The Callanish Inn, Linshader Ferry and West Uig Mail Service

Picture credit Tony Jones

The standing stones of Callanish on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides are another of these things (like St Kilda and the Waverley) that are just so ubiquitously well known that I'm not as interested in them as I should be. In fact, of much more interest to me is the modest 19th century house next to the Stones visitor centre: pictured below, it was once the Callanish Inn at the east terminus of a ferry across Loch Roag here.

Picture credit - The Tamed Shrew

According to Bill Lawson's Lewis - the West Coast - in History and Legend, the inn was probably the house mentioned as being built at Callanish in 1827 for Alexander Stewart, the factor (land agent) for Lewis. Though no bigger than any of the surrounding croft houses nowadays, in the 1820s a one and a half storey house like this, rendered and slated with chimney stacks and glazed windows, would have presented a stunning contrast to the surrounding dwellings when the overwhelming majority of the population lived in blackhouses like those pictured below (which the design of the Stones visitor centre to the right of the inn in the photo above consciously evokes in form if not scale):-

Blackhouses on Mingulay in 1905 - picture credit intarch.ac.uk

We have a description of the Callanish Inn in 1850 written by the Rev. George Hely Hutcheson, a sportsman who stayed there for two months while Aline Lodge on Loch Seaforth which he had taken a lease of was being made ready for him:-

It was a queer place that said Callernish Inn, then - the dirtiest little den it was ever my misfortune to locate in. With the exception of the inns in Stornoway, and one small house at Dalbeg, it was the only caravanserai in the Lews. It was an exertion to hold on to the hard, slippery, black horsehair chairs; the beds not inviting; the food, when you arrived without notice, not of the first order.

After some uncomplimentary remarks about the mutton, chicken and cold lobster on offer at the Callanish, he continues:-

Fortunately, we caught plenty of sea-trout. In all Highland inns there are eggs and good preserves, and in this one there was a wonderful servant, who made all those curious compounds called scones, that alone are made in the North, from meal, or barley, or flour, or Heaven knows what. A female was that servant, and she was the only one about the premises that ever seemed to me to do anything. She was both housemaid, parlourmaid, and washerwoman, - nurserymaid and lady's maid, too, for she was sister to the hostess of the inn, who was generally occupied a great part of the year in either producing or nursing babies. Poor, dear Mrs M'Leod!

Picture credit - VisitScotland

You can read the full account, including Hutcheson's amateur attempt to treat one of the landlady's pregnancies while the doctor struggled across the island from Stornoway, here. But, having made the acquaintance of Captain Burnaby, the army officer and fellow field sportsman surveying Lewis for the Ordnance Survey at the time, happily for the inn's reputation he was able to conclude:-

And yet, with all its drawbacks, many is the happy hour I have passed with Burnaby in that small parlour. It was a delightful fishing station. The Grimesta lochs and river were about two miles off, to the mouth of which you rowed up Loch Roag; the Blackwater river about the same distance.

Jolly and carefree as Hutcheson's sporting remeniscences are, it's salutary to recall that the early 1850s were among the grimmest of times for the ordinary people of Lewis. It was just a few years after the potato famine of the late 1840s which had left many crofters so hopelessly in debt that they couldn't pay their rent, were evicted from their holdings and given no choice but to emigrate.   

Ordnance Survey 6 inch map - picture credit National Libraries of Scotland

Note how, on the 1st edition of the OS 6 inch map surveyed in 1849-52 by Hutcheson's friend, Captain Burnaby (above - click to enlarge), the ferry across Loch Roag from the Callanish Inn is marked Aiseag Linshader. Aiseag is the Gaelic word for ferry. It was operated by the inn-keeper who also had a farm attached to the inn - wearing the three hats of inn-keeper, ferryman and farmer used to be a common arrangement.

The Ordnance Survey Name Book records that the ferry fare was a shilling except that someone (Burnaby?) added a pencil note querying whether the shilling was the fare per person or the hire of the whole boat for a crossing, irrespective of the number of passengers or amount of goods carried?

The ferry departed from a jetty in front of the inn. As the picture below shows, there are only vestigial remains of this left but, to judge from the tyres along it, the fact it's kept free of seaweed and the outhaulers (mooring ropes) up the beach, this spot appears to be still in use for embarking in small boats even today.

