"A poor little public house": the Altnaharrie Inn

Photo credit: Guido

As Scotland's only two Michelin starred restaurant in the 1990s, the Altnaharrie Inn on the west shore of Loch Broom opposite Ullapool (above) was once one of the country's most recherché eateries. It had come a long way from the "poor little public house" it was dismissed as in an Edwardian travel guide but sadly it doesn't exist at all now: it was converted to a private home in 2003. There used to be a ferry across the loch here as well but that's gone too. Here's the story:-

Auldnahinin was a pendicle of the lands of Keppoch. That sentence needs unpacking: ‘Auldnahinin’ was the previous name of Altnaharrie. I’ve also seen it spelt Aultnahinin, Aultnahinan and Aultnahanons. W. J. Watson derives Altnaharrie (which also has numerous variant spellings making the place wretchedly difficult to search!) from the Gaelic Allt na h-airbhe meaning burn of the wall: see here for an explanation of the wall in question. It’s hard to see how you can derive a name ending -hinin (et al) from h-airbhe but it’s definitely the same place: perhaps there was a scribal error which got perpetuated. And a pendicle was a smaller piece of land which was an adjunct to a nearby bigger piece of land and usually separated from it. Rhireavach further west along the Scoraig peninsula was also a pendicle of Keppoch (see map below).

Extract from an advert in the Inverness Courier for the sale of Dundonnell Estate in 1833 referring to Aultnahinan Ferry

Keppoch with its pendicles of Rhireavach and Altnaharrie (from hereon, I’m going to use the modern name to refer to the place at all times in its history) were parts of a territory called the Barony of Lochbroom which ran from Loch Broom west to Loch Ewe and Loch Maree. It was acquired in the 16th century by the chiefs of Clan MacKenzie, the MacKenzies of Kintail, from the MacDonalds of Lochalsh by the process explained in this article by Malcolm Bangor Jones which is really the bible for the history of landownership in Lochbroom from the 16th to 18th centuries. 

As Malcolm explains, the Kintail family - who were ennobled as Earls of Seaforth in 1623 - ran into financial difficulties in the 17th century and had to start mortgaging and selling off parts of their vast estates. Fortunately, various MacKenzie kinsmen rallied round and bought land from Seaforth thereby keeping it in the clan. Prominent among these were the MacKenzies of Tarbat. About 1673, Sir George of Tarbat (later ennobled as Earl of Cromartie) bought Keppoch and its pendicles of Altnaharrie and Rhireavach from Seaforth and almost immediately feued them to his (Tarbat's) cousin, Alexander MacKenzie of Tarvie. (A feu is a lease which lasts in perpetuity. Feus also have different terminology from leases thus: landlord = superior; tenant = feuar; rent = feuduty.)

In 1727, Alexander of Tarvie’s son John sold Keppoch and its pendicles to his second cousin, James MacKenzie of Achindrean. He re-styled himself ‘of Keppoch’ until he sold it in 1742 to Kenneth MacKenzie, 2nd laird of Dundonnell, another estate composed of ex-Seaforth land in Lochbroom. Keppoch, with its pendicles of Altnaharrie and Rhireavach, have remained part of Dundonnell Estate to the present day. Thomas, the 6th laird of Dundonnell, sold the estate to another family of MacKenzies in 1834 (the advert above) and the 6th laird of that second line of MacKenzies, Hugh (who mostly lived in Australia), sold it to an Englishman, Sir Michael Peto, in 1942. He in turn sold it to the Roger brothers, Alan, Neil and Alastair, in 1957 and on the death of the last of the brothers (Alan) in 1997, Dundonnell Estate was sold to Tim Rice, the lyricist, who still owns it today.

Advert in The Field, 1978

So much for the surrounding landownership, what of the inn on the ‘pendicle’ of Altnaharrie and the people who lived there? In the 1970s, its tenants called it a drovers' inn in their adverts (above) but, with all due respect, I'm a wee bit sceptical about that. No drove road to Altnaharrie is marked on the map of them in the seminal work on the subject, A R B Haldane's The Drove Roads of Scotland. And that stands to reason: cattle droving being in a generally south east direction, there would be no need to ferry cattle across Loch Broom. Look at the map below: if you had cattle at Badluchrach or Scoraig, or at Keppoch or Dundonnell or Ullapool, why would you ferry them across Loch Broom when you could drive them down the sides of the lochs and over by Fain and Braemore and the east?  

But if the Altnaharrie Inn's credentials as a droving inn are open to question, its credentials as other sorts of hostelry of yesteryear are impeccable. The earliest reference to it I've been able to find is in 1827 when the "change house and ferry of Aultnahereagh" were advertised to let by Dundonnell Estate in the Inverness Courier

You could write an entire book about the socio-economics of the north west Highlands at the height of the Clearances as revealed by that advert alone: note the distinction between the farm of Ardindrean and the township of Blarnalivoch - what was to become of Simon McLean, Colin Mackenzie, Angus Macdonell, Colin McRae and the "sundry small tenants" presently occupying these properties if they were let to be "advantageously occupied as one entire holding" as suggested by the advert? But let's stick to what a change house was. It's tempting to assume it was an inn where one changed horses but I've never been convinced that's what it necessarily meant: I note with interest that the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (see here) defines it as "a small inn or alehouse - perhaps [emphasis added] with reference to the changing of horses". Generally, I think it's more the smallness of the establishment which differentiates a change house from an 'ordinary' inn, rather than the range of services on offer.

