Dubh Loch: when is a loch not a loch?

I've mentioned this before but the law reports can be a great source of local history that might otherwise be lost. Another case in point is MacKenzie v Bankes in 1877 which concerned fishing rights in a loch in Wester Ross.

360 degree view by Dave Lawson here

Despite being set amongst the most dramatic scenery, Dubh Loch - the nearest in the photo above - is not well known. That's probably because it's a ten mile walk from the nearest road: in the starchy Victorian language of one of the judges in the case I'm going to talk about, it lies east of Loch Maree "in a very wild part of the hills, far from any gentleman's house". Dubh Loch is separated from its much larger neighbour to the north west, Fionn Loch, by a shallow bar or submerged ithsmus about 100 yards wide and covered with knee deep water between two spits of land. This feature is called A' Phait which is the Gaelic word for ford or stepping stones (thanks to my Gaelic consultant there - you know who you are) and it's crossed by a narrow stone causeway.

A' Phait, with Fionn Loch to the west (left), as shown on the 1875 Ordnance Survey 6 inch map. You can see more of this map on the National Libraries of Scotland website. Use the "Change transparency of overlay" slider on the left to reveal high resolution geo-referenced aerial imagery under the map. 

The causeway at A'Phait viewed from the south with Fionn Loch to the left and Dubh Loch to the right - picture credit Stuart S via Tripadvisor

Incidentally, Dubh (pronounced "Doo") Loch means literally Black Loch and Fionn (pronounced "F-yawn") Loch means literally White Loch. However, the names are more figurative: Dubh Loch is black in the sense of being more often in the shade due to its surrounding mountains whereas Fionn Loch is white in the sense of being more often in the sunlight due to its more open aspect.

Anyway, before we get to the court case which embroiled Dubh Loch in the 1870s, we need to have a quick legal lecture: here comes the science bit - concentrate! as Jen A used to say in the shampoo ads. In Scottish law, if a loch (and I'm talking about freshwater lochs here, different rules apply to sea lochs) is entirely surrounded by a single property, then the owner of that property has the exclusive right to fish in it. But if a loch is bounded by two (or more) properties, then both (or all) the proprietors are allowed to fish in it. Moreover, each is allowed to fish in all parts of the loch - they're not confined to fishing just the part of the loch opposite their particular property. Applying that rule to Fionn and Dubh Lochs in the 1870s, look at the map below (click to enlarge):-

Both lochs were entirely surrounded by Letterewe Estate belonging to Meyrick Bankes (of a rich Lancashire family you can read about here) except between points A and B which adjoined Kernsary Estate belonging to Osgood MacKenzie (he who is most famous for having founded Inverewe Gardens). 

Osgood and his guests and sporting tenants of Kernsary had been in use to fish over the whole of Fionn and Dubh Lochs for many years until October 1876 when Bankes put a stop to Kernsary fishing Dubh Loch, he being concerned, apparently, that fishers on the loch might disturb deer on his surrounding Letterewe Estate. Osgood responded to this by raising court proceedings to have it declared that he had a legal right, jointly with Letterewe, to fish in Dubh Loch. To succeed in this, Osgood required the court to find that Fionn and Dubh were all one loch. Because if it found that Dubh was a separate loch from Fionn, then, because no part of Kernsary adjoined Dubh, it would have no right to fish it and Bankes would be quite within his rights to prevent Kernsary from doing so.

Osgood MacKenzie. I couldn't find a picture of Meyrick Bankes

After a lengthy proof (hearing at which the evidence of witnesses is heard), a judge of the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled in favour of Osgood MacKenzie by deciding that Fionn and Dubh were legally all one loch. He seems to have been influenced by scepticism of the evidence of Meyrick Bankes' scientific witness, Mr Buchanan, that A'Phait was really a river, albeit a short one, between the Dubh and Fionn and thus they were in no different situation from two lochs linked by a longer river. But observing that this so-called river was almost as wide as it was long, the judge dismissed this as "really a thing of the imagination".