Google Streetview

At the other side of the ferry there was another landmark which would have stood out in the middle of the 19th century even more than Callanish Inn: Linshader Farm. For a while in recent years, the farmhouse was derelict:-

Linshader House - picture credit - Google Streetview

But within the last ten years (and since the Google Streetview car visited), the house has, despite being a listed building, been demolished although part of the front elevation has been retained as a feature in a new house built beside it. Here it is viewed from across the loch at Callanish:-

Linshader House from Callanish - picture credit Guido

I'm afraid I don't think that works at all. It looks like some kind of derelict factory. Why didn't they just restore the farmhouse? Here's a picture from the architect's website from behind the house looking back across Loch Roag to Callanish: the chimneys of the inn are just visible above right of the tree:-

Looking from Linshader House across Loch Roag to Callanish - picture credit Studio KAP

It's easy to be critical of modern architecture but in one sense the new house follows in tradition in that it presents as stark a contrast to the other houses in its neighbourhood as the original house would have done when it was built in the mid/late 18th century with the crofters' blackhouses around it.

During the first half of the 19th century, the tenants of Linshader Farm were the MacAulay family. They seem to have held the farm since early in the 18th century and therefore appear to be a rare example of a family who held on to a farm through the Clearances and made the transition to commercial farmers from old style tacksmen. ("Tacksman" is an old Scottish word for a tenant but in the Highlands & Islands it has the particular connotation of someone to whom a landowner rented a farm at a relatively modest rent. The tacksman sub-let parts of the farm to small tenants at a higher rent and lived off the difference. Most tacksmen disappeared in the second half of the 18th century as landowners began to take a more commercial attitude to renting their property. Later, the word tacksman came to be applied to the tenant of any farm bigger than a croft.)

In a rental of the estates of the owner of Lewis, the chief of the clan MacKenzie, the Earl of Seaforth, drawn up in 1726 after Seaforth's forfeiture for his involvement in the 1715 Jacobite Rising, Linshader is recorded as let to Angus MacAulay for payment each year of two "muttons" (sheep carcases?), two stones of butter, two firlots of oatmeal and £104:15s:4d Scots money (£9.44 sterling).

Aiseag Linshader from the air. Callanish Inn is the white building bottom right and Linshder Farm is behind the island in the middle of the loch. Picture credit Canmore

The most notorious of the MacAulays of Linshader was Donald known in Gaelic as An Dotair Ruadh, the red haired doctor. Born about 1800, there appears to be a question mark over whether he held any medical qualifications but this didn't prevent him practicing as a doctor by sending his man servant out with pills and medicines. Rather less to his credit was his practice of taking leases of various farms across Lewis and then ruthlessly evicting the small tenants from them. He was also in the habit of picking legal fights with his landlord with a view to extracting financial settlements. So much of a nuisance was MacAulay as tenant that he had to be bought out of his leases by the MacKenzies of Seaforth in order to facilitate their sale of the island to James Matheson in 1844. An Dotair Ruadh died in a private lunatic asylum for the wealthy in Liverpool in 1852 - more information about him here and here.

The next tenant of Linshader Farm was Murdo MacAulay. What (if any) relation he was to An Dotair Ruadh, I don't know but we do know that he hosted a rather unusual church service in March 1845. At the "Disruption" of 1843, the minister of the parish of Uig (in which Callanish and Linshader are situated) and virtually the whole of his congregation left the established Church of Scotland to join the Free Church. The new minister, the Rev. David Watson, was not appointed until 1845 and, upon arrival in his new parish, he preached first at Linshader Farmhouse because the tenant and his wife were the only adherents to the established church left! (In general terms, the crofters joined the Free Church while the gentry and the middle classes - the tenant farmers etc. who formed a tiny minority of the population - remained with the established church.) There's more about Mr Watson, whose tenure as the under employed minister of Uig 1845-56 was an unhappy one, here.

Looking across Loch Roag to Linshader from Callanish - picture credit Alan Huyton

From 1863, we have a description of a holiday in Callanish and Linshader. It comes from this blog which reproduces the diary of Stornoway shop keeper Charles Morrison. The hardware store he founded known locally as "Charlie Morrison's" - picture here - remained on the same site in Bank Street through four generations of the Morrison family before finally closing in 2002. Anyway, in October 1863, Charles and the lady he was courting, Christina Gerrie, with their friends Donald Macrae and Isabella Nicolson, went for a long weekend on the west coast of Lewis. He doesn't explicitly say they stayed at the Callanish Inn but that is the strong likelihood given that Isabella Nicolson's father may have been the tenant there. In the words of the diary (spelling and punctuation as per the original):-

Friday 30^th October
I went along with Donald McRae Christina Gerrie & Isy Nicolson to Callenish. I hired a conveyance from Mrs J. Clark. We left Stornoway at ½ past 5 P.M. and arrived at Callenish at ½ past 8. 

