Bing

I can spend a lot of time "flying low" over the West Highlands and Islands in Google Earth seeking out abandoned crofts and lazy-beds and stuff like that and it's always a bit of a frustration when you get to the end of the high resolution photography.

But in the last few days, Bing Maps - Microsoft's answer to Google Maps - seems to have plugged this gap with a lot of new high res coverage not available on Google. Select "Aerial" and zoom close in - you can't get an overview of where there is high res on Bing (because it's not universal) like you can on GE but there are areas where it seems like Bing takes over from where GE left off.

For example, GE does the south of Raasay well and Bing does the north and Rona. GE also does most of Coll but not Tiree whereas Bing does vice versa. Alas, neither does Oban yet (which is verging on criminal in my book). Anyway, here's Breacachadh Castle on Coll casting long shadows courtesy of Bing never before seen on GE as a taster:-

And here's a picture of the castle courtesy of my friend Doogie Greer:-

A minor niggle about Bing is you don't seem to be able to switch off the road map overlay over the aerial photos as you can in GE (which I found frustrating in Scarinish) but I'll let them off with that (for now).

Stromeferry - Part 5

Part 1 here.

In Part 4, we'd got to 1897 when Stromeferry was superseded by Kyle of Lochalsh as terminus of the Skye railway.

As seen in the picture above, the pier was now redundant and deserted but the ferry across the loch was about to come into its own again with the advent of motor vehicles in the first decade of the 20th century.

I don't know exactly when a vehicle carrying ferry was first instituted across Loch Carron at Strome (the name, incidentally, is from the Gaelic word sruth meaning "stream" alluding to the flow of tide through the narrows: it's also encountered at Kylestrome in Sutherland) but it's likely to have been around 1819 when the road from Dingwall to Kyle Akin via Garve, Achnasheen and Lochcarron built by the Highland Roads and Bridges Commission was completed.

That said, Robert Southey, the poet laureate at the time, arrived at North Strome along the new road in 1819 expecting to find a ferry capable of carrying his horse and chaise (carriage) across the loch but was disappointed. Recording that his was the first carriage ever to have arrived at Strome, his plan of returning to Inverness via Kintail and Glen Moriston was thwarted and he had to content himself with crossing the ferry on foot for a walk half way to Auchtertyre before returning to Lochcarron.

22 years later, in September 1841, a Scottish judge, Lord Cockburn, fared a little better. Travelling with his family on holiday in his carriage, he recorded that his was only the third carriage that year to cross the Kylerhea ferry to Skye. That ferry he described as "though boasted as the best in Skye, is detestable, at least for carriages, and as ill-conducted as possible." The carriage was loaded onto the ferry by "dozens of ... Highlanders, all scolding in Erse [i.e. Gaelic], who almost lift it and throw it into the groaning boat."

Cockburn was not much more complimentary about the ferry from Skye back to the mainland at Kyleakin (pictured above) and on arrival at Strome he described the ferry there as:-

"... like the rest - picturesque - (and for this, the worse conducted, the better) and as well managed as mere hands, without proper boats, pier or any apparatus, can ever manage a ferry. When our ferrymen were loitering on the south side, it was curious to hear them excited to activity by the mail horn on the other." 

Loading a motor car onto a ferry like Strome in the early days must have been almost equally as hazardous an operation as loading a horse drawn carriage as the next photo shows: this is actually the ferry at Dornie in 1910 which existed until the first bridge was built in 1940:-

The earliest picture I have of the Strome Ferry is the next one and, again, it's a question of the vehicle being delicately loaded on planks athwart the boat - which was, of course, propelled by oars:-

Quite apart from the hassle and risk involved, taking a car across the Strome Ferry was also expensive, costing 10 shillings (50 pence) for a car in the 1900s. Hence why some early motorists took adavantage of an early form of "Motorail" whereby, for 7 shillings and 6 pence (37.5p) and subject to giving two days notice so that the necessary wagon could be arranged, the Highland Railway would carry a car from Strathcarron at the head of the loch to Stromeferry on the south side, thereby avoiding crossing the ferry.

In the next chapter, I'll tell you about the next generation of car ferry at Strome - the motorised turntable ferry.

Carscaway Castle

From the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland 

Occupying a rocky peninsula in a commanding position overlooking Loch Way on the Hebridean island of Greft, Carscaway Castle (Gaelic Dun Cearcabhagh) comprises a curtain wall following the contours of the summit of the peninsula to form an irregular enclosure with a later tower at the SE superadded over the curtain and projecting therefrom. On analogy with similar castles in the region (Dunvegan etc.), the curtain is likely to date from the 13th or early 14th century and the tower from the late 14th-early 15th.