As to how much older the Altnaharrie Inn might be than 1827, in his article I linked to above, Malcolm Bangor Jones noted that George MacKenzie, brother of the owner at the time, John MacKenzie of Tarvie, was living at ‘Auldnahinin’ in the 1720s. So George is the oldest known resident. There’s no mention of an inn or ferry, though, and nothing at all is marked on the site on the Roy Maps which were surveyed 1747-52 - no handful of pink dots one might expect of a pendicle.

It's not impossible the Roy surveyors simply overlooked Altnaharrie but they did capture other, even remoter small settlements further west on the north coast of the Scoraig peninsula such as Annat and Achmore (a pendicle of Loggie) so it would be odd if they had. Perhaps George MacKenzie’s home at Altnaharrie was not re-occupied after he left it at some date before the Roy maps were surveyed.

It's worth remembering that Ullapool didn't exist as a village before it was established by the British Fisheries Society in 1788 so a possibility is that Altnaharrie Inn and ferry didn’t exist before that. A piece of evidence in this regard is the local militia lists viewable on the excellent Clachan of Lochbroom local history website. These were lists of men of fighting age liable to be called up for defence in case of invasion. The men were listed under the settlements where they lived, be that a farm, township or pendicle. In the 1798 list, the first one, nobody is listed under Altnaharrie (or Aultnahinin). The same in the next list, in 1821, but two individuals (John & Roderick Mackenzie) whose occupation was given as ferryman are listed that year under Loggie, which is on the west side of Loch Broom two miles south of Altnaharrie. Roderick Mackenzie appears again as ferryman at Loggie in the 1825 list but nobody appears as ferryman anywhere in the last militia list which was in 1827. So does that allow us to conclude that the ferry across Loch Broom was moved from Loggie to Altnaharrie, and an inn established there, some time between 1825 (last mention of ferryman at Loggie) and 1827 (Altnaharrie change house and ferry mentioned in the letting advert that year shown above) but with a hiatus in 1827 (nobody listed as ferryman anywhere in the militias list that year)?

If there’s doubt about what a change house was exactly, there’s none about what a ferry house was as Altnaharrie is marked on the 1849 Admiralty Chart (click to enlarge): a house which was both the home of the ferryman and an inn. National Library of Scotland

As well as the militia lists, the Clachan local history group have patiently transcribed the census returns from the earliest in 1841 (here). These reveal two families living at Altnaharrie in 1841. Neither is given the occupation ‘ferryman’ or ‘inn keeper’, curiously: one is a cattle dealer and the other is a crofter but as inn keeper-ferrymen were almost always crofters or farmers as well, maybe he chose to be listed under what he regarded as his principal occupation. From the census of 1851 on, though, until 1921 (the last census publicly available), there is always only one family returned at Altnaharrie and its head of household is always listed as a ferryman. Blending in the valuation rolls available to search online (1855-1940), the tenants of Altnaharrie were (C=census, V=valuation roll):

C 1841 - John McDonald (crofter) & Roderick McDonald (cattle dealer)

C 1851 - Malcolm McDonald (possibly the son of John McDonald, the crofter in 1841)

V 1855 - [Altnaharrie not found]

C 1861 - Roderick McKenzie

V 1865 - Murdo McKenzie

C 1871 - John McLean

V 1874 - John McLean

C 1881 - Murdo McLean (‘ferryman and crofter’)

V 1885 - Murdo McLean (‘house and croft, 1 Aultnaharrow Ferry’)

C 1891 - Murdo McLean (presumably same one even though gave age as 40 in 1881 but 52 in 1891!)

V 1895 - Murdo McLean

C 1901 - Murdo McLean

V 1905 - Murdo McLean (‘licensed house, Altnaharra Ferry’)

C 1911 - Kenneth McKenzie (‘ferryman and innkeeper’ - also Norman Campbell ‘assistant ferryman’)

V 1915 - Kenneth McKenzie

V 1920 - Kenneth McKenzie 

C 1921 - Kenneth McKenzie

V 1925 - John MacKenzie (‘licensed house’)

V 1930 - Lt. Col. Philip Mitford (‘house, 1 Altnaharra Ferry’)

V 1935 - Lt. Col. Philip Mitford

V 1940 - Lt. Col. Philip Mitford

The appearance of a Lt. Col Philip Mitford as tenant in 1930 looks very incongruous compared with the preceding McKenzies, McLeans and McDonalds. Whether or how closely he was related to the Mitford sisters I don't know but his local connection was that he was married to the grand daughter of Sir John Fowler, engineer of the Forth Bridge and owner of Braemore Estate at the head of Loch Broom. What had happened was that the inn closed in 1928. The Mitfords rented it as their holiday house (I assume: I believe their main residence was at Lentran just outside Inverness) and the ferry was operated post-1928 by a John Macrae who lived in Ullapool: in a letter to the Ross-shire Journal in March 1949 giving the history of the ferry (here - paid subscription required), Mr Macrae said it had existed for "well over 100 years" which is good local knowledge corroboration of establishment in the 1820s as suggested earlier.