Meyrick Bankes appealed to the Inner House of the Court of Session (Scottish equivalent of the Court of Appeal) where the matter was reconsidered by three senior judges headed by the Lord Justice Clerk. Taking a less scientific and more common sense approach, they decided that Fionn and Dubh were two separate lochs. Two of the judges were influenced by the simple fact of them having different names: in the words of the Lord Justice Clerk "these two sheets of water are as separate in their nature as they are in their names". The third judge was a bit doubtful about that - he observed that bits of the Mediterranean having different different names (Adriatic, Aegean etc.) didn't make it any less one sea - but he didn't feel strongly enough about it formally to dissent from his brethren.

Having lost the second set, so to speak, Osgood appealed to what was then the highest court in the land, the House of Lords (nowadays the Supreme Court). Though not without misgivings on the part of two of them, four law lords ruled that Dubh and Fionn were separate lochs. They were influenced by the consideration that what gives rise to the rule that a proprietor adjoining a loch is entitled to fish over all of it and not just the part opposite his property - that it's not easy in practice to identify where such imaginary dividing lines lie when you're out in a boat - simply didn't apply to Fionn and Dubh Lochs. It was perfectly obvious where the dividing line between them lay at A'Phait, even before the causeway had been built, where the evidence of the witnesses was that the water was not deep enough for a boat with a fisherman and a ghillie to pass over it.

Thus did Osgood MacKenzie ultimately lose his marathon legal battle to get to fish on Dubh Loch. Legal fees must have been cheaper in these days because for the cost of a court case pursued all the way to the Supreme Court today, you could just about buy Letterewe Estate! Anyway, the legal outcome is less interesting than some of the nuggets of local history revealed by the evidence of the witnesses led in the case. Unfortunately, not all of the evidence is transcribed in the law report, only so much as the judges thought particularly relevant (which is great for lawyers but rubbish for historians!), but here's some of it. First, John MacKenzie, one of Osgood MacKenzie's witnesses, who built the causeway in 1828:-

"I put the stones there by orders of Duncan MacRae, tenant of Inveran, which was part of Kernsary. MacRae was also tenant of Carnmore [the land on the north east side of Fionn and Dubh Lochs] and Strathnashellag [a glen parallel with the lochs to the north east], on the north side of the loch. He told me to make a causeway or stepping-stones across the Phait. I got £5 for doing so. I used no lime or clay in making the causeway. I made it just of loose stones, not dressed in any way. Macrae ordered the causeway to be made to get sheep across the Phait from his one farm to his other farm. I cannot say very well what was the height of the causeway above the ground; I believe it was between 2 and 3 feet. The breadth, I believe, was between 6 and 7 feet."

Looking down on the east end of Fionn Loch and Dubh Loch from the top of Beinn Airigh Charr. Picture credit Tim Allott

Also of interest was the evidence of William MacIntyre, born in 1796:-

My father was managing partner in the firm of Messrs Birtwhistle, who had the farm of Letterewe and some other farms in that neighbourhood. He was so at the time I was born, and continued to be so until his death in 1827. I was born at Letterewe. I lived there till I was twenty years of age, when I went into the navy as a midshipman. I remained in the navy till 1822. I then returned to Letterewe, where I spent two years. I next went to Liverpool, where I was for thirty-three years. I came back to Poolewe in 1860, and have been living there ever since. The first time I visited the Fionn Loch was in 1813. There were some smugglers then on an island in the loch, and they had a boat and took me across with them. I first saw the Phait in 1816. There was no artificial causeway across it in these days, so far as I observed. A medical student was along with me, and when we came to the Phait he carried me across the water. ... My father had a coble [flat bottomed boat] at the Phait at one time. I recollect that from the circumstance that one day a cattle-dealer named Peter Morrison was crossing the Phait in the boat. I don’t know how it happened, but the boat drifted out with him, and he got so much alarmed that he was shouting out to us how his property was to be disposed of. ... My father at one time kept a shepherd who kept a pair of stilts to go through the water."

A final interesting snippet came from Murdoch MacLean, born in 1788:-

"I have seen a boat on the Fionn Loch a good bit from the Phait. The man who lived in Kernsary owned it. It was kept to bring wood from the islands."  