In the NW quadrant of the curtain, steps ascend to the wall head but no details of the wall head arrangements survive. The entrance is in the SW quadrant following a natural defile altered with the addition of masonry and steps cut into the rock to form a corridor curving round in to upper (W) part of the courtyard. The tower is two storeys over a vaulted undercroft, the entrance in the east face at 2nd floor level accessed by a stair against the inside of the curtain of later date. Again, no details of the wall head survive. Inside the courtyard are traces of later buildings against the inside of the curtain of two phases. The earlier comprises a building to the W apparently contemporaneous with additions to the entrance corridor to the upper courtyard. Against the NE wall is a building – possibly the principal accommodation of the castle after the abandonment as such of the tower – with vestigial detail suggesting a mid 17th century date.

History - The seat of the MacAllans of Greft, there are no contemporary references to the castle until Dean Monro reported in 1549 “ane greite strengthe perteinyng to Alane Alansoune Vick Alane”. The castle was fired and its garrison hanged by Lieutenant Nash of the frigate Hyena in the aftermath of the royalist Glencairn Rising against Cromwell in 1654. It was never reoccupied, the MacAllans taking up residence at Greft House after their rehabilitation at the Restoration. Upon the 25th chief’s bankruptcy in 1850, his estates were bought by Viscount Ogleby. In 1910, Lord Ogleby contemplated a full restoration of the castle (similar to Eilean Donan and Duart) but finding the costs prohibitive contented himself with a detailed survey (see illustration above) and sympathetic stabilisation works to consolidate the ruin. Following acquisition of the island by the Storas Greabhaid (“Greft Resources”) crofting trust in 2008, improved public access is planned in conjunction with Historic Scotland.

Craignure

This is how you disembark nowadays from the ferry at Craignure, the principal "entry port" for the island of Mull:-

Photo credit Lyn Mac

And this is how you did it before the pier was built at Craignure in 1963:-

Refer back to my post about ferries and steamers. This is the ferry ashore from the steamer from Oban shown in that post.

Medieval as it looks, in fairness Craignure wasn't the main port for Mull before 1963. Back then, there were two main ports where there were piers - Salen, further up the Sound of Mull, which was the pier for people living on the west coast of Mull, and Tobermory, the island capital. The steamer from Oban sailed to both these piers and Craignure was just a minor "ferry call" en route for people living locally in the south east corner of Mull. Tourists going to Iona and Staffa went direct to these islands on a separate steamer from Oban operating in summer only.

Note how on that 1950's map the Class A roads (red as opposed to brown) are centred on Salen and Tobermory. It's a reflection of the transport ethos that prevailed before the 1960s which may be summarised as:

Where there's not a railway, go as long a distance as possible by ship and as short a distance as possible by road.

On Mull, that changed in 1964 when the leisurely steamer from Oban to Tobermory via intermediate calls was replaced by a car ferry to the new pier at Craignure whence you went by road to Salen, Tobermory and points west. The road through Craignure is now red and Salen pier is slowly rotting away through disuse.

Oban again

The absence of McCaig's Tower suggests an early date for this picture:-

The boat in the foreground (behind the caption "Oban from North" - actually it's from the north west) has no masts and what appears to be a crane so I'm guessing it was a coal hulk - i.e. a floating coal depot for refuelling steam-ships. But coal (for steam ships and trains) would presumably have come on the railway so does this suggest a date before 1880 which was when the railway reached Oban?

Also, the photo appears to have been taken from a very high vantage point. If taken from a high point on Kerrera (the island which forms the west side of Oban bay), I feel you would be able to see some Kerrera shore in the foreground. So was the picture perhaps taken from the top of the mast of a sailing ship? If it was, I can’t help thinking the ship must have been awful close to Kerrera!

Stromeferry - Part 4

The railway to Stromeferry had been built in the 1860s entirely with private money and not a penny of assistance from the state: none had been asked. But 25 years later the prospects of any further railways in the far north west of Scotland being funded entirely by the private sector were zero: however socially valuable, experience had shown they were not profitable enough.

On the other hand, there was now the prospect of state subsidy. In the 1890s the government let it be known that it was willing assist a limited number of railway developments to assist the fishing industry which was seen at the time as the panacea to the Highlands and Islands’ economic problems. It was the equivalent of a government today offering to assist a high voltage electricity cable to help unlock the renewable energy potential of the islands - but which would deliver the best value: a cable across the Minch or to the Northern Isles?

In 1890s, there was no shortage of railway schemes to choose from with routes to Lochinver, Ullapool and Aultbea all being proposed. But nothing came of these because in the end the government chose to subsidise the line from Fort William to Mallaig and an extension of the Stromeferry line to Kyle of Lochalsh.

Work began on the Kyle Extension in September 1893 and it opened in November 1897. Needless to say the MacBrayne’s steamers to Portree and Stornoway immediately moved their mainland terminus to Kyle. Overnight, Stromeferry became a backwater: the steamer pier was now totally redundant and eventually demolished in the early 1930s. One wonders what trade at the Station Hotel must have been like around the turn of the 20th century?