Saturday 31^st October
It rained very heavy in the morning and D. McRae and I went and saw the Druidical Stones about mid day it got fair and Christina went along with us in a boat to Linshader. Donald remained there and Christina and I took a walk we went by Grimersta Garnahine and back to Callenish a distance of about 7 miles. Our drawings for October is £307-13 which is very good.

Sunday 1^st November
[Referring to a 3.75 hours church service uncomfortably seated in a stuffy schoolroom at Breasclete] After we came out I spoke to Alex. McRae Melstay and was introduced to Miss McRae Linshader both were with us the whole evening. I spent a long time with Christina in the sofa.

Monday 2^nd November
Christina, Donald, and I went to the Druidical stones. I counted them 47 in number. We then had a walk the length of the Mill at Breasclet. At 5.o.clock we went to Linshader to tea and spent a very pleasant night there with singing and dancing. It was 10. o.clock before we left.

Tuesday 3^rd November
Christina and I mostly kept the house today it being like rain. In the evening Alexr McKenzie, Newton came afterwards Miss McRae Linshader and we passed a most agreeable night at singing and dancing.

Wednesday 4^th November
I got up at 7 and went to Garnahine to see if there was any conveyance to bring us home there was none. About 1 o’clock there was word that Mrs Gerrie broke her leg and I left at 2 for Stornoway to see as to the truth of it. I walked it in 4 hours when hearing it to be true I hired a conveyance and left alone at 9 P.M. and arrived at Callenish at ½ past 1 A.M. It was very dark all the way going and the horse very stubborn.

Thursday 5^th November
Donald McRae Miss Gerrie and I left at 2 o’clock and arrived here at 5. I had a note from Christina saying that her mother was very poorly.

You can read the full diary entries here and here with commentary here. The inference from the diary is that the tenants of Linshader Farm in the 1860s were called McRae but by the 1880s the tenant was another Ruadh, this time Angus Ruadh MacKenzie pictured below.

Angus Ruadh MacKenzie

According to his great grandson (who by coincidence lives at Linshader today), Angus Ruadh was one of eleven children born in a tiny croft house at Calbost on the east coast of Lewis in the Pairc district. He walked to Stornoway and became a bootmaker. Then he bought a cow and when that broke its leg, Angus Ruadh went into butchery. That business prospered and he eventually secured a contract to supply meat to the Royal Navy. He was also involved in the Stornoway fish trade and was the tenant of Melbost and Reef Farms as well as Linshader, then the biggest farm on the island. It's said that Angus Ruadh had a fast pony such that he could have breakfast at Melbost (just east of Stornoway, where he lived), go to Carloway on the pony, cross Loch Roag to inspect Reef (near Uig on the west coast of Lewis) and Linshader, and be back at Melbost in time for supper!

There are very few farms left on Lewis today because most of them were broken up to create crofts after World War 1. This was usually done in the teeth of opposition from the landlord (now Lord Leverhulme) but Linshader Farm was an exception. When Leverhulme sold Lewis in lots in 1924, Linshader was bought by a sporting syndicate who's main interest was the fishing on the Grimersta River. They had no interest in the property as a farm and actively promoted its division into crofts to the Board of Agriculture for Scotland on the basis that the new crofters might be employed as ghillies. It was a fitting outcome considering the possibility that Donald Macaulay, An Dotair Ruadh, created Linshader as a farm by evicting its crofters around the second quarter of the 19th century.

Linshader divided into crofts

When farms were divided into crofts like this, the redundant farmhouses and steadings were usually either demolished or else just abandoned. This explains a number of ruined farmhouses in the Outer Hebrides such as that at Gress (east coast of Lewis) and the one on Vatersay (south of Barra). But again, Linshader Farmhouse seems to have been an exception and was allocated as the house for Croft No. 4, Linshader.

Back on the other side of the loch, I don't know when the Callanish Inn and the ferry stopped operating but a possibility is that closure coincided with (or was hastened by) the building of the road (now the B8011) from Garynahine to Uig with its bridges over the Black Water and Grimersta Rivers flowing into the head of Loch Roag. Before that, a boat ride across the half mile of water between Callanish and Linshader would very often have been a far easier undertaking than fording these rivers. I don't know exactly when this road and its bridges were built but it seems to have been in the early 1850s because the Ordnance Survey 6 inch map surveyed by Captain Burnaby in 1849-52 marks a "Wooden Bridge (Proposed)" across the Black Water at Garynahine. This was also a time when roads and other public works were being carried out to provide employment for the victims of the recent potato famine. Also, thinking back to Charlie Morrison's diary entry for 31st October 1863 and his and Christina's walk back from Linshader to Callanish via Garynahine, it's hard to imagine the latter hitching up her Victorian skirts to wade across two rivers in spate (remember that he'd recorded that it had rained heavily that morning).

