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| Picture credit - Alan Austin |
My sister-in-law and her family are great fans of the Isles of Glencoe Hotel at Ballachulish, pictured above, and regularly go there for weekend breaks. And I noted a visitor from South Africa describe it on Facebook recently as an "exquisite place". Surrounded by greenery by the shore of Loch Leven a few miles from Scotland's most famous glen - Glen Coe, celebrated in equal measure for its scenery, outdoor recreation and history - this is tourist central.
Yet 35 years ago, Ballachulish was described as "Scotland's dirtiest village". Have a look at the Youtube video below. It's a piece from the BBC's "Nationwide" programme in 1973. Note the burnt out buildings, the abandoned cars, the derelict railway station and piles of debris. Where the IoG Hotel now stands is the tongue of waste land sticking out into the sea at 1:47 and where the reporter is walking from 2:00 to 2:28.
That's how I remember Ballachulish from my earliest recollection in the 70s - a grotty blot on the landscape to whizz past, normal gorgeous Highland scenery to be resumed shortly. As the Youtube reveals, it's because Ballachulish is not a crofting or fishing village but a slate quarrying village. And once the quarry had closed, industrial dereliction set in. I was sort of vaguely aware of Ballachulish's quarrying past but decided I needed to know more. The intrusion of industry into the Highlands & Islands, an area generally associated with being "unspoilt", is a theme that fascinates me. As so often happens, though, my enquiries led me into a few digressions so this post is going to be a bit leggier than I originally planned.
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| Approximate boundaries of Lorne in yellow |
Ballachulish is situated at the very north end of the territory called Lorne which stretches from Loch Leven south to Loch Awe. In the 13th century, Lorne, with its adjacent islands of Mull, Coll, Tiree and Jura was held by the MacDougalls of Argyll, the most powerful lords on the western seaboard who ruled their domain from Dunstaffnage Castle, just north of Oban.
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| Dunstaffnage Castle. The curtain wall was probably built in the second quarter of the 13th century by Duncan (died c.1240) or Ewen MacDougall of Argyll. Picture credit Ben Allison |
The MacDougall Lords of Argyll had prospered by backing the right horse in the struggle between Scotland and Norway for control of the western seaboard which culminated in the Norwegians ceding suzerainty over the islands on the west coast of Scotland after the Battle of Largs in 1263. But the MacDougalls then spectacularly crashed and burnt early the next century by backing the wrong horse in the Wars of Independence.
Allied by marriage to the Comyns who were in turn similarly allied to the Balliols, the MacDougalls started well by beating Robert Bruce when he was at his lowest ebb at the Battle of Dalrigh just east of Tyndrum in 1306. But two years later Bruce turned the tables by defeating the MacDougalls at the Battle of the Pass of Brander (the steep sided valley the road to Oban passes through between Loch Awe and Loch Etive). Dunstaffnage was besieged and captured for the king. Alexander MacDougall of Argyll and his son John went into exile in England never to return to Scotland, their estates forfeited to the Crown: for a time John was an admiral in the English navy, an appropriate role for one whose heraldic banner was an image of a galley.
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| The Galley of Lorne - the coat of arms of the Lords of Lorne |
The foregoing account of the fall of the MacDougalls of Argyll is quite well known. But what I didn't know was that they made a comeback in the reign of Robert Bruce's son, David II (1329-71). Admiral John's grandson, another John nicknamed Gallda (Gaelic for "foreigner" in reference to his years of exile in England), managed to ingratiate himself with the new king sufficiently to be rewarded in the 1350s by a grant of the mainland parts of his family's former territory, namely the Lordship of Lorne. But the MacDougall resurgence was destined to be shortlived because when John Gallda died in the mid 1370s, he left two legitimate daughters and an illegitimate son, Allan. This set the scene for a power struggle because the MacDougall clan kindred in Lorne supported Allan as their chief whereas the Crown insisted on the application of feudal law - which required that the lands of the lordship be divided between the legitimate heiresses with the elder's husband taking the title Lord of Lorne - particularly as the heiresses' husbands were two brothers, Stewart kinsmen of the new king, Robert II (1371-90), the first of the Stewart dynasty.
After much manoeuvring, political, military and legal, a settlement was arrived at whereby, in 1388, the older heiress and her husband transferred their interest in Lorne to her sister and brother-in-law - Sir John Stewart of Innermeath - and Allan MacDougall contented himself with the island of Kerrera and a slice of territory between Oban and Loch Feochan under Stewart overlordship. At some point in the mid-15th century, a subsequent MacDougall chief built as his stronghold Dunollie Castle at the entrance to Oban Bay - the castle and Kerrera still belong to the MacDougalls at the present day.
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| The familiar profile of Dunollie Castle at the entrance to Oban Bay - Picture credit dun_deagh |
Stewarts of Appin
Thus did the Lordship of Lorne come into the hands of the Stewarts but only for two more generations when history repeated itself. The third Stewart Lord of Lorne, John Mourach ("Leper John"), died in 1463, assassinated in Dunstaffnage Castle by a renegade MacDougall still smarting over the settlement of the Lordship reached more than half a century earlier. John left three legitimate daughters, an illegitimate son, Dugald, and a brother, Walter, to whom he intended Lorne to pass absent a legitimate son. But the daughters were married to three members of that most acquisitive of clans, the Campbells: Colin, 1st Earl of Argyll; his uncle, Colin, 1st Campbell of Glenorchy; and Arthur Campbell of Otter. These three were not about to pass up the opportunity to add Lorne to their existing territories round Loch Awe. In 1469, after much political and legal wrangling, the Campbells backed Walter Stewart into a deal whereby he got to keep some of his late brother's lowland estates due to be inherited by his nieces, the Campbells' wives, in exchange for transferring Lorne to the Earl of Argyll. The latter then cut Glenorchy in for a third share of Lorne, specifically the southmost part between Loch Feochan and Loch Melfort. (Arthur of Otter doesn't seem to have got anything.) Finally, John Mourach's masterful illegitimate son Dugald was accommodated with the northmost portion of Lorne, from Loch Creran to Loch Leven. He and his successors styled themselves Stewart of Appin.
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| Castle Stalker - Picture credit WłasnąDrogą |
In the third quarter of the 16th century, Alan, the 3rd Stewart of Appin (counting from Dugald, the illegitimate son of John Mourach, the last Stewart Lord of Lorne) built as his stronghold Castle Stalker, pictured above. He also parcelled out parts of his estate to his kinsmen. This was a very clannish thing to do - a clan chief's kinsmen owning parts of the clan territory was functionally the same, if not preferable, in clan terms to it all being owned by the chief himself. (The Stewarts of Appin are a good example of a segment of a lowland family settling in the Highlands, going native and morphing into a clan. The Frasers are another example - indeed most people don't realise there were ever Frasers who weren't part of a Highland clan.) Anyway, among the Stewart kinsmen who got a portion of Appin was Alan's grandson, another Alan, who, around 1540, received Ballachulish Estate consisting of three farms on the south shore of Loch Leven, namely, (from west to east) Ballachulish, Laroch and Brecklet.
And having FINALLY wrenched myself back round to Ballachulish where I started, I think I'll break here and resume in a subsequent post.
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| The arms of Stewart of Appin reflect his heritage: the "fesse cheque" of the Stewarts quartered with the Galley of Lorne |
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