This evidence paints a fascinating picture of this remote corner of Wester Ross in the first half of the 19th century: vast sheep farms covering the whole hinterland between Loch Maree and An Teallach, some tenanted by locals, we may assume from a name like MacRae, but others tenanted by Englishmen, we may equally assume from a name like Birtwistle, in partnership with Scots. Note the reference to the witness MacIntyre's father having been the "managing partner" at Letterewe Farm - does this infer that Birtwistle was a sleeping partner, an investor in the booming wool and mutton business? Had he ever even been to Wester Ross? A cattle dealer venturing out of his comfort zone and giving himself a big fright by getting quite literally out of his depth in these wild places. Social mobility in the form of MacIntyre joining the Navy then living in Liverpool for 30 years before retiring to Poolewe. Friendly smugglers living on islands and shepherds on stilts! And all this in a landscape so barren that the only wood to be had is also on an island in Fionn Loch, the only place where the tree saplings are safe from being eaten by deer and sheep. (There's still a tree covered island in Fionn - picture here).

National Libraries of Scotland - click the link and use the "Change transparency" slider on the left to reveal the underlying aerial imagery

I've heard it said there were no Clearances in Wester Ross. But the Roy Map pictured above, drawn 1747-55, shows settlement and cultivation in Strath na Sealga and these people would have to have left, probably at the end of the 18th century, to make way for the sheep farmers. How much of a difference is there really between a "Clearance" in the sense of people being forced out by sheriff officers and having their homes burnt behind them as in Sutherland and those who simply saw the writing on the wall that said they couldn't afford the sorts of rents being offered for their farms by people bankrolled by the Birtwistles of this world and quietly, and without fuss, moved away from the land their ancestors might have occupied for generations?      

The Loch Maree road

I'm a bit OCD about knowing the dates of things. This isn't a new tendency, either, for I recently discovered a clutch of letters I received in response to enquiries I'd written in 1984 (before Mr Google was even a twinkle in his parents' eye) to various bodies seeking information about the dates of certain projects in Wester Ross. 

There's one from the Hydro Board about hydro-electric schemes and another from Howard Doris on the chronology of oil platform construction at Kishorn. There's also a letter from Highland Regional Council about the dates of certain road improvements. Unfortunately, they couldn't supply any dates for some phases of the Loch Maree and North Applecross roads before 1975 (when HRC came into existence in succession to Ross & Cromarty County Council) but they helpfully suggested I contact Mr Hector MacLeod, of Strath, Gairloch, retired roads supervisor, who would have "intimate detailed knowledge of roadworks from the early 1930s". And there's a reply from Mr MacLeod, in his beautiful handwriting, with the requested details.

Nor is this information entirely useless. A year or two ago, I was contacted by someone who'd seen one of my photos on Flickr of the road along Loch Maree (the A832) which had a caption alluding to its phased reconstruction in the 1970s. He wanted to know if I could supply the date of the works on a certain section of the road because he was a geologist and it was important to him to know for exactly how long a specimen of rock in his possession which had been blasted out by the roadworks had been oxidising (or something like that!) in the sunlight. And as it happened, I was able to the answer his question from the information so kindly supplied by Hector MacLeod 35 years ago! So, and in the interests of the advancement of science, it's perhaps time to lay out the whole of this arcane knowledge for the benefit of posterity. 

Look at the map below (click to enlarge). From A to B (Kinlochewe to about a mile west of Bridge of Grudie), the road was rebuilt (i.e. upgraded from single to double track) between summer 1966 and August 1972 by Ross & Cromarty County Council's direct labour. I think I'm right in saying (but anyone with local knowledge can correct me) that the work started at Kinlochewe (point A) and went northwards. I also recall this stretch being known locally as "MacIlhinny's Highway", I assume in memory of an Irish member of the labour force but, again, local knowledge can correct me.

From B to C, the road was built between January 1973 and October 1974 by R J McLeod (Glasgow), contractors.