But a reprieve was soon to come via the route – almost literally - that had originally put Stromeferry on the map. This was the road from Contin to Auchtertyre built by the Highland Roads & Bridges Commission and completed in 1819. It ran down the west shore of Loch Carron and crossed the loch by a ferry at Stromeferry. The arrival of the railway in 1870 had put the road and the ferry out of business for anything but purely local traffic - in the railway era, traffic for Lochcarron (the second biggest settlement in Wester Ross after Ullapool in the mid 19th centuray), Applecross and Shieldaig went via Strathcarron Station at the head of the loch. But that began to change again in the early 20th century with the advent of the motor car – once again Stromeferry lived up to its name to become a place where travellers dismounted a wheeled conveyance (train, car) to get on a boat!

In the next episode, I’ll tell you about the car ferry across Loch Carron.

Small Isles Medical Practice

While researching something completely different, I came across in – of all things – the British Medical Journal an obituary which piqued my interest. Here are some extracts from it:-

Dr. Martha Devon, who practised for more than thirty years in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, died on December 31, 1961, aged 64. [...]

Her first post was as a locum for eleven months in Islay, and this led to her appointment in 1928 as the first woman doctor to the Small Isles - Eigg, on which she lived, Muck, Rum, and Canna - the last 20 open sea miles from Eigg. There were some doubts about the wisdom of sending a woman to such an arduous post, but Martha Devon soon dispelled them. There was no transport on the islands, no proper roads, no telephone except at the post office two miles away. Visiting was on foot, and the steamer called only once a week. Should she be required on any other island an open boat was sent to fetch her, often entailing long hours in unsheltered waters and in every kind of weather. On one occasion, to the astonishment of that well-known MacBrayne skipper “Squeaky” Robertson of the Plover - who refused at first to believe that she had been out in such weather - she reached Canna in a gale that had kept the whole MacBrayne fleet in port.

Being a constant sufferer from such poor and primitive communications, Martha Devon’s abiding interest was in improving them; and in 1931, when the Department of Health asked her for suggestions, she proposed flying surgeon and theatre sister to the patient. This idea was laughed at, so she promptly persuaded the editor of the Daily Record - then running stunt flights - to fly her to Eigg in a Blackburn Bluebird, which she did in a hundred minutes, landing on the beach. Thus she pioneered the first medical flight to the islands, now almost commonplace.

Picture credit - Ivy and Martin's Webpage

In 1936, after eight years of this strenuous life, Dr. Devon was appointed to the isolated parish of North Glenelg on the western seaboard of Inverness-shire, and on the rough gravelled roads of Mam Ratigan [sic] and Loch Hourn - hill roads sometimes blocked by snow and ice in winter - she taught herself to drive a car. This practice also included Kylerhea in the south of Skye and isolated places in Loch Hourn, both areas involving boat journeys. The war added to her difficulties, as her practice was in a protected zone and locums were therefore almost impossible to obtain. Petrol had frequently to be collected from over eleven miles away. Isolated in this way from her fellows she acted as M.O. [Medical Officer] (without rank) to the Home Guard [...]

Martha Devon was a very intelligent woman and a fine doctor. She did not suffer fools gladly, and [...] Like her father before her she was a “character” and had a fund of stories, many against her self. Arthritis – aggravated by years of strain and exposure – and a severe gastric haemorrhage caused her to retire about a year ago to the drier climate of the Cromarty Firth. Her many friends must regret that she did not have long to enjoy her new home in Evanton.

Dr. Devon operated under the Highlands and Islands Medical Service (HIMS) set up in 1913 which was a sort of forerunner to the NHS. The H&I were not the only part of Britain where poverty denied people access to private medical care but the problem was particularly acute because of the large distances doctors had to cover to get to some of their patients (72 miles from end to end of one practice in Lewis, for example) and their habit of levying a mileage charge in addition to their consultation fee. Hence the HIMS was born whereby doctors were obliged to visit any patient in their practice and charge only a nominal fee and no mileage charge. In return, the government topped up the doctor’s income to a reasonable living.

Today, under the NHS, there is still a GP practice on Eigg covering Muck Rum and Canna as well and the present incumbent is also a woman (as was Doctor Devon’s immediate successor in 1936). I enjoyed the admonition on the practice's website:-

Please note that the Rigid Inflatable Boat available to the practice is for visiting the islands and is not a rescue vessel. Nor is it to be used for patient transport. Visits to the islands are only possible during the hours of daylight and not in adverse weather conditions.

Photocredit - Marion Gilroy

(By the way, can you guess what I was researching when I came across Dr Devon’s obituary?)