The Grimersta River in spate - picture credit FishPal

By the 1890s, when the second edition of the OS six inch map was surveyed, the map no longer shows the building at Callanish marked as an inn. "Linshader Ferry" is still marked but without a dotted line across the loch suggesting that the location is remembered as one where a ferry used to cross but no longer (think "Stromeferry - No Ferry"). But there is now a "Temperance Hotel" (no alcohol served) at Garynahine suggesting that it has replaced Callanish as the point where a journey from Stornoway to Uig could be broken.

OS 6 inch map, 2nd edition, 1895

But the bridges and road from Garynahine to Uig didn't spell the end of ferry services from Callanish. There was still no road to Earshader on the coast of Lewis opposite Great Bernera as there is today (the B8059) so, in the early 20th century, a ferry started to run from Callanish to Great Bernera and then carried on westwards to Miavaig in West Uig. (I don't know exactly when this service began but it's not marked on an 1895 OS map but is on a 1909 one.)

This boat also carried the mail from the post office at Callanish which was in the building which had been the inn. However the service was fraught with hazard as evidenced by a story in the Stornoway Gazette reporting on a meeting held in West Uig in December 1919. The meeting heard how, that November, the motor launch used, "being far too small and inequal to the difficulties and dangers of [the] passage ... was disabled and cast upon a desert island". Since then, the mail had been carried on a sailing boat and, unsurprisingly, there were occasions when it either arrived at Callanish too late to catch the mail van to Stornoway or couldn't sail at all leading to backlogs in the mail. On one occasion, a motor car had taken some of the mail but had had to leave some due to lack of space. The meeting resolved to make a complaint to the Postmaster General but it's an interesting reflection on the state of transport facilities in 1919 that the PG wasn't asked to provide a mail van to West Uig but merely that:

a serviceable steamer or motor-boat (which can accomplish the journey in all weathers, excepting very tempestuous days) ... be put on the ferry between Callanish and Miavaig; and that it be made a condition that the mail [van] should always wait at Callanish for the arrival of the Miavaig mails.

You can read more about the meeting here. Despite its modest demands, it appears a mail van to Miavaig was provided in 1928 and thereupon the mailboat from Callanish terminated at Great Bernera. That left the doctor who served Bernera and who lived in Miavaig in a bit of a spot, though, because, to get to his patients on the island, he now had to drive all the way to Callanish to catch the mail boat there. Bill Lawson's book contains an extract from Alasdair Alpin MacGregor's The Haunted Isles describing an episode when he accompanied a Dr. Grant on one such mission. Fearing they wouldn't get to Callanish in time for the 9.30am departure of the ferry - an "old and clumsy" craft with a 20HP Kelvin engine - they went up the side road to Linshader in the hope of hailing the ferryman - "old Duncan MacRae" - from there even though the boat no longer made a scheduled call at Linshader. Fortunately for the patient they were successful. The B8059 to Earshader on the Lewis shore opposite Great Bernera was built in the 1930s and this, I assume, brought the end to scheduled sailings from Callanish.

The OS one inch map revised in 1956-57 shows Callanish post office in a different position from the former inn. Callanish Farm - including the farmhouse (i.e. the former inn and post office) and the Stones - belonged to Edinburgh University for a number of years (possibly even since Lord Leverhulme disposed of Lewis in lots in 1923-24, although I don't know) until 1994 when the University transferred the Stones and the farmhouse to a dedicated trust called Urras nan Tursachan which includes Western Isles Council, Scottish Natural Heritage and Historic Environment Scotland amongst its trustees. UnT opened the new visitor centre in 1995 and now rents the old farmhouse and inn beside it as self catering tourist accommodation.