From D (Lochmaree Hotel) to E (about 200 yards before Victoria Falls), the road was built between November 1974 and April 1976 by K Stewart (Strathpeffer), contractors.

From C to D (Lochmaree Hotel), the road was built between October 1978 and July 1980, also by Stewarts. Note, I'm not sure if the road directly in front of the hotel was part of the D-E project in 1974-76 or part of the C-D project in 1978-80: I think the latter but, as usual happy to be corrected.

The stretch from E (Victoria Falls) west to F (the top of Slattadale) postdates my enquiries in the 1980s but was carried out in the early 90s (anyone know the exact year?) also by Stewarts.

For the rest of this post, we'll do a photographic tour of the old Loch Maree road from my own photos and postcard collection starting at Kinlochewe and going west towards Gairloch. Click the images to enlarge and under some of the old pictures, you can click a link through to the equivalent view today on Google Streetview. First, though, a bit of history. 

The road from Kinlochewe to Slattadale was first built in the late 1840s as part of a scheme to provide employment to local people left destitute by the potato famine of the mid 1840s. Half of the cost (£2,527:8s:6d) was provided by the Edinburgh Destitution Board (from charitable donations raised in southern Scotland and abroad) and the other half by Gairloch Estate as the local landowner. (More about that here. Other roads in Wester Ross were built on this basis around the same time, including those from Kerrysdale Bridge to Badachro on south side of Loch Gairloch (B8056) and from Dundonnell to Braemore (A832), the latter still being known as the Destitution Road today.) 

Prior to the 1840s, there had been no road capable of taking wheeled traffic along the side of Loch Maree and the usual mode of transport was by boat along the loch from a pier at a point about half a mile from its head called Rubha an Fhamhair - think I've spelt that right! It's Gaelic for Giant's Point and is anglicised by the Ordnance Survey to Rhu Noa. Even after the road had been built, travel along the loch by steamer was still possible until 1911 when it was finally eclipsed by road travel with the advent of the internal combustion engine (further blog post about the Loch Maree Steamer to come soon). Anyway, here's the old road going past Rhu Noa with the remains of the steamer pier still visible:-

The A832 at Rhu Noa. Same view today here

From Rhu Noa to where the road turns away from the loch to Bridge of Grudie, the old single track road ran on a different alignment from the current road built in the late 60s/early 70s. It was lower and closer to the shore and for long stretches was carried on retaining walls built out into the loch. These are still there although now in badly deteriorating condition. But they're beautiful works of art and I don't know why they're not protected as listed buildings or something and maintained to create an alternative cycle path/walkway along the lochside. These walls were one of the first things I made a beeline for to photograph when I got my first camera in 1984:-

 

     

Below is the same stretch of road as the last photo when it was still in use. Note the same pine tree! The current road is at about the level of the top of the bank on the right in these views.

 

 

That last photo suggests that this stretch of the old road winding along the shore carried out on retaining walls was called "The Pass" - I didn't know that. Totally unsuitable for 20th century tourist traffic so you can see how this was an early candidate for upgrading in the 1960s when most of the rest of the A832 to Gairloch west from Garve remained single track for many more years after. Below is a photo of similar retaining walls still in use today beside Loch Shieldaig on the road from Kerrysdale Bridge along the south side of Loch Gairloch. These were built at the same time (late 1840s) as the ones on the Loch Maree road:-

 

Back beside Loch Maree, further north, at Bridge of Grudie, a new road bridge over the River Grudie was built when the road was reconstructed around 1970 but the old bridge was left standing beside it. I always used to be puzzled by the old bridge in that, on its east (Kinlochewe) side, it seemed to be hard up against a rock face involving the road in a very sharp right turn immediately you'd crossed the bridge. I guess that was due to the exigencies of the only available bit of solid rock to foot the bridge on. You can see this here and on the 1902 Ordnance Survey Six Inch Map:-

 

Picture credit: National Library of Scotland

Below are the two bridges with the old one in the foreground:-

Below is looking back (east towards Kinlochewe) from Bridge of Grudie across Loch Maree to Slioch.

