The Gesto Hospital

I've mentioned a few times that I enjoy reading old law reports. Not so much for the points of law they're there to elucidate but for the human interest stories they reveal and local history they can preserve. An example of this par excellence I stumbled across recently was the case of MacLeod's Trustees v MacLeod's Trustees in 1871. It provided the answer to a question that had occasionally puzzled me: why was the former Gesto Hospital on Skye located at Edinbain rather than at Gesto, another place on Skye but about 15 miles away? This is the story:  

Photo credit Martin Sharman

The view above, looking up Loch Harport to the Cuillins, is one of the most familiar in Skye. The conspicuous white buildings in the foreground are the steadings of Gesto Farm but look closer and on the left you'll see the ruin of Gesto House. Here's a closer picture of it:

Photo credit Iain Morrison

The house was built around 1760 and was the home of the most senior cadet branch of the MacLeods of Dunvegan, the MacLeods of Gesto. Their progenitor, who lived at the end of the 14th century, was Murdo, a younger son of Malcolm, the second chief of Dunvegan. Murdo's grandfather had been Tormod, first of Dunvegan and son of the eponymous Leod, and hence the Gesto chieftains' Gaelic patronymic was Mac Mhic Thormoid, pronounced (roughly) 'Mac Vick Orromid' and meaning son of the son of Tormod.

There seems to be some controversy about the exact nature of the earlier generations of the family's tenure of Gesto - were they the feudal vassals of their chief, MacLeod, as the chiefs of Dunvegan were known, or were they direct vassals of the Crown? Be that as it may, what we do know is that John, 8th of Gesto, received a tack (an old Scottish word for a lease) of the land from MacLeod in 1674. Below is an abstract of the tack from The Book of Dunvegan (page 84):

As can be seen there, as well as Gesto itself, the tack included the lands of Boust, Cross Breacle, Rodillore and Feainkeadach. I think the last three are the places spelt on modern maps as Crossbreck, Coillore and Fearan nan Cailleach. In fact, the land let by the tack extended a long way up the east side of Loch Harport.

The rent was 360 merks (£20 Sterling - about £3,000 in today's money) a year and it's interesting to note that MacLeod was in debt to Gesto for the sum of 4,000 merks (£222 Stg., about £30,000 today).

The 1674 tack (lease) was to run for the life of John MacLeod, 8th of Gesto and 21 years thereafter. All we know about the date of his death is that, according to Alexander MacKenzie's History of the MacLeods, his son Roderick, 9th of Gesto, received a tack of the land in 1728. MacKenzie mistakenly states that that was the first tack held by a member of the Gesto family but if he is right about the year, that may suggest that 1728 was when the 1674 tack expired 21 years after the death of John the 8th which must have been in 1707. All MacKenzie says about Roderick's lifespan is that he "was alive in 1745" with the implication that he died soon thereafter. So it was probably his son John, 10th of Gesto, who built the house around 1760.

John the 10th was succeeded as tacksman (tenant) by his son, Captain Neil MacLeod, 11th of Gesto, but he was the last of the family to possess the land. The Captain had for many years litigated ('been at law' in the quaint euphemism of the time) with his landlord, MacLeod of Dunvegan, over the boundaries of Gesto with the adjoining farm of Drynoch at the head of Loch Harport. Although Gesto eventually won his case it was a pyrrhic victory because it provoked MacLeod to refuse to renew the tack of Gesto when it expired in 1825. Thus, somewhat ignominiously, ended the Gesto family's tenure of their ancestral possession of some four centuries: the Captain spent the rest of his life until he died in 1836 between the cottage he rented in Stein on Skye and Edinburgh where he haunted the Advocates' Library obsessing over his legal setbacks.

Kenneth MacLeod - picture credit Wikipedia

It was left to the Captain's third and oldest surviving son, Kenneth, pictured above, to restore the family's fortunes. Born at Gesto in 1809, he spent 30 years in India where he amassed a huge fortune as an indigo planter before returning home in the 1850s determined to spend a lot of his money buying land in Skye. The MacLeods of Dunvegan wouldn't part with Gesto, unfortunately, so Kenneth had to content himself with land they'd previously sold off, namely, the adjoining properties of Greshornish, Coishletter and Edinbane. He also bought the detached farm of Orbost a few miles to the south west making a total estate of some 20,000 acres (8,000 hectares) and a rental of £1,100 per annum (about £110,000 in today's money). He made his home on Skye at Greshornish House.

