Torloisk Estate

  This was owned by the Marquis of Northampton, who was connected by marriage with the old family of the Macleans of Torloisk, one of whose early chiefs was Ailean na Sop, a reformed pirate. The estate lies along the north side of Loch Tuath with some of the finest views in Mull across the island of Ulva and the sea lochs to Ben More and the central mountains. Thirty-two evictions were carried out by the factor in order to extend the private lands of the proprietor. Neil Patterson, of Dervaig, was born at Crackaig in 1860, half a mile from a similar settlement, Glacgugairidh (Hollow of the Dark Grazings) which stands in a sheltered hollow at the edge of the 100ft cliff that runs along above the shore for miles. Just below the settlement there is a cave under the cliff in which are the foundations of what must have been a miniature distillery in the days of illicit distilling, well camouflaged from sea or shore. Neil described how he and other youngsters from scattered townships attended Reudle School, now a gaunt isolated ruin standing above the main road at the foot of the steep Ensay hill.* Each pupil was expected to take a peat with him daily for the fire in the schoolroom, on which you can still see old graffiti, ships in full sail, names such as Robert MacDougall, 1894 – most likely one of the MacDougall family of Haunn township, hardy inshore fishermen. Calum Alister MacDougall, who lived to be 100, was an uncle of mine by marriage. In fact, two brothers married my two aunts, and their progeny, Alick (Ban), Peter and Calum were cousins of mine. Distance was of no consequence to the pupils of those days, who travelled miles to and from school by tracks across the hills.

  Two ladies of undoubted veracity told me that during a visit to Glacgugairidh they distinctly saw a figure moving into one of the houses, but when they cautiously looked in there was no sign of anyone. There was a communal garden in which I saw the old ash tree where, according to the story, a woman hanged herself from a branch. Truly an eerie place after dusk!

  Ulva, and Its Smaller Neighbour

  Gometra

  Perhaps the most heartless and extensive clearances in Mull occurred here, carried out by a laird who must have had a sadistic obsession. Ulva, five miles from east to west and two from north to south, is an island with a long and fascinating history. For nearly 800 years it was the land of the Clan MacQuarrie whose chiefs lived in the old dun-fort of Glacingaline beside the narrow strait dividing Ulva from Gometra. In the eighteenth century the chief moved to a more conventional residence near the present Ulva House. A wall in the present factor’s house is part of the original building. This is where the MacQuarrie chief entertained Dr Johnson and Boswell in 1773.

  At Ferinanardy there are the ruins of the cottage where Neil (Mor) Livingstone, grandfather of the famous Dr David Livingstone, lived as a crofter until 1792, when the family moved to the south and settled at Blantyre. Neil (Bheag), the father of Dr Livingstone, was born in Ulva in 1788, the Doctor himself at Blantyre in 1813.

  Neil (Mor) and his two brothers, who lived at Ballachulish, defied the authorities in 1756 by secretly taking down and reverently interring the bones of James Stewart, James of the Glen, and throwing into the sea the hated gibbet on which he had hung in chains under military guard for four years after the most infamous trial in Scottish history in 1752. James Stewart was completely innocent of the murder of Colin Campbell, known later as the Red Fox; yet at a rigged trial at Inveraray, before a Campbell jury and a Campbell judge (the Duke of Argyll himself), the outcome was an expression of the hatred the Campbells had for the Stewarts. The three brothers left the district at once and Neil finally settled safely in Ulva.

  Another famous personality connected with Ulva was Lt. General Lachlan Macquarie, who is still remembered in Australia as the ‘Father of Australia’. His father was a farmer in Ulva. He was Governor-General of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, after which he retired to live in his Mull estate of Jarvisfield looking over to Ulva. He explored and opened up the colony, and he and his wife so revolutionised the lives of the convicts sent to Botany Bay that it is recorded that the harshness of life and justice in Britain encouraged such crimes as stealing a sheep to ensure deportation to the happier environment of Botany Bay.