 

And here's a similar view taken in the 1960s when the road was still single track:-

 

Picture credit: Tim Hayman

And here's the approach to the old bridge viewed from the west (towards Kinlochewe):-

 

Same view today here

A few hundred yards after Bridge of Grudie continuing west in the direction of Gairloch, the new road diverges (here) from the route of the old road to follow a line closer to the loch. The old road remains clearly traceable for about two miles and can be walked along.

 

The old and new roads west of Bridge of Grudie. The passing places on the old road are still clearly visible.

Here's a selection of views between Bridge of Grudie and the Lochmaree Hotel ordered roughly south to north. In the first one, I didn't know they had the big passing place signs with PASSING PLACE written on them as early as when this card was posted in 1970:-

Same view today here

Next are two pictures I took on the old road looking south in 1984. Note the old telegraph poles - you don't see them anymore:-

 

 

In the picture below, which is at point C on the map above, the new road now describes a straighter line nearer the loch bypassing the curve:-

 

Same position on the new road here

And the next picture is just about a couple of hundred yards further on in the direction of the Lochmaree Hotel. I remember a particularly nasty tourist traffic snarl up at exactly this spot in the mid-70s before this stretch was improved involving irate caravaners shouting at each other and one gentleman even trying to rock my parents' trailer with boat thereon sideways off the road leading to some choice language from my father. [EDIT 21/2/21 - see the Addendum at the end of this post for a link to footage of this stretch of the old road.] The new road is now on a line further away from the viewpoint:-

 

Same position on the new road here

Next, just a mile or so further on, here's the Lochmaree Hotel when the old single track road used to run right past its front door. The new road is realigned about a hundred yards to the left:-

Equivalent view on the new road here

Here's a little stretch of the old road just before the hotel looking back east in the direction of Kinlochewe I photographed in 1984:-

Next, a couple of shots of the old road between the hotel and Victoria Falls:-

Approximately the same position today here

Next are two shots I took in 1984 of where the new road then ended just before Victoria Falls until it was continued on up Slattadale in the early 90s:-

 

Next is Garbhaig (pronounced GARA-vaig, I believe) Bridge beside the Victoria Falls in 1984 when it was still on the main road. I think the bridge still stands but is now bypassed since the road up Slattadale was improved in the early 90s.

And next, a couple of hundred yards past the bridge looking back towards it in 1984:-

Same view today here

Next, a view further up Slattadale going towards Gairloch about a mile west of Garbhaig Bridge in the 1980s when the road was still single track. This is looking east back down the hill in the direction of Kinlochewe:-

Same view today here

Compare with the postcard view below from approximately the same position before the trees had been planted. Most of these trees have since been felled and the views over Loch Maree have been opened up again.

And finally, looking up Slattadale (west towards Gairloch) near the top of the hill in the 1980s when the road was still single track:-
 

Same view today here

Well, I hope you enjoyed that retrospective drive along Loch Maree. I certainly enjoyed the opportunity to look through every single photo of it I've got in my archive (and weed out some of the many duplicates!) If anyone can add anything or make any corrections, please leave a comment.

Addendum 21/2/21

I'm grateful to Alex Gray for drawing my attention to this film in the National Library of Scotland's Moving Image Archive. It's amateur footage in December 1939 of a Bofors anti-aircraft gunnery unit going from the east along the A832 to the naval base at Loch Ewe. At 17.14 is exactly the stretch of the old road along Loch Maree between the Hotel and Bridge of Grudie I referred to where I remember a snarl up of tourist traffic in the mid 1970s (inevitably rather grainy still from the film below):-

Here are the various places seen in the film so far as I could identify them:-

Going west:-

03.44 - Loch Garve

04.10 - approaching Grudie Bridge 

04.35 - Achnasheen

05.05 - Loch a' Chroisg (note the old style passing place signs)

05.25 - top of Glen Docherty

06.17 - Loch Maree

06.37 - Loch a' Chroisg again

06.51 - Rhu Noa, Loch Maree

07.32 - where the truck is off the road is between Inverewe and Tournaig - about here  

09.37-15.37 - Loch Ewe between Tournaig and Aultbea

Going back east:-

15.48 - Loch Maree at Tollie

16.00 - Loch Tollie

16.10 - coming down the hill into Gairloch

16.24 - approaching Kerry Bridge

16.26 - Glen Kerry

16.49 - going down Slattadale

from here to 18.15 - going along Loch Maree

18.17 - top of Glen Docherty??