Kenneth MacLeod was the character named simply as "the Landlord" in the book A Summer in Skye by the Edinburgh poet Alexander Smith describing a stay at Greshornish in 1862: Smith was the husband of one of MacLeod's nieces. You can read about MacLeod's social engineering among his crofting tenants in A Summer here - it's all very self made hard man but fair in a way you wouldn't get away with nowadays.

Greshornish House - picture credit Jorg Schafer

Kenneth MacLeod of Greshornish (as he styled himself) died in 1869 leaving a will reciting that his ancestors had:

"for many generations possessed or occupied lands on the west of the island of Skye, and that I am very desirous to continue the connection of my family with the said country after my death, and for this purpose have purchased the lands and others after described [i.e. Greshornish et al.]"

But having no children of his own, the Skye properties were left to his great nephew Kenneth Robertson who adopted the name Robertson-MacLeod in consequence. He was the son of Isabella MacDonald (the daughter of Kenneth MacLeod of Greshornish's sister Ann and her husband, Charles MacDonald, tenant of Ord in Sleat) and her husband, John Robertson, tenant of Skeabost, a farm on the shore of Loch Snizort about 5 miles as the crow flies from Greshornish. (The owner of Skeabost was Isabella MacDonald's brother, Lachlan, thus a nephew of MacLeod of Greshornish, and who, like him, had also been an indigo planter in India.)

Orbost House

All the farm stock and the contents of Greshornish and Orbost Houses were also left to Kenneth Robertson-Macleod but as regards the rest of his considerable wealth, MacLeod of Greshornish had other plans. To quote from another of his wills (he had three in all):-

"Fifth, The house built by me at Edinbane I wish to be converted into a residence for a medical man, and the building attached to be made into a hospital for the benefit of the people of Skye. Rules and regulations for the same I hope to have drawn out before my death, but in the event of death before then, my executors have power to do so, and to be called the Gesto Hospital. Sixth, Having now disposed of my property in Skye, it is my wish and will that all my property in India should be disposed of twelve months, to the best advantage, and that the sum of £10,000 be set aside to endow the Gesto Hospital at Edinbane, and the remainder divided into ten shares and given as follows [here follow various legacies] To Flora MacDonald Smith I bequeath the sum of one penny sterling, in remembrance of her services inducing my services to leave me."

Before we continue with the story of the hospital, note the last sentence there. Flora MacDonald Smith was the niece of Kenneth MacLeod who was married to the author of A Summer in Skye! She's not mentioned in the book but it looks like she was there in the background causing problems in her uncle's household! If anyone knows more about what provoked what one of the judges in the litigations which ensued over MacLeod's wills after his death described as "a mocking bequest indicative of a rather bitter spirit", do please leave a comment. 

In fact, the bequest of a penny wasn't repeated in his final will (although we don't know if it was replaced by a more meaningful one) but, anyway, it wasn't Flora Smith who ended up challenging Kenneth MacLeod's wills in court, it was the heir to the Skye properties, Kenneth Robertson MacLeod (KRM). The reason was this: although MacLeod had been very rich, he had nevertheless considered it expedient also to have borrowed £10,000 during his lifetime. This debt was secured on the Skye properties (meaning they were mortgaged for it) and was still outstanding when he died. The usual rule was that a debt secured on land - known in Scots Law as a 'heritable debt' -  had to be taken over by the heir to the land. But KRM (or rather his parents because he was only six years old at the time) argued that the £10k debt should be paid out of the rest of his great uncle's estate, namely that which had been earmarked for the endowment of the Gesto Hospital: if they were successful in this claim, the hospital would be scuppered. KRM's counsel laid emphasis on the fact that the will containing the hospital bequest had a clause saying that all Kenneth MacLeod's debts had to be paid first before any bequests or legacies could be implemented but the Court decided that that didn't apply to heritable debt: that had to be paid by the heir to the land, KRM. 