  More romantically, Thomas Campbell, who was to become Poet Laureate, wrote – among other local poems – ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter’, well known in our schooldays, which describes the fate of the ‘Chief of Ulva’s Isle’ along with the daughter of Sir Allan Maclean, when eloping across the ferry to Ulva in a storm closely pursued by her father and his men. It must have been the longer crossing from Gribun to Ulva rather than the short crossing from the Torloisk side we know today. When he wrote the poem Thomas Campbell was a tutor at Sunipol House in the north of Mull.

  The social history was to become grim. Unsettled days followed after 1804 when the 16th MacQuarrie chief was obliged to sell the island to pay off his indebtedness, leaving a contented, self-supporting people to their fate. The island was sold to three successive purchasers. One of them was the rather flamboyant Ronald MacDonald of Staffa, who went bankrupt in 1817. Finally, Ulva was bought in 1835 by a wealthy incomer, Francis W. Clark, who had been Sheriff of Stirling in the 1820s and ’30s.

  In 1837 the island had a population of 604, which increased to 851 by 1841; admittedly a high number, but the island was outstandingly fertile and allowed them to sustain their traditional way of life. In fact, it was Clark himself who supplied the statistics of the island for the Statistical Account of the island published in 1845. He described it as an island of outstanding fertility, his successful experiments in growing new crops such as wheat and peas, and the export of about 900 barrels of high-quality potatoes from his own home farm. He praised even the quality of the kelp produced from the shores, for there was a short resumption of the industry in the 1840s. The evidence of witnesses who appeared years later before the Napier Commission in 1883 revealed what followed in Ulva. I shall mention two of them – Lachlan MacQuarrie and A. M. Fletcher.

  As a measure of the Clark’s clearances that began to take effect in 1850, only 51 people were left by 1881, crowded into a corner of the island near the present ferry known as Desolation Point. Even that number was regarded as temporary, for they were forbidden to build houses or plant trees, in case this indicated some degree of permanence. The island is still dotted with the ruins of townships and cot-houses burned down by the factor and estate workers on Clark’s orders. The laird’s first step was to evict 73 households after moving them to smaller unproductive holdings, leaving a total of 350 people destitute. They were cottars, who as I have explained occupied their land as in days gone by under the chief, as their forefathers had done, with no legal titles. Any family trying to protest or appeal simply had the roof torn off and the house burned down, often without giving time for the occupants to remove their possessions. One old woman who was described as bedridden and cared for by her daughter was left with only a corner of the roof to keep the rain off her bed.

  I have already described my background as a boy before World War I in Mull Combination Poorhouse, where my father was in charge of many old lonely inmates crippled with their lives’ hardships. I have two unforgettable memories. An old man once said to me: ‘When I was a boy like you, I remember my father carrying me out of the little cottage my grandfather had built. We were hardly out of the door than the factor and his men waiting outside put their blazing torches in the thatch and told us to clear out. We lost everything.’

  The other memory is of an old woman who said to me: ‘When I was left a young widow, of course I had to give up our home and croft. I went to see Mr. Clark and asked him if he could give me some wee place for shelter. He said “Why should I? I am not your father; but I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I am on the committee of the new poorhouse at Tobermory and I shall see to it that you are admitted.”’ This must have been after 1862 when the new establishment was built.

  Some of the laird’s actions reported by witnesses were incredible. With his own hands he tore washing from the lines and filled in a well with stones as a punishment for people temporarily obliged to live within sight of his windows. Again, he tried to ingratiate himself with the children by handing out biscuits in the hope that this would persuade their parents to cooperate with the kind laird! Everything hastened to an end following the effects of the dreaded potato disease, and Ulva suffered such evictions and persecutions that finally nothing was left but a large sheep farm and a handful of estate workers.

  The foregoing are only a few of the authentic incidents reported in the evidence of reputable witnesses before the 1883 Commission.

  The dislike in which Clark was held comes down in the tradition that when he died, his empty coffin, when delivered at the ferry slipway, could not be moved until an appropriate spell had been invoked to release it from the powers of evil. He must rest uneasily within the little walled burying place on the top of that little steep hillock beside the eastern shore.