Ballachulish Part 5 - Decline, fall & rehabilitation

Despite the seemingly endless litigation they were embroiled in at the time (as described in Part 4), the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries saw the peak in production from the Ballachulish slate quarries.

Workers at Ballachulish Quarry: picture credit Canmore. You can see a higher resolution version of this image here

The high point was 1897 when slate production in Argyll (i.e. including Easdale and the surrounding "slate islands" as well as Ballachulish) topped 33,000 tons or about 15 million slates. A further boost to the industry came in 1903 with the opening of a railway to Ballachulish to carry the slates away more efficiently than by sea as hitherto: one of the last of the Victorian railway building era, the line branched off the Oban railway at Connell Ferry and crossed Loch Etive over a new bridge.

Railways in red - note that, until the 1960s, the Oban railway ran from Stirling via Callander rather than from Glasgow up Loch Lomond-side as it does today.

Ballachulish Station in the 1920s. Note the quarry and pile of waste slate behind at top right

But despite the investment in the railway, Scottish slate production declined dramatically from the turn of the century high during the ten years to the beginning of the First World War in 1914. There were two reasons for this: first, competition from cheaper slate imported from Wales and abroad. These imports were also by now thought to be of better quality (in terms of the all important regularity of size of the slates produced rather than the raw material). And ironically, it was development of the railway network which allowed the penetration of imported slate into the market.

The second reason for the decline was growing preference for cheaper (but less durable) clay and concrete roof tiles. The Easdale quarries closed in 1911 (although slate production on the neighbouring slate islands - at Cullipool and Toberonochy on Luing and at Balvicar on Seil - continued). By 1913, the all Argyll annual production had slumped to 6,200 tons and then the Ballachulish quarries closed for the duration of the War (I assume because the workers were away in the army). Slate quarrying resumed after the conflict but the industry was by now a shadow of its former self with the all Argyll production running at about 8,000 tons a year: the application of new technologies such as drilling by compressed air were a bit too little, too late. The Ballachulish quarries finally closed in 1955, followed by closure on the slate islands in the early 1960s. 

Clay (left) and concrete (right) put slate out of business. Picture credits Sandtoft Roof Tiles and Kate Otterson 

With its biggest employer gone, the village of Ballachulish went into sustained decline just like a mining village after its pit has closed. To add to its misery, the railway from Oban closed in 1966 as part of the Beeching Cuts of the UK rail network. But if the employment and transport options diminished during the 20th century, at least the housing improved. The rows of whitewashed quarrier's cottages which had been so admired in the previous century were now seen as cramped and insanitary. They were progressively demolished and replaced by Council housing. Today, there seem to be only two of the original cottages left in Ballachulish, those visible on Google Streetview here. They're not even listed buildings either - perhaps they ought to be. If you want to get a flavour of a 19th century Scottish slate quarrying village, you have to go to Eileanabeich on Seil or Cullipool or Toberonochy (in all of where the houses are no doubt mostly second homes and teeteringly expensive).

New houses (foreground) begin to replace the old (background) at Ballachulish. Note the piles of quarry waste at bottom left.

But not long after it was dubbed "Scotland's Dirtiest Village" in 1973 (as mentioned in Part 1), things began to look up for Ballachulish. In December 1975, a road bridge across Loch Leven was opened to replace the age old Ballachulish ferry. This had the effect of drawing more tourist traffic through the village instead going round the head of the loch through Kinlochleven to avoid the ferry queues. (Kinlochleven suffered correspondingly, of course - I have never been there since the bridge opened - but at least it still had its aluminium smelter.) Thus began a gradual rehabilitation of Ballachulish.

