Inverness. It is in Duthil, however, not in Rothiemurchus.

PPS It is not the place described in http://attinlea.blogspot.co.uk/ which is in http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NJ0517. That one is in the parish of Abernethy and Kincardine.

PPPS there were two households at your Attinlia in the 1841 census. One was John Cameron, age 74 and Alex Cameron, age 40, with one fremale and two male servants, and the other was Alexi Dunbar, aged 40.

PPPPS The one in Abernethy and Kincardine is listed in Donald Matheson's book. He says, "Here we have the root Aitionn, so often found in this parish, meaning juniper or gorse in combination with lea, or meadow or field, and the word Juniperlea was at one time most applicable".  However Matheson is not widely regarded as 100% reliable. My Gaelic dictionary does list aiteann as meaning juniper. It also lists aite as meaning a place or situation. The Ordnance Survey booklet Place names on maps of Scotland and Wales says that lia is from liath meaning grey. I don't know why Matheson might have thought that a place name in Duthil was a hybrid of the Gaelic aiteann and the English word lea. (Also, my Gaelic dictionary gives a completely different word for gorse or whin.)

[Skoosh]

There's a monument around there which marks the house of Iain Beag MacAndra, a wee 17th century archer, the story in,

www.carrbridge.com/index.php/info/History/

Skoosh.

[Forfarian]

There's a monument around there which marks the house of Iain Beag MacAndra, a wee 17th century archer, the story in www.carrbridge.com/index.php/info/History/

Yes. See http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/273338.

The monument is across the river from Dalnahaitnach, which is a couple of kilometres downstream from Attinlia, closer to Carrbridge. See http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=57.2596&lon=-3.9086&layers=5&b=1 - the site of the monument is about where the line from point 1029 meets a track south of point 1038 (The numbers are actually the height above sea level in feet, but they make handy reference points in this case).

[josey]

Good sleuthing everyone  .

[Skoosh]

Juniper sounds about right, plenty of it in the upper Dulnain!

Skoosh.

[NenNen]

Can't thank you all enough for your help - being a Golden Oldie I get a bit confused on these sites.  I will now try to add the PR entries for you all to see. 3rd attempt - I've had to cut them considerably but they are easy to read