  How heartening it is today that the island is being revitalised.* Visitors are welcomed in increasing numbers every year. Paths are being restored, information provided, the small Telford-designed church is to be admired, and easy access is being made along the south-east shore to explore the amazing extent of worn-down, basaltic columns, so like the stonework of ancient buildings that the place became known as ‘The Castles’. The estate runs a herd of pedigree cattle well-known at the markets and shows of the mainland: but always an echo of the sad old days seems to remain.

  Jarvisfield Estate

  This was the present Gruline estate, extended and renamed after being bought by Lt. General Lachlan Macquarie. Lt. General Macquarie bought about 10,000 acres of this land from Murdoch Maclaine of Lochbuie at a price of £1 per acre. In 1804 he renamed the estate Jarvisfield, in memory of his first wife who had died ten years earlier, Further purchases of land were made from the Argyll Estates, until, at his death in 1824, the estate covered 21,000 acres. It extended from Glen Forsa on the Sound of Mull to the village of Salen, and across the isthmus to Gruline, on Loch na Keal, where he could look across to Ulva, where his father had farmed. It included some of the most spectacular scenery in central Mull. He and his family lie in that little mausoleum that stands beside the access road to Gruline House. For a long time this little plot and the museum were maintained by the Government of New South Wales.

  In 1808 he established the village of Salen as a road centre, with sixteen crofts, an inn, a shop, and resident tradesmen. He contributed to the building costs of substantial stone-built houses. A pier was built, but its location had to be moved on two later occasions to cater for the increasing size of ships and an adverse tidal flow. Later in the nineteenth century Salen was to find itself surrounded to within half a mile by sheep farms and sporting estates. The General was never responsible for any clearances; on the contrary, his ambitions for the people resembled those of Maclean of Coll at Dervaig.

  Torosay Estate

  This is the nearest corner of Mull to the mainland at Oban, just nine miles distant from Grass Point, where there is a small harbour and pier which used to be the focal point of all the drove roads in Mull for transport to the mainland. Torosay was another part of the Argyll Estates sold by the Duke of Argyll to Campbell of Possil in 1820. The new owner proceeded to clear the estate of unwanted tenants, but the only recorded details refer to the clearing of 34 holdings, 170 people, from a few small townships in Glen Forsa to make way for large farms. Artefacts found in the glen, especially round Callachally, prove that it was populated back to the Iron Age, or even earlier. The glen extends from the Sound of Mull to meet Glen More under that shapely hill, Ben Talaidh, the ‘Prospect Hill’. The village of Salen, and the modern car ferry terminus at Craignure, lie within the estate.

  In 1875 the estate was bought by Murray Guthrie, and in 1911 he sold Duart Castle and 400 adjoining acres to Sir Fitzroy Maclean, 10th Baronet of Duart and chief of the Clan Maclean, which had dominated the Isle of Mull until driven out by the Campbells in 1692. The ancestral centre of the Clan Maclean was now restored after a gap of 200 years, and the ruined castle was rebuilt and re-occupied in 1912 by Sir Fitzroy.

  What we know today as the ‘Salen Show’, held by the Mull and Morvern Agricultural Society every August in the ‘Field of the Englishman’ – one of the many Mull stories – near Aros Bridge, originated well over 200 years ago as a horse-fair held every 21st August within the Parish of Torosay. There were extensive woodlands in Torosay up to the late eighteenth century, but they were cut down to provide charcoal for the Lorne Furnace Company of Argyll, and possibly at Bonawe as well, to provide charcoal for gunpowder and explosives for the Navy and for the developing industries in the south.

  The only public railway in the Scottish islands ran from the Craignure ferry terminus for over a mile to picturesque Torosay Castle with its famous walks, garden and well-wooded policies. The railway ran on a gauge of 10½ inches.

  Lochbuie, with Glenbyre and Croggan

  Lochbuie estate, the former lands of the Maclaines of Lochbuie, lies south and west of Torosay along part of the rugged cliff-lined coast of Mull, extending to Loch Scridain towards the west.