Amongst other improvements, the biggest quarry - the East Quarry - has been landscaped and is now home to a tourist trail with interpretation boards scoring 4.5 out of 5 on Tripadvisor. In fact, there are now so many trees around Ballachulish that the quarries can be hard to spot unless you know where to look for them: this whole series of posts was prompted by having seen a remark from a guest at The Isles of Glencoe hotel that she hadn't noticed them! (The West Quarries today house a garage and Council roads depot - see here)

Landscaping around the derelict East Quarry: picture credit malcolmqp

The long derelict railway station (noted for being "the best of a series of station buildings in the Glasgow Style, with distinctive swept roofs decorated with red ridge tiles and ball finials, stylised buttressing, half-circular windows and curvy platform fenestration") is now the doctors' surgery.

The railway station turned medical practice: picture credit Tom Parnell

As far as ownership of Ballachulish Estate - all the land along the south shore of Loch Leven from about half a mile west of Glencoe Village as far as about two miles west of Ballachulish Bridge and back up to the ridge of Beinn a' Bheithir ("Ben a Vair") - is concerned, I mentioned in earlier episodes that this had been in the hands of the Stewart of Ballachulish family since the first half of the 16th century until 1862 when it passed to a Yorkshireman Captain Tennant and from him to Sir George Beresford in 1871. From him it passed to his wife, Lady Elizabeth, in 1873 and then upon her death in 1898 to the Beresfords' daughter, Marcia. She died in 1908 after which I've not been able to discover much about the ownership of the estate except that her husband, Captain Francis Beresford-Drummond, is recorded in directories as still living at Ballachulish House in 1920s. He died in 1926 and, as the Beresford-Drummonds had no children, I'm guessing the estate would have been sold shortly afterwards (probably quite cheaply due to the slump in royalties from the slate quarrying at this time). It was probably around this time as well that the Forestry Commission acquired a large proportion of the inland parts of the estate.

Ballachulish House was bought for £900,000 in 2009 by Russian businessman Alexander Shapovalov without even viewing it. In 2015 he was being prosecuted in Russia when he fled to Britain and claimed asylum. Russia attempted to extradite him back but he opposed that on the basis that, having made an enemy of Vladimir Putin, he feared being murdered in jail. Extradition was eventually refused in 2018 and asylum granted in 2020. Shapovalov's legal troubles are not over, though - in 2015 he attracted suspicion by attempting to withdraw £50,000 in Bank of England £50 notes from the Royal Bank of Scotland in Inverness. As a result, his assets - including Ballachulish House - have been frozen pending a "civil recovery" action by Crown Office (Scottish equivalent of Crown Prosecution Service), that is to say they will be confiscated if proved to have been "obtained through unlawful conduct". This case has yet to be concluded but in the meantime you can stay in Ballachulish House through Airbnb (worth clicking through to that link for the lovely photos of the house). 

Ballachulish House: picture credit Airbnb

What of the slate industry today? For many years, the demand for slate for repairs to the roofs of such slated buildings as remained could be satisfied by re-using slates from buildings being demolished. But with the passage of time, there are fewer and fewer slated buildings being demolished while the number surviving (often those of high heritage value) has stabilised. Most slate for newbuilds is imported from Spain nowadays (although it continues to be quarried in small quantities in England and Wales), but the problem of sourcing slates to repair existing roofs is complicated by the fact that each quarry produces slates of subtly different colours: Ballachulish slates are deep blue-black compared with Easdale's gunmetal grey, for example. So you can't mix them on the same roof and recycled slates as a source have almost run out now. That being so, Historic Scotland (the quango responsible for advising on built heritage) commissioned a study in 2016 into the feasibility of reopening two Scottish slate quarries -  including Khartoum Quarry at Ballachulish - on a small scale. (Khartoum is one of the smaller quarries at Ballachulish, behind the main East Quarry about half a mile up Gleann an Fhiodh and now surrounded by Forestry Commission plantations.) I'm not sure what, if anything, has or will come of this (nothing, I suspect). In the meantime HS recommends slate from the Cabrera Mountains of north west Spain as being the closest analogue to Ballachulish slate.

Spanish slate quarry: picture credit: LBS