 

Altnaharrie in 1935. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums, ID: JV-A-1807

Why did the inn close in 1928? It would have been due to the unsuitability of the road down to Altnaharrie (built 1847) for motor vehicles. Today, the way from Dundonnell (and points west as far as Gairloch) to Ullapool is over the Fain and round by Braemore Junction (24 miles). In the days when everyone travelled on foot, though, the Fain was for getting to Dingwall: if you wanted to get to Ullapool, you went by Altnaharrie and the ferry (6 miles). But with the growth in motor transport in the 1920s, more and more traffic between Dundonnell and Ullapool was being forced round by Braemore and away from Altnaharrie and so the inn’s trade dwindled away. Hence the ferry was never converted to a vehicular ferry as was the case with other similar crossings in the 1920s. (Another explanation I read (here - paid subscription required) for the decine of the ferry - and consequently the inn? - was that it had been free with Dundonnell Estate paying the ferryman a wage instead. But when this arrangement ceased - we're not told when - the high fares charged deterred use. How credible that is, I don't know.) 

 

Though the inn had shut in 1928, the ferry nevertheless continued as a foot ferry, its trade buoyed up now by increasing numbers of hikers: in the 1930s, members of the Scottish Youth Hostelling Association were offered a discounted ferry fare of a shilling (5p) or 1/6 (7.5p) with a bicycle. That represented a 50% discount on the normal fare of 3 shillings for a crossing with a bicycle and a party of three or more attracted a further discount of 9d each or 1/3 with a bicycle. At this time, there was no timetable for the ferry and it operated on demand. As the ferryman, Mr Macrae, lived in Ullapool, travellers arriving at the Altnaharrie side had to summon the ferry across by raising a flag as you can just see in the photo below:

 

The flagpole at Altnaharrie to summon the ferryman across from Ullapool in the 1930s. Picture credit Ullapool Museum (Attribution – Non-Commercial – Share Alike)

Finally on the ferry - for now - and although we're going back in the chronology a bit, it also had the exalted status of being a mail boat. The mail for Dundonnell and the communities around Little Loch Broom used to go first to Ullapool and then cross the ferry. In 1896, a letter in the Inverness Courier noted there were two 'letter carriers' (postmen?) who crossed from Ullapool, one bound for Scoraig, the other for Dundonnell, and berated the parsimony of the Post Office in not arranging for a pier on the Altnaharrie side which would have avoided an incident during a recent storm when the boat had been swamped while landing on the beach and "sent the mail bags, parcels etc. in all directions". Fortunately, they were all recovered. Latterly, the Little Loch Broom mail bypassed Ullapool and went by land over the Fain instead: I've not been able to pin down exactly when that change was made but there's reference to a post office at Dundonnell in 1919 so I guess sometime before then.    

 

What made the road down to Altnaharrie unsuitable for ‘day to day’ motor traffic, however, was a positive attraction for more adventurous motorists keen to put their machines to the test. On several occasions, the Scottish Six Day Reliability Trial for cars and motorcycles quite literally went out of its way to include a detour to Altnaharrie off the day's run round Wester Ross. At the 1919 event, there were more failures climbing Altnaharrie Hill than at any of the other challenges which included the Devil's Elbow and the Bealach to Applecross. And it was reported that the only female competitor in 1923, Miss Marjorie Cottle of the Liverpool Motor Club, fell off her motorbike on the Altnaharrie road ("mostly composed of boulders and mud with a rare hairpin thrown in for luck") during a rainstorm: that cost her a silver cup but it didn't prevent her ending up being one of the gold medallists overall. The pictures below are from the 1923 event:-

 

Competitors' cars and motorcycles in front of the Altnaharrie Inn 

Sports cars outnumbering ferry boats at Altnaharrie

Struggling up Altnaharrie Hill - Ullapool visible across Loch Broom

Is that Miss Cottle taking a moment second from left? More photos from the 1923 edition of the SSDT in Wester Ross here

When Sir Michael Peto bought Dundonnell Estate in 1942, he had big plans for its development to try and diversify the somewhat moribund crofting economy. There was talk of establishing reindeer herds and resettling abandoned crofts with incomers from the south and Sir Michael used his seat on the County Council to agitate for the road to Altnaharrie to be upgraded to ordinary motor traffic standard and for a Council operated vehicular ferry to be established. This was not as outlandish a scheme then as it appears to modern eyes because it seems that the Fain road was closed by snow in winter much more often back then than now (whether due to climatic differences or the absence of the snow ploughs and gritting we take for granted today, I don't know). The Council was sympathetic to such projects but only provided they were 75% grant assisted by central government and this was never forthcoming - it was just not high enough up the list of priorities. But what Sir Michael did achieve was re-opening the Altnaharrie Inn. When Col. Mitford died in 1946, he resumed possession and in 1948 let the inn to Murdo and Irene MacGregor and re-applied for its liquor licence which was obtained in October that year. For the first time the ferryboat was equipped with an outboard motor (hitherto it had been rowed across) and a crossing time of seven or eight minutes was boasted. You can see the motor on the boat in the picture below:-