Picture credit - Guido

       

Old Inveraray Castle

Picture credit - James Brown

The present Inveraray Castle (above), seat of the chief of Clan Campbell, the Duke of Argyll, was built 1745-61. It replaced an earlier castle on the same site which I've long been on the look out for a picture of, albeit in the knowledge that none may exist. But a while back I found the picture below:

However, I was a bit dubious about the authenticity of this picture because the castle looks far too close to the town (even allowing for these buildings having been replaced by the current ones). But then I discovered another two pictures which are indubitably of the old Inveraray castle. In the first one (click to enlarge) the castle's on the right between the trees:-

Picture credit - British Library

In the second one, it's on the left:-

Picture credit - National Galleries of Scotland

That last picture is at a big enough resolution to allow a zoom in on the castle:-

All three pictures of old Inveraray Castle are by Paul Sandby, an English artist who, as a young man, spent time in Scotland in the late 1740s working as a draughtsman for military survey work in the wake of the Jacobite Rising. His Inveraray pictures were drawn in 1748 and it's just a guess on my part but Sandby might have been there in connection with building the military road from Dumbarton which reached the the Rest and Be Thankful in 1748 and Inveraray the following year. Paul Sandby's brother Thomas, another artist, was in Scotland during the 1745 Rising as the Duke of Cumberland's secretary. He drew the old Inveraray Castle in 1746 - you can see that here but it's at very low resolution and the zoom in function doesn't seem working with it.

In fact, there was more to the old Inveraray Castle than just that tower you can see in the Sandby drawings. There was another tower ("the New Tower") to the south west of the one visible in the drawings ("the Old Tower"). The New Tower was linked to the Old by a range of buildings which had been demolished by the time of the Sandby drawings. You can see the New Tower between the Old one, by now ruinous, and the new castle in this picture by Sir John Clerk of Eldin dating to around 1770:-

Picture credit RCAHMS

In the two dimensional picture below, the New Tower, to the right of the red line, stands in front of and partly obscures the Old Tower, to the left of the line:-

Picture credit - RCAHMS

According to the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland Inventory for Argyll, Volume 7, the history of the old castle is as follows: The Old Tower was built in the 1450s by Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy (who also built the very similar tower at the nucleus of his own Kilchurn Castle) during the minority of his nephew, Archibald Campbell of Lochawe, 2nd Lord Campbell who was created 1st Earl of Argyll in 1457: hitherto this family's stronghold had been Innis Chonnel Castle on an island in Loch Awe but it was soon moved to their new castle at Inveraray. At first, it was a tower of simple rectangular plan topped with battlements and at this stage in its development, Inveraray Castle would have looked not unlike a slightly taller and thinner Castle Stalker:-

Castle Stalker - picture credit Hakan Johansson

At the end of the 16th century, the castle was altered by having a short wing added at its south west end to make it into an "L-Plan" tower house. At the same time (probably), the roof of the Old Tower was remodelled so as to dispense with the battlements and provide a roof with projecting eaves, chimneyed gables, dormer windows and corner turrets as can be seen in the various pictures above.

Ground and 1st floor plans of the Old Tower after addition of the wing (bottom right) in the late 16th century - Picture credit RCAHMS

At this point (late c.16th), therefore, the Old Tower of Inveraray Castle looks like a slightly fancier version of Castle of Park in Wigtonshire (which doesn't have the corner turrets):-

Castle of Park - picture credit John of Reading

... but not quite as fancy as Craigievar Castle (which has a stair tower in the re-entrant angle):-

Craigievar Castle - Picture credit Eileen

Very soon after (or maybe even at the same time as) the addition of the wing to the Old Tower, the south west range of buildings was added with the New Tower (possibly a bit lower than the Old) at its far end. The nearest I can think of for a castle with two linked towers like this is (and I'm probably overlooking dozens of more obvious examples!) Dunvegan as it appeared before altered out of all recognition in the 19th century:-

Dunvegan Castle in 1797 by Francis Grose

In the 18th century, the Campbell chiefs - since 1701 promoted from Earl to Duke of Argyll - began to think about bringing their seat up to date again. In the 1720s, plans were drawn up for a palace incorporating the Old Tower as a centre piece (see here) but these were shelved. Then, in 1744, a survey of the Old Tower revealed it to be suffering from subsidence due to the unstable nature of the river bank it stood on so the decision was taken to build a new castle altogether slightly further from the river. For a number of the years, the old and new castles stood together, the former in progressively detiorating condition until it was swept away completely in the early 1770s and the site landscaped.

Approximate position of the old castle relative to the new

The puzzle about the old castle appearing in the first Sandby drawing to be too close to the town is easily explained. I knew that Inveraray had been a planned new village laid out by the Dukes of Argyll in the second half of the 18th century but what I didn't know was that the old town was on a different site, much closer to the castle. In the picture below (click it to enlarge), you can see the houses of the old town on the shore below the castle - one of the towers of the old castle is also still standing, although I don't know which:-

From Records of Argyll by Lord Archibald Campbell

The plan below, drawn in the first half of the 18th century, shows the respective positions of the old and new castles and towns:-

Picture Credit RCAHMS

You can read more about the development of the new town in the Conservation Area Appraisal here (start at page 8). I liked this quotation of the 3rd Duke of Argyll in 1743:-

"I intend if possible to remove the Town of Inveraray about half a mile lower down the Loch, but it must be a secret or else the feus [i.e. the houses which were owned as opposed to merely rented] there will stand in my way or be held up at very extravagant prices."

