The term, ‘croft’ - croit in Gaelic - is the name given to a specific type ofsmallholding created by landowners on their Highland estates from the end of the 18^th century. By that time, the traditional stocking of the landwith tenants who could be called upon to defend the clan territory was giving way to a monetary economy, when land rents subsidized the landlords’ way of
life.

On Eigg, some of these tenants were large farmers,called tacksmen, occupying the large farms or tacks of Laig and Kildonnan, but
many were small farmers occupying smaller communal farms in as joint tenants, as in Cleadale. The Cleadale tenants were the first people of Eigg to be evicted from their land. A new township was set up under the cliffs, and crofts made out of the farm. The crofters were then expected to harvest valuable seaweed (kelp) to pay their rent. when the value of kelp went down, they too were threatened with eviction.

Protection from eviction only came in 1886, following a decade of crofters' agitation, when an Act of Parliament finally granted security of tenure.

The 2000 survey of the island by the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic monuments (RCAHMS) brought to light the richness of the Eigg landscape:

• a mosaic of pasture and arable fields with traditional boundary features such as earthen
  dykes and drystone dykes
• Evidence of ancient settlements from neolithic through Bronze Age and Iron Age: hut circles, burial mounds, duns, forts
• Evidence of medieval farming, rig and furrows and lazybeds cultivation along with townships and ancient field systems underlying the crofts.