A Walter Ballard took over the tenancy of the inn in 1967. At that time it was reported (here) that its licence had been given up 8 years previously but I don't know if that means the MacGregors had left in 1959 and the inn had been closed again since then. Anyway, it was also reported that Mr Ballard had made substantial improvements (possibly adding the extra storey to the longer, lower right hand portion of the house in the photo above?) such that there were now five rooms and "during the summer a ferry service was operated. It was used by hikers and mountaineers." It's not clear from that whether the ferry had continued to operate on that basis even though the inn may have been closed or whether that was Mr Ballard's plan going forward. And it seems that hopes of the road being improved hadn't been entirely given up (though surely hopeless since the Fain was upgraded to double track in early 60s for access to the naval fuel depot at Loch Ewe established in 1963?) because Mr Ballard informed the Dingwall licensing board that he'd ascertained that a local bus operator would be willing to operate a summer service to connect with the ferry if the road were made suitable! Of course, that never happened either but the unimproved state of the road didn't deter some brave souls from trying it in their cars - this account (screenshot below) of one such attempt in 1953 by a Mr Channon Wood despite the existence of a sign of a sign at Dundonnell saying 'Ferry road - no cars' is well worth the read.

Mr Ballard's tenure of Altnaharrie was short for he died in 1970 just three years after acquiring it and it was taken over that year by a Kenneth Eaton who had previously farmed at Arle, between Salen and Tobermory on Mull. Then finally the tenancy was acquired by Fred Brown, a vet who'd previously lived at Rogart in Sutherland, and his wife Jill in 1976. Sadly, Jill died in 1978 following which Fred discontinued the inn to use it as his home from which to concentrate on his veterinary practice and yacht chartering business. ('Summer Isles Charters': I once co-skippered one of his yachts, a Moody 36 I forget the name of, taking two couples on a wonderful week long cruise out of Ullapool. And I even got paid for it which I hadn't been expecting!) 

Then, in 1980, Fred and his new partner, a Norwegian lady called Gunn Eriksen (they married in 1984), decided to reopen the inn on the basis of its being managed for them by a couple they'd come to an arrangement with. When that couple backed out two weeks before a full house of guests was due to arrive, Gunn had no choice but to do the cooking herself despite having no training as a chef (she was a ceramic artist). But it was serendipitous because by 1989 she'd been awarded a Michelin star with a second following in 1995. The reviews were rather better now than in 1911 when Altnaharrie was described (here) as "a poor little public house whence the tourist will cross to Ullapool with all speed."

Fred Brown outside the Altnaharrie Inn in the 1970s. AI colourisation of a photo in The Hidden Places of Britain by Leslie Thomas

In the 1970s and 80s, during the tenure of Kenneth Eaton and the Browns, the ferry was running four times a day (although with "additional journeys as required" in 1975), six days a week from May to September. The fare rose from 15p in 1975 (£1.20 in today's values) to £1 in 1985 (about £3 today). The photographs below are in 1975:-

At Altnaharrie looking across Loch Broom to Ullapool. Picture credit: Richard Sutcliffe via Geograph 

At the junction of the track down to Altnaharrie with the road from Dundonnell to Badralloch. Picture credit Richard Sutcliffe via Geograph

Throughout the 1990s, though, there are recurring press reports of the issue of public access to the ferry being discussed at Lochbroom Community Council. They're somewhat cryptic (meetings with councillors, reports, correspondence received etc.) but I can't help wondering if what was going on was that Fred Brown was finding it increasingly burdensome to operate the ferry on any other basis than as and when he required for his own purposes, taking his guests at the inn across the loch and generally trying to extricate himself from it? (I don't believe he was ever subsidised and surely there would have been issues around insurance and so forth.) The last such report, however, records an agreement in August 1999 to publish the ferry times on notices in Ullapool and at the junction of the Altnaharrie track with the road from Dundonnell to Badralloch and Fred advertised for a boatman May 2000. So he seems to have been prepared - reluctantly? - to continue a scheduled service but matters were overtaken the following year when Gunn suffered from two slipped discs preventing her from cooking for guests. The inn didn't open for the 2001 season (or maybe closed part way through it, it's not quite clear) nor in 2002. That year, the Browns put it up for sale (they had bought the freehold from Dundonnell Estate in 1989) provoking much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the foodie fraternity: "Serving the Last Supper" was one headline lamenting the passing of the Altnaharrie Inn. The pictures below are from the sale brochure.

The ferry boat pictured was called 'Mother Goose' and I believe the higher block behind the main front was added by the Browns in the late 1980s.

In 2003, Altnaharrie was bought  - for "a bit more than" the asking price of £500,000, the estate agent said coyly - by a retired dentist from Cornwall, Nigel Middleton, and his wife Lynda for use solely as their own home. They still have it today. The sign with the ferry times at the Badralloch road junction was first replaced by one saying "No Ferry at Altnaharrie" (picture here) which has, in turn, been replaced by one saying "4x4 only, 3.5 ton limit" (here). So obviously the non-existence of the ferry has taken a shorter time to sink in than at Stromeferry (No Ferry) and it surprised me a bit that the sign doesn't say 'Private Road' - perhaps a tacit acknowledgement by the Middletons that it's still a vehicular public right of way in case a latter day Marjorie Cottle or Channon Wood fancies their chances?

I believe the Browns went to live in Norway after they sold up but they retained some land to the east (the left as you look over from Ullapool) of the inn on which they obtained planning permission for three houses (see here). These plots were marketed but I don't believe they were ever sold or the houses yet built (no sign of such on the Land Register, anyway).

