"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?