I must say, I imagined Dukes of Argyll to remove towns by the strokes of their pens rather than having to negotiate to buy them out! Development of the new town began in the early 1750s but it was slow to take off and, rather like the castles, the old and new towns co-existed side by side for a while until the 5th Duke, in a manner more typical of 18th century dukes, decreed that the old town (described in 1769 as "composed of the most wreteched hovels that can be imagined") be completely removed by no later than Whitsunday 1777.

Inveraray New Town - the oldest buildings, dating to the 1750s, are on the left. Picture credit - yepyep

I leave you with a portrait of Paul Sandby who drew three of the pictures in this post. I love these oil paintings that are almost as realistic as a photograph - it's like you're actually meeting someone who saw old Inveraray Castle! 

Paul Sandby in 1789 by Sir William Beechey - Picture credit Wikipedia

Pier at risk - Lismore

I'd been going to begin this post with "If there's a Buildings at Risk Register, there should be a Piers at Risk Register ..." when I thought I'd better check the BAR Register to see if there's any piers in it. There are: inserting search term "pier" revealed eleven piers but not the one I'm proposing for inclusion: Achnacroish Pier on Lismore:-

Picture credit - Barry Turner Photography

The pier is unused and now in such a parlous state that a red warning notice not to approach has replaced the name board which, just like the board at a railway station, informed voyagers by sea which island they were at back in the days when passenger vessels tended to sail on routes with multiple calls like a branch railway unlike today's "there and back" sea routes:-

Picture credit - Ornulf Halvorsen

A plaque on the wall pictured below indicates the pier was originally built in 1880 by A & K Macdonald and J Goodwin & Coy., Contractors with John Strain as the Engineer. A & K Macdonalds seem to have been quite prolific contractors around this time, a quick google revealing that they were also responsible for the wooden berthing head of Stromness Pier in Orkney in 1878/79 and the Achanalt to Attadale section of the Skye Railway (to Stromeferry later extended to Kyle of Lochalsh) in 1868. I couldn't find anything about J Goodwin & Coy. but John Strain was the engineer to the extension of the railway from Dalmally to Oban and Oban's Railway Pier which also (probably not coincidentally) opened in 1880:-

Picture credit Lynne

The boar's head, motto Ne Obliviscaris ("Don't forget") and ducal coronet on the plaque reference the Duke of Argyll who owned a lot of land on Lismore. I wonder if he paid for the pier? That's the sort of thing dukes did in these days (today, they generally don't have two brass farthings to rub together due to having costly stately homes to maintain) except that, in 1880, it would have been the same Duke that Edward Stanford of kelp fame had had to deal with as described here. Stanford noted (here) that, in 1863, His Grace had been accorded a cool reception on Tiree (which he also owned) due to his mean-ness and had refused to build a pier for that island and consented only to laying some moorings instead. Perhaps the Duke had mellowed by 1880 or the Railway Company had some money left in its budget after having completed the pier at Oban ...

No pier just tidal jetties at Achnacroish on the Ordnance Survey 1875 Six Inch Map

Whoever paid for the pier, it would have represented a boon in the 1880s of a similar magnitude to building a bridge to the island today. Tiree, with four times the population of Lismore, didn't finally get its pier until 1911, Coll and Colonsay until the 1960s and Rum, Eigg and Muck until the 21st century! A pier a steamer could get along side avoided the arduous task of loading passengers and - more particularly - cargo on to the steamer via a rowing boat operating from a crude tidal jetty as seen at Loch Harport on Skye in 1890s below:-

Loading sacks of wool on John MacCallum's Hebridean at Loch Harport, Skye

Turning to the vessels that called at Achnacroish Pier, remember that, until the 1970s when the transition to all passengers and cargo going on multi-purpose ro-ro vehicle ferries was complete, coastal shipping up the west coast and to the islands fell into two categories. First there were the cargo steamers sailing from Glasgow about once a week carrying heavy goods and (until the War) a few passengers. Second, there were the mail steamers running daily from the railheads with the mail and passengers and light and perishable goods. In summer (mid-May to mid-September), the mail runs were supplemented by additional routes and frequencies carrying passengers only and catering to the tourist trade: until the 1920s, these were known as "swift steamers".