Finally, I have no local Ullapool knowledge to draw on and the foregoing is all taken from online sources, principally news stories in the British Newspaper Archive. So if anyone local can correct any mistakes or add any other details, I'd love it if you left a comment. Thanks. 

Could that be the ferry going across on the left?

St Catherines revisited: the Hotel

In 2018 I wrote a post about the St Catherines ferry which used to cross Loch Fyne from Inveraray to the village of that name on the Cowal shore: only ever a passenger ferry, it closed in 1963. There's a lot more information about the ferry in Walter Weyndling's 1996 book Ferry Tales of Argyll & the Isles which you can read here (free but registration required). 

The point of this post, though, is to talk about the inn at St Catherines which stood at the top of the ferry pier as seen in the 1930s postcard above. I'm fascinated by travel in the Highlands in the 18th and 19th centuries before the era of rail and the motor car and when it was still a pretty arduous business. A central feature of travel in these days was the wayside inn for the reception of weary travellers. One such was the inn at St Catherines, particularly important to the traveller arriving after the last ferry across to Inveraray for the night had left. And in periods of bad weather, the ferry - a sailing vessel at St Catherine's before 1827 - might not run the following day either necessitating an extended stay.

Boating on Loch Fyne in blustery conditions by J M W Turner. This is the west side of the loch a mile or two south of Inveraray so it's not the St Catherines ferry but may give an impression of what it could be like! Picture credit: The Met

Scottish inns didn't have a brilliant reputation 250 years ago, though, and I'm always interested to read descriptions of them. The other day, I came across one of the St Catherines Inn written as long ago as 1773 and it comes out rather well. It was written by an 18 year old girl called Anne MacVicar (better known as 'Mrs Grant of Laggan' because she subsequently married a Mr Grant who was the Minister of the Parish of Laggan). She was travelling with her parents from Glasgow to Fort Augustus where her father was going to take up the post of barrack master. The second day of the journey began at Luss and they stopped at Tarbet or Arrochar (Anne candidly admits she can't remember the name of the place but from context it must be one of those two) for breakfast. There they were joined by a fellow traveller, a rather objectionable student travelling home from college she nicknamed Smelfungus. The following is an extract from the letter Anne wrote to her friend Harriet she was leaving behind in Glasgow:

Why, after tiring you and myself with such a detail [how obnoxious Smelfungus had been at breakfast], should I tell you of the horrors of Glencroe, through which we travelled in a dismal rainy day? In one particular, I dare say, I agreed with the stranger [Smelfungus], for I really thought dinner [i.e. lunch] the most interesting event of this day's journey, not merely as a repast, but the manner of it was so novel. There was a little inn, thatched, and humbler than any of the former; we came very cold to it; we found a well-swept clay floor, and an enlivening blaze of peats and brushwood, two windows looking out upon the lake we were to cross [Loch Fyne], and a primitive old couple, whose fresh complexion made you wonder at their silver hairs. All the apparatus of fishing and hunting were suspended from the roof; I thought myself in Ithaca, though Homer does not speak of peats or trout, and far less of grouse. The people showed an alacrity in welcoming us, and a concern about our being wet and cold, that could not have been assumed. I never took such a sudden liking to people so far out of my own way. I suppose we are charmed with cheerfulness and sensibility in old people, because we do not expect it; and with unservile courtesy in the lower class, for the same reason. "How populous, how vital is the grave!" says your favourite Young; "How populous, how vital are the glens!" I should be tempted to say here: but after the "stupendous solitude," through which we had just passed, the blazing hearth and kindly host had peculiar attractions.

Shall I tell you of our dinner? Never before did I blot paper with such a detail; but it is instructive to know how cheaply we may be pleased. On a clean table of two fir deals we had as clean a cloth; trout new from the lake, eggs fresh as our student's heart could wish; kippered salmon, fine new-made butter and barley-cakes, which we preferred to the loaf we had brought with us. Smelfungus began to mutter about the cookery of our trouts; I pronounced them very well drest, out of pure spite; for by this time I could not endure him, from the pains he took to mortify the good people, and to show us he had been used to lodge and dine better. I feasted, and was quite entranced, thinking how you would enjoy all that I enjoyed. Dear Harriet, how my heart longs for you, when I think how yours is made to share all my wild pleasures!

The boat was crossing with other passengers over the ferry, which is very wide. We were forced to wait its arrival two hours — to me very short ones; one of them I have given to you, for I could never tell you all this when the warm feeling of the minute had worn off. I have kept my promise of being minute, most religiously; there is merit in it. For you I have forsaken Smelfungus, who is yonder walking on the Loch side, in all the surly dignity of displeasure. I am going to tea, and will put him in good humour, with questions about his college. 

What a pleasant teadrinking! The old landlord knew all my father's uncles, and the good woman was so pleased with my interest in her household economy! It produced a venison ham, sacred to favourites, and every other good thing she had; every one was pleased, and Smelfungus himself became, "As mild and patient as the female dove, When first her golden couplets are disclosed." And here I conclude this long letter to begin another at Inverary. Innocent, beloved, and amiable, what more can I wish you, that will not risk a share of your happiness? Adieu, Beloved! A.M.