  It may be that the wholesale clearances carried out here, which were replaced by a more profitable source of revenue, were prompted desperately even then by a mounting indebtedness. By the twentieth century the estate was heavily mortgaged, and ownership by the chief was lost through a delay of only a few hours in the repayment of an instalment, which was seized upon by the mortgagee as an excuse to foreclose. Perhaps the actions of some of the other Mull lairds were copied by Lochbuie, finding that the revenue from a sporting estate, especially deer stalking, became a more profitable and economical source of income than gathering rents from a peasantry. On the way to old Moy Castle and the mansion house that replaced it as a residence, you will see a handsome pyramidal cairn erected, as the plaque says ‘. . . by Lochbuie and his Highlanders . . .’ in 1902, to mark the coronation of King Edward VII. Perhaps the inscription should have read ‘. . . and his surviving Highlanders . . .’, for long before that the estate had been swept clear of his people and turned into a sporting estate.

  In 1894 the newspaper Oban Times reported as follows:

  ‘In 1884 there were 91 households with 500 people engaged in crofting and fishing, a comparatively prosperous community: by 1894 there remained 42 households and 250 people. Crofts had been taken over by Maclaine of Lochbuie and amalgamated into a deer forest. The countryside is dotted with ruins.’

  In the area of Kinloch and Loch Buie there were 10,000 acres, including some of the finest grazings and arable land in Mull as a result of the geological limestone formations. Most of it became a sporting estate, with three shooting lodges and only a handful of gamekeepers and staff. There was one shocking action of which some lairds were guilty, and Lochbuie was one of them. In the days of near famine, the government could hardly avoid augmenting the supplies of oatmeal and other food distributed to the hardest hit and landless people. Unwisely, distribution was placed in the hands of lairds, and it emerged in evidence that not only had some of them diverted the rations to subsidise workers on their own private estates, but were even feeding them to the horses! Shooting lodges and roads in the Lochbuie estate were reported to have been built in return for food.

  Two witnesses before the Napier Commission gave evidence that in 1861 there were 25 people in the township of Kinloch, at the head of Loch Scridain. They were evicted in 1865, and their 15 crofts, along with the hill grazings, combined to form two farms. This was carried out even after the rents had been increased substantially. Those callous evictions certainly led to the deaths of several old people who were forced to live under new and indescribable conditions without care or comforts.

  Kilfinichen Estate

  In 1849, on the Argyll Estates at Kilfinichen, which lies on the north side of Loch Scridain and extends west to Tiroran and Burg, the 8th Duke summarily evicted 32 families and took over their holdings. 25 people emigrated to America at their own expense after being threatened with further action if they failed to cooperate. Others moved to the notorious southern area at Kinloch, where they lived in poverty, forbidden to cultivate field or garden, yet having to meet inflated rents of £5 to £15 per annum. In despair, the people sold what was left of their livestock and even their household belongings, and ended up destitute.

  Memories of this, handed down by her grandmother, were related by Chrissie MacGillivray, who lived latterly on her own at Burg sheep farmhouse, now owned, with the headland of Burg, by the National Trust for Scotland, at the end of a five-mile rough track from Tiroran. I often called there when on my way to explore the cliffs and amazing McCulloch’s Fossil Tree in the cliffs.

  Her grandmother referred to some of the incidents. Before their houses were demolished there was one blind, bedridden old woman who went to live with her niece at Tiroran. The family contracted measles, and the old woman had to be moved into the byre, with the rain pouring from the roof.

  In 1847, when Poor Relief was distributing rations after the potato famine, an old woman was living in a tiny windowless room. She had her five pounds (weight) of rationed oatmeal stopped because she had an able-bodied son who was expected to support her, even although he lived with his family a long way off and probably needed assistance himself.

  It was Chrissie’s grandmother, Mary MacDonald, who spoke nothing but the Gaelic, who composed that lovely hymn – Leanabh an Aigh, Child in the Manger – all fourteen verses in the Gaelic, that was set to music in the 1920s.

  The area around Kinloch was bought by a Mr Mitchell in 1873. On the south side of Loch Scridain there was wholesale misery. The north side was much more fertile and attractive and with a large peasantry, but this was systematically cleared by Mitchell. He suggested rather vaguely to the dispossessed people that they could change over to fishing for a living; but they were pastoral by nature and inheritance and had neither boats, gear, or expertise. Unlike the Duke of Argyll, Mitchell made neither money nor loans available to encourage them.

 

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