The picture below is of one of MacBrayne's cargo vessels, the MV Lochshiel loading sheep at Achnacroish pier. She was built in 1929 and sailed from Glasgow delivering cargo to the Firth of Lorne, Sound of Mull and Loch Linnhe area until she was sold in 1952:-

The Lochshiel at Achnacroish Pier - picture credit Lismore Website Photo Gallery

Here's a closer up picture of the Lochshiel on the Clyde and you can see more of her at nearby Croggan Pier on Loch Spelve in Mull (another pier at risk) here.

MV Lochshiel (1929-52) on the Clyde. Scan from Duckworth & Langmuir's West Highland Steamers

Turning to the mail steamers, in 1881, the year after Achnacroish Pier was opened, MacBrayne's signed a contract with the Postmaster General to carry the mails between Oban and Fort William with calls at Lismore, Port Appin, Ballachulish and Ardgour (Corran Ferry), one sailing each way six days a week year round, on a steam vessel capable of 13 knots in summer and 12 in winter: you can read the full contract here. In fact, this mail run didn't last long after the railway to Fort William opened in 1894. Instead, swift steamers between Oban and FW called at Lismore daily but, of course, they only sailed in summer. In winter, the island had to make do with only one call a week by the Oban to Tobermory mail steamer.

Amongst the swift steamers which called at Lismore on the Oban-Fort William run before the War, these included the paddle steamer Fusilier built in 1888: I think she was also the mail steamer in the mid 1890s:-

Picture credit - Dalmadan

That picture above can probably be dated to 1926 or 1927 because, prior to 1926, the Fusilier's navigating bridge was aft of her funnel and she was removed to a different route in 1928. From 1927, her place was taken by the larger but older paddle steamer Iona seen approaching Achnacroish Pier below:-

The Iona approaching Achnacroish Pier. Picture credit - Lismore Website Photo Gallery

Here's another one of the Iona (or perhaps the very similar but slightly smaller Chevalier) approaching the pier:-

The Iona (or Chevalier?) approaching Achnacroish Pier - the mountain is Beinn Bheithir, not Ben Cruachan!

 In 1936, the Iona was replaced by the MV Lochfyne, seen at Lismore below:-

The Lochfyne at Achnacroish. Picture credit - Lismore Website Photo Gallery

After the Oban-Fort William mail service ceased in the mid 1890s, the Oban-Tobermory mail steamer which called at Lismore once a week and maintained the island's connection with Oban in winter when the swift steamers weren't operating was, from 1908, the MV Lochinvar. The picture below is taken on board the Lochinvar approaching Achnacroish Pier:-

Approaching Achnacroish Pier on the Lochinvar. Picture credit - Corriebob

Here's a picture of the Lochinvar as she appeared early in her career at an unknown location:-

MV Lochinvar

 
And here she is at Lismore later in life after she'd acquired a wheelhouse, a traditional funnel and a bigger crane:-

The Lochinvar at Lismore - picture credit Lismore Community Website Photo Gallery

In 1947, a new mail contract provided for a new year-round twice daily sailing between Oban and Lismore by motor launch. This was to be in addition to the Tobermory mail steamer's once weekly call which continued until that run was discontinued in 1964 upon the advent of car ferries to Mull (Craignure). For the purposes of the new daily service to Lismore, MacBrayne's acquired a former hospital launch built in 1941 to bring stretcher cases ashore from ships anchored in the Clyde and renamed her Lochnell. Below is a picture of her leaving Achnacroish Pier:-

The Lochnell leaving Lismore - picture credit William MacDonald

Already in 1934, Achnacroish Pier was described as "soon unusable" by the MP for Argyllshire in a question in the House of Commons to the Under Secretary of State for Scotland about reconditioning dilapidated piers in the county. In the picture below taken in the early 1950s, from on board the Lochinvar, its fragile state is plain to see:-

Picture credit - corriebob

An upgrade to this vital piece of island infrastructure was clearly overdue so the iron pierhead built in 1880 was eventually replaced by a reinforced concrete structure: I don't know the exact date but this entry in the National Records of Scotland including "bound plan and section of work at Achnacroish Pier" suggests the early 1950s, perhaps 1951 or 1952. Anyway, as well as the berth itself, the improvements included a livestock ramp, a new goods shed on the pier and a passengers' waiting room:-

The waiting room at Achnacroish Pier. Picture credit - David Taylor

But if there were improvements to Lismore's transport infrastructure in the early post-War years with the establishment of the daily year round mail boat and refurbishment of the pier, there were also set backs. The summer only Oban to Fort William passenger service (they weren't called "swift steamers" after the 1920s) operated by the Lochfyne was resumed after the War but called at Lismore only four days a week now instead of six as previously. Then, in 1949, Lismore became a request stop and, finally, calls at the island by the Fort William steamer stopped altogether after 1952.