St Catherines Inn and ferry, 1826

Anne began her next letter to Harriet almost as soon as she’d arrived at Inveraray. She recorded:

Such a day as we had after crossing the ferry! such torrents! Our carriage stood us in good stead, when we left the boat, in which, indeed, we got completely wet. But, alas! for the unsheltered head of Smelfungus, and for the new hat he was so careful of. Wet and weary, late and dreary, we arrived; and yet I was not depressed. 

The MacVicars were travelling by coach which is remarkable by itself. Not so much that they could afford to travel by coach but that there were roads over which one could travel: that was absolutely not to be taken for granted in Argyll in the 1770s. But the military road to Inveraray over the Rest and Be Thankful, built 24 years earlier in 1749, must have been passable by coaches: that was not to be taken for granted either considering the military roads had been designed for marching soldiers rather than middle class families in coaches (many stretches of the military roads were realigned in the first quarter of the 19th century to make them more suitable for wheeled traffic). Anyway, does that last quotation from Anne's letter infer that the coach crossed the ferry from St Catherines to Inveraray with them? We know that wheeled traffic could cross on sail powered ferries as seen in the picture below ...

... but that was just to cross the half mile between Kyle of Lochalsh and Kyleakin. I sort of 'hae ma doots' that carrying a coach a mile and a half across Loch Fyne would be feasible. What I think was more likely was that the coach was sent round to Inveraray by road to await the MacVicars when they got off the ferry. Although as going round the head of the loch is only an extra 6 miles compared with the two hours they had to wait for the ferry, and then - what? - 30 minutes minimum? - to cross the loch in a sailing vessel, I'm not sure why they didn't go with the coach. The ferry really catered for travellers arriving at St Catherines from the south rather than the east.

The head of Loch Fyne in 1820 as seen in Lumsden’s Steamboat Companion

On the map above, the military road from the Rest and be Thankful the MacVicars travelled along in 1773 is the one pointing to the right edge of the map. There was a road branching off it along the south side of Loch Fyne to St. Catherines and Strachur but for some reason it’s not marked. The two roads pointing to the bottom edge of the map, to Ardentinny and Lochgoilhead, hadn’t been built in 1773 but once they had, in 1809-10, the quickest and most comfortable route from Glasgow to Inveraray (and from there to Oban and points north) became by steamboat to Lochgoilhead and coach to St. Catherines. In these days, the longer the part of your journey you could accomplish by steamboat along the sheltered waters of a firth or sea loch and the shorter by road, the better - especially when the road involved “the horrors of Glencroe”, as Anne MacVicar put it (Glen Croe is the approach to the Rest from the east. I've included a map marked with all the various locations at the end of this post).

Advert in the Glasgow Herald, 1866. John Campbell was the tenant of the St Catherines Inn

If I’m not making a very good job so far of this post being about the inn rather than the ferry, it could be justified as emphasis that the inn was as significant a stop on the journey to Oban by steamer, coach and ferry in the 18th and 19th centuries as the Green Welly Stop at Tyndrum is on the journey today by car! Anyway, to the inn, but first we need to introduce the estate it formed part of. 

As well as the inn, St Catherines Estate included the ferry rights across to Inveraray; a farm of about 600 acres with stocking for 400 sheep and 4 milk cows; and two houses (one for the tenant of the shooting rights). And I’m sorry but we haven’t escaped the ferry yet! What I meant there by the estate including the ferry rights was that the right to operate a ferry at a convenient crossing point was a proprietary right. Usually it belonged to the owner of the land on one side but sometimes it belonged jointly to the owners on either side. Whoever the owner was, he usually let them to someone who actually operated the boats and collected (and kept) the fares paid by the passengers. But whatever the arrangements, the significance of ferry rights at a particular crossing being proprietary was that nobody else except the proprietor (or his tenant) could set up a rival service at the same crossing: that would be a trespass against which the proprietor (or tenant) could obtain an interdict (Scottish word for injunction: see this post for an instance of exactly that happening). Now, in my previous post about St Catherine’s, I said that the ferry rights there belonged to Inveraray town council but I’ve since discovered that’s not quite right. In fact, they belonged jointly to Inveraray and St Catherine’s Estate but under a strange arrangement whereby Inveraray only had the right to carry passengers east across the loch but not the other way and St Catherine’s Estate vice versa. This appears in the news cuttings below:-

Report of a meeting of Inveraray Town Council in 1881. Note in the third and fourth last lines that what was let by public roup (auction), for the princely sum of £30 (about £3,000 today), was the "(Inveraray side)" of the ferry.

Advert by St Catherines Estate for the let of the inn and ferry rights making it clear only east to west traffic is included. I don’t know what they meant by a ‘chartered ferry’ - it’s not a term of art of Scots Law

A dafter way of arranging a ferry it’s hard to imagine but reading between the lines of the various accounts I think that what happened in practice was this: Inveraray pro-actively sought out tenants to operate the ferry as a public service while St Catherine’s reactively permitted the Inveraray tenant to pick up return passengers at their side in exchange for a toll of so much per passenger. (Walter Weyndling’s book I linked to above, refers to 6d, 5d and 3d per passenger at different times.) So when St Catherine’s Estate were advertising for a tenant of their east to west ferry rights in the advert above, I don’t believe they were actually looking for somebody with a boat. Rather, they were farming their right to the tolls from Inveraray's tenant operator: “What fixed amount per year will you offer us to receive the variable amount of tolls received in the year?” That was common practice with any variable income stream in these days.