But the hospital wasn't out of the woods yet. Another lawsuit was depending before the English courts on a point of Indian law whereby apparently money couldn't be bequeathed for charitable purposes. As there's no equivalent of this in Scots Law, and I know nothing about English/Indian law, I don't understand this: suffice to say the English court eventually ruled that it didn't apply to Kenneth MacLeod. Thus were the legal obstacles cleared away and the Gesto Hospital - Skye's first - secured.

Gesto Hospital around 1930 - a Scholastic Souvenir Company postcard scanned from 'Skye: A Postcard Tour' by Bob Charnley and Roger Miket (here)

The hospital had two wards with six beds each: in 1912 it was recorded that all the beds were full so a Welsh tramp with a broken leg had to be accommodated in the attic! There was one doctor (or 'Medical Officer' as he tended to be known) who lived in the single storey house on the left of the photo above: the doctor from 1896 to 1900 was Lachlan Grant who became famous at his next job at the Ballachulish slate quarries as I wrote about here. There was also a single nurse although that increased to two in the 1930s: also on the payroll in 1930 were a cook and a gardener. There was an operating theatre which in the 1920s was also serving patients from the Uists, there being no such facility there: after a three hour passage across the Minch landing at Dunvegan, the patients were brought to Gesto by horse and trap. Electricity from a hydro-electric plant was installed in 1920. 

The foregoing information is distilled from the chapter on the Gesto Hospital in this book. Note that the author's not correct that the land Kenneth MacLeod bought on Skye was part of the Gesto family's former lands but that minor quibble aside, it's full of interesting detail about the Gesto (and other Skye hospitals). An aspect which particularly interested me related to the hospital's finances: the money MacLeod had left as its endowment (which totalled about £30,000 - about £3 million in today's values - due to his having made it other bequests beyond the Indian £10,000) was lent out at interest by the trustees of the hospital, local Skye landowners, to themselves! Even though these loans were secured by bonds (mortgages) on their estates, it's the sort of thing that wouldn't be likely to pass muster with the Charity Regulator nowadays. And in fact the declining value in the 1930s of one of the estates concerned, Waternish, gave cause for concern - i.e. that the rents paid by its crofting tenants might not cover the interest on the loan and, consequently, that, if the estate had to be repossessed and sold, the price might not be enough to pay off the loan. (It appears the hospital trustees had previously forced the sale of another estate they held a bond over, Skeabost, which had belonged to MacLeod of Greshornish's nephew, Lachlan MacDonald, and was where KRM's father had been the tenant.). Generally, the Gesto Hospital's finances seemed to be pretty fragile until it was taken into the NHS upon its creation in 1947. Below is a description of the hospital just before that in 1946 (click to enlarge for clearer view: the full document is here): 

As the extract above already hints at, such a small hospital in such an old building was perhaps unlikely to have a long term future in the second half of the 20th century. Indeed, perhaps the biggest surprise is that the Gesto Hospital lasted as long as it did because it didn't finally close until 2007, having been latterly a geriatric facility and GP practice (picture of it in 2001 here). After lying empty and boarded up for a number of years (see that here), the building was sold in 2012. Today it's a private home with three associated self catering holiday apartments (website here).

The former Gesto Hospital today - Google Streetview

As regards Kenneth MacLeod of Greshornish's Skye properties, his heir thereto, Kenneth Robertson-MacLeod, died in 1945. In the years following, the estate was divided up with one of his (KRM's) nephews Iain Hilleary acquiring Edinbane, and a niece, Otta Swire (the author), acquiring Orbost. Greshornish (including, I think, Cuishletter) was sold in 1959 to a local butcher, Donald Matheson. After further changes of ownership, Greshornish House is now a hotel and much of the land is forestry in the hands of absentee Germans, representatives of the ancient royal house of Wurttemberg which can trace its history back to the 11th century - which I only mention because Edinbain is still in the hands of the Hilleary family who, through the MacLeods of Gesto and Dunvegan, can trace their history back to the ancient royal house of Man and the Isles in the 11th century.