The following year, 1953, the Glasgow cargo steamer also ceased calling at Lismore: within just a couple of years of the pier having been comprehensively upgraded, it had lost a huge chunk of its regular traffic! Henceforth the island's cargo would be unloaded and Oban then put on to the daily mailboat Lochnell. Any big loads she couldn't handle would have to be carried on the weekly call by the larger Lochinvar on the Tobermory mail route.  Below is a picture of an awkward looking piece of agricultural machinery too big for the Lochnell being lifted aboard the Lochinvar:-

The Lochinvar handling an awkward cargo. Picture credit corriebob

After the Tobermory mail service stopped in 1964 (replaced by the car ferry to Craignure), bigger loads for Lismore, and livestock going to market, had to go on extra sailings performed by one of the other mail or cargo steamers in its spare time - the Inner Isles Mail steamer, MV Claymore, is seen at Achnacroish Pier on one such sailing in 1972 below.

The Claymore on a special call at Lismore in 1972 - photo by Jim Aikman Smith in West Highland Steamers

In 1964, the Lochnell was replaced on the Lismore mail run by the converted fishing boat Loch Toscaig which had previously served between Kyle of Lochalsh and Toscaig in Applecross. That's her parked alongside the Lochfyne at Oban below:-

The Loch Toscaig alongside the Lochfyne at Oban - picture credit Ken Ross

And here's the Loch Toscaig leaving Oban for Lismore in 1972:-

Loch Toscaig leaving Oban 1972 - picture credit Rob Beale

The early 70s was the era of the drive to convert the passenger, mail and cargo services to the islands to a single fleet of multi-purpose drive on-drive off car ferries. Though not yet formally merged to form Caledonian MacBrayne, the Caledonian Steam Packet Company (the former BR subsidiary responsible for shipping services on the Clyde) and MacBrayne's had both been under the ownership of the Scottish Transport Group since 1969 and were already working together on developing a class of small landing craft type vehicle ferries to serve the smaller islands and secondary routes to some of the larger ones. Although Lismore would, no doubt, have come to benefit from the introduction of one of these so-called "island class" ferries in due course, according to the excellent Ships of Calmac website, it happened earlier than planned when the Loch Toscaig had to be temporarily withdrawn with engine trouble in 1974. She was relieved by one of the new ferries and once it had been discovered that she could unload vehicles onto the beach next to Achnacroish Pier, the Loch Toscaig  was never invited back. Shortly, thereafter a slipway was built and the island class ferry MV Eigg became the regular Lismore ferry.

Achnacroish Pier next to the slipway and car ferry which put it out of business. Picture credit Tom Careyette

The significance of the advent of car ferries operating from the slipway for Achnacroish Pier was that it ceased to have any regular traffic. Now it was just maintained by its owners, Argyll & Bute Council (see here), as a reserve asset in case ever needed to handle a load that for whatever reason couldn't go on a lorry on the Eigg. One example was the materials for the Ionad Naomh Moluag Lismore Gaelic Heritage Centre in 2006 which you can read about here and pictured below:-

Materials being unloaded in 2006 - picture credit Ionad Naomh Moluag

But these exceptional loads must have been rare and I'm guessing that the reason why the Council finally abandoned Achnacroish Pier was the replacement of the Eigg about 5 years ago with a larger drive-through ferry: henceforth, there would be no further risk of a load that couldn't manage the awkward reverse down the slipway a voyage on the Eigg entailed.

An awkward load of electricity poles for Lismore reverses onto the Eigg at Oban

Some of these old steamer piers have adjusted to the car ferry era by taking on new roles such as the overnight berth for the ferry (Gigha, Raasay, Lochranza); loading timber (Lochaline, Craighouse); fish farming base (Scalpay) or an occasional overnight berth for fishing boats (Canna) - one (Salen) has even been redeveloped under private ownership as holiday accommodation (as well a berth for fish farming boats). But Achnacroish has sort of fallen between all these cracks, I'd guess because Oban is so close and offers more facilities and also because it's rather exposed to the prevailing south westerlies. I wonder if modern attitudes to recycling and health and safety will soon compel the Council actively to demolish it or if it will be left to crumble away?

Achnacroish Pier from landward - picture credit alifetimeofislands