Approximate boundaries of St Catherine's Estate

Anyway, back to St Catherines Estate, ‘the two merkland of Kilcatrine’ was held as a feu (perpetual lease) from the Earls (later Dukes) of Argyll: part of the feuduty (ground rent) was to ferry the Earls and their retinue across the loch to Inveraray free of charge. A ‘merkland’ was a piece of land anciently valued at a merk (two thirds of a pound Scots) for rental and taxation purposes and it was called Kilcatrine - Gaelic for ‘church of St. Catherine’ - after a chapel of that name there built by Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochawe, 1st Lord Campbell and ancestor of the Earls and Dukes of Argyll, in the middle of the 15th century: its ruin is still just visible in the trees behind the houses to the south of the inn (see here).

In the 17th century, the feu of Kilcatrine was held by a family called MacKerras (Gaelic for Fergusson) until 1695 when they sold it to James Campbell, baillie (Scottish word for magistrate) and later provost (ditto for mayor) of Inveraray. He passed it to his brother Patrick and it remained with his descendants for another three generations. It would have been these Campbells, I think, who anglicised the name of the estate to St Catherines: it appears as such in the Land Tax Roll of 1751. One of them, I can't tell which exactly but described as "weak and fickle" by the Duke of Argyll's factor (steward) made himself obnoxious to the duke, his feudal superior, the following year (1752) by refusing to surrender his feu or even agree terms for access to the quarry on the estate for stone to build Inveraray Castle. A deal was eventually done, though, and much of the distinctive greenish grey stone the castle is built of was quarried at St Catherines.

Inveraray Castle. Phot credit: dan

The last Campbell laird of St Catherines, the 5th, was Captain Patrick Campbell. In 1849, he commissioned a 'feuing plan' from cartographer Thomas Carfrae to develop the lower parts of the estate along the seaside as a housing estate. Although this plan is referred to at Historic Environment Scotland's Trove.scot website (here), it's not available to view online, sadly, so here's a link to another feuing plan, at Toward, to give you the picture. Feus (plots) would have been sold (strictly speaking let on perpetual ground lease but often at a peppercorn feuduty (groundrent)) to rich middle class Glaswegians to build elegant Victorian villas as their weekend residences on: think of the outskirts of towns like Dunoon and Rothesay and around the Holy Loch etc. Nothing ever came of the feuing of St Catherine's, though, and I strongly suspect the reason was distance from Glasgow: the key to a successful feuing plan was rapid access to the city by steamship and upper Loch Fyne is just a bit too far. 

Captain Campbell sold the estate to Patrick Forbes, an Edinburgh lawyer, about the middle of the 19th century and when he (Forbes) died in 1875, it was sold to the 8th Duke of Argyll (1847-1900). On the death of the 9th Duke in 1914, St Catherines passed to his widow, Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, for her life: when she died in 1939, the estate passed back to the 10th Duke (1914-49, nephew of the 9th Duke). 

Princess Louise, Dowager Duchess of Argyll in 1915

Of course, His Grace and Her Royal Highness didn’t cook breakfast and make beds at their inn at St. Catherines themselves. They let that privilege to tenants. We've already met John Campbell who was the tenant of the inn in the 1860s and drove the coach to Lochgoilhead to catch the steamer to Glasgow. James MacDonald was the tenant in 1875 and he was succeeded by Donald Sutherland in 1879. He was also the tenant of the farm. It was common for inns to have farms attached to them in the 19th and early 20th centuries to provide food for the table and fodder for the guests' horses and, in fact, all the tenants of the St Catherines Inn were also the tenants of the farm until the Second World War. In 1898 John MacIntyre became tenant. 

The fortunes of the inn had declined somewhat since the opening of the railway to Dalmally (for Inveraray) in 1877 and then Oban in 1880 which had taken much of the traffic from the steamer and coach route via Lochgoilhead and St Catherines but the next tenant, Allan MacDonald, a butcher from Lochgoilhead who took over in 1909, turned things around by taking advantage of the emerging transport technology of the 20th century: the motor car. In 1931, the Oban Times noted that Allan had made St Catherine’s “one of the best patronised hotels on the Glasgow to Dunoon road”. No car ferry to Dunoon in these days and note how it’s now being referred to as a hotel rather than an inn. The valuation roll records a petrol pump at the i… sorry, hotel in 1935 and you can see it if you look closely at the postcard at the top of this post (click to enlarge). Previously, in 1925, the MacDonalds had expanded their empire when Allan’s son Peter took the tenancy of the Creggans Inn four miles down the road at Strachur and henceforth the two establishments were run in conjunction with each other. Nor was it the case that the MacDonalds were hoteliers first and farmers second: their names regularly appeared in the reports of sales at local livestock markets and it’s significant in this regard that, when Peter MacDonald gave up the Creggans in 1931, it was take a tenancy, not of another hotel, but of a farm.

The St Catherine’s Hotel was gutted by fire in April 1934 and it’s a testament to Allan MacDonald’s drive that he had it immediately rebuilt in time for that year’s season. Looking at the postcard above, I’m going to guess that glass verandah along the front was part of the 1934 rebuild. It looks very similar to the one along the front of the Creggans (see here) which is probably not a coincidence. 

Allan MacDonald died the following year (1935) and was succeeded by his son James. He transferred the tenancy of the hotel to his brother in law, Duncan Munro, in 1946. In 1951, he (Duncan) bought the whole of the St Catherine’s Estate from the 11th Duke of Argyll (1949-73: he of the scandalous 1960s divorce case). It’s emblematic of the continuity of the history of the place and also of the conservatism of Scottish conveyancing lawyers that, in the deed of conveyance by the Duke to Duncan Munro, the property was still described as “the two merkland of Kilcatrine commonly called Saint Katherines” (with a K). Argyll had advertised the estate at offers over £12,000 (about £330,000 in today’s prices) but I don’t know what Duncan Munro paid for it. 

Advert in the Oban Times, September 1951: British Newspaper Archive

In 1968, now in partnership with his sons Duncan, Junior and Allan, Duncan Munro sold the hotel to a William and Sheila Somerville from Lower Kilmardinny Farm in Bearsden. Now, without access to a full Registers of Scotland ‘search sheet’ (which is quite expensive), I can’t give chapter and verse on the ownership thereafter. Changes of ownership of things like hotels and farms were no longer being reported quite as religiously by the Oban Times as they had been in previous decades but a Lewis Laurie was recorded as living at St Catherines Hotel in 1970 and his name appeared as the contact in an advert advertising the hotel for sale in 1989. He skipped the hotel’s team in a curling competition amongst local licensed traders in 1991 (won by the Cairndow Inn) but whether Mr Laurie was the owner or manager on behalf of the Somervilles or subsequent owners (or both of these things at different times), I don’t know. 

A Sheena Dowse was reported being the owner in 1994. A John Roger applied for the licence in 1998 and that’s the last reference to the St Catherines Hotel trading as such I could find. I think it shut some time in the early 2000s - it was unoccupied in 2003 - and was bought by local property developer Archie McArthur about the same time. In 2004, he lodged a planning application to redevelop the building but before we look at that, a quick look at the rest of the estate: it’s mostly been sold off - the largest part, the hill ground of the farm was sold for forestry, don’t know when exactly, but it belongs today to Gresham House Forestry Fund (see here (paid subscription required) and here) - although Duncan Munro, Junior’s son, another Duncan, still owns a house (Alt na Craig) and the freehold of the static caravan park which is operated by the same company as operates the parks at Drimsynie and Loch Eck etc. In many ways, the caravan park is a sort of 20th century reimagining of the feuing plan, now made possible by faster connection to Glasgow by motor car.

St Catherine's caravan park looking south west over Loch Fyne. The pier from which the ferry used to run to Inveraray can be seen. Photo credit: Google Maps

Archie McArthur’s 2004 planning application for the hotel was for development of a “tourist complex comprising conversion and alterations to former inn to provide 10 holiday units, licensed bar/restaurant (public house licence) and shop, erection of detached dwellinghouse for key worker [i.e. manager], storage building, 24 parking spaces and biological treatment plant.”  Unfortunately, this didn’t find favour with the planning department. Some of the correspondence (but not the plans, unfortunately) is preserved here and this meeting gives a flavour of the issues: apart from being ‘over developed’ (planning speak for trying to cram too much into too small a site), the main problem seems to have been the health and safety implications of parking and access off the busy A815 road in a 60mph zone. It seems that no compromise could be found, the planning application was withdrawn in 2005 and there matters were left for the best part of the next 20 years with the hotel empty, boarded up and decaying away. Mr McArthur put it on the market in 2021-22 at £225,000 but there were no takers.

St Catherine's Hotel in 2022: Google Streetview

Turning to the building itself, it’s a Category C listed building. Its citation as such (here) says it was built in 1756. In the 1920s, workmen repairing the hotel unearthed a stone bearing the date 1745. It bears a strong resemblance to the nearby Cairndow Inn which is probably not coincidental. Until it stopped trading around 2000, there was a sign over the door of the St Catherine's Hotel (picture of that here) claiming it had been granted a charter as a wayfarer’s tavern in 1460. I suspect that’s a conflation of the foundation of the chapel in the 1460s with a gloss in a 1925 article in the Oban Times (here: paid subscription required) speculating that the founder, Lord Campbell, would have kept a house and stable at St Catherine’s for his use while en route to Kilmun (on the Holy Loch) where he’d also founded a church. There’s nothing at all improbable in there having been an inn at St Catherine’s prior to the mid 18th century but I’m sceptical of anything very formal as early as the 15th century. The point here is, though, that the building that stands today is the one Anne MacVicar and her parents dined in in 1773 - you have to picture it with a thatched roof, though.

I said “the building that stands today” - but not for much longer. Absent the prospect of a ‘tourist complex’, in 2024 Archie McArthur obtained a budget for the best that could be done with the former St Catherine’s Hotel: a four bedroom house in the main block and two three bed houses in the single storey wing to the south (right in the photos). That produced a net loss of £600,000 to the developer so he applied for permission to demolish it and this was granted. The demolition hadn’t happened as at June 2025 and I don’t know whether it’s happened yet as I write this in January 2026.

It’s ironic that the thing that saved the St Catherine’s Inn in the first quarter of the 20th century - motor traffic - was responsible for its demise in the first quarter of the 21st. I wonder what future revolution in travel will bring about the demise of the Green Welly Stop 100 years from now?

As usual, if anyone can correct me on the ownership or other aspects of the history or can update on the demolition, do leave a comment.