THIS JEWELLED ISLE How the people of a beautiful Scottish island got their land back By Harry Mount PHOTOGRAPHED BY MURDO MACLEOD

Resident and community trust member Sean Morris at Harris, on the Isle of Rum The red phone box on the edge of Loch clumsily into their burrows in the Rum local Lesley Scresort is a hot contender for the most mountains above Kinloch. Their eerie, Watt with her pony romantic, isolated call box in Britain. cooing call led the ancient Norse Harvey on the In one direction its little window panes residents to think trolls lived up there; beach at Kinloch look across a bay full of oystercatchers one of Rum’s mountains is still called to the grey-blue mountains of the Isle Trollaval (Troll Hill). of Skye. In the other, it looks back to Kinloch Castle, a much-crenellated, Things haven’t changed much on Rum orangey-brown, late-Victorian pile. since Norse days, except that there Once the plaything of a Lancashire are now fewer human beings. In 1796, industrialist millionaire, Sir George the population of the island was 445. Bullough, it is now the grandest youth Now there are a mere 31 permanent hostel on earth. residents, their numbers periodically The only sound is the mournful swollen by the hillwalkers who bed whoop of those oystercatchers and down under the eaves of Kinloch Cas- the shocked-old-lady cry of the eiders. tle in the servants’ attic quarters. Those And, beyond the castle, there lies the 31 residents are mostly made up of isle of Rum (some call it Rhum, avoid- wardens for Scottish Natural Heritage, ing jokes about dead men’s chests and the charity that was given the island rum coves). The 26,400 acres of green, for £1 an acre in 1957 by Lady Bullough. scree-flanked cuillins (the local word But now, in a development that has for mountains), criss-crossed with glens, been cheered across the Hebrides, the waterfalls and lochs, constitute one of island’s only village, Kinloch, a pretty now those two problems are to be the key. And already there are ecstatic the last British wildernesses, the biggest group of whitewashed crofts nestling solved for the first time in the island’s grins from islanders who’ve moved of a group of four islands in the Inner round the castle, has been given to 7,500 years of human habitation. At the from cramped conditions to bigger, Hebrides called the Small Isles. those wardens—for absolutely noth- moment, Rum’s large Gothic school by renovated properties.” ing. Revolutionary changes of land the ferry port has only four children. From now on, Scottish Natural Among its residents are 1,000 deer— ownership like this are taking place all But a further two are already on the Heritage and the Scottish government subject, since 1972, to the longest across the chain of islands strung along way. And, under the Scottish Natural accept that human development on continuous mammal-study scheme in Britain’s 6,000-mile-long coastline. Heritage plan, a Rum-based commu- Rum will happen at the community’s history and recent stars of the BBC’s In 1997, the neighbouring island nity trust will run the five crofts next pace and will reflect their choices. This Autumnwatch—and 200,000 manx of Eigg was sold to the Isle of Eigg to Kinloch Castle to help generate will mean hard work. But the prize is shearwaters, a third of the world pop- Heritage Trust, acting on behalf of the income and attract more residents and a future where human and physical ulation. Their guano is so thick that islanders. In 2006, the puffin and storm families. “Now Rum is cooking on gas. ecology develop apace and Rum can it has turned the earth above their petrel haven of Skokholm, off the west In a year, the island will hopefully be emerge from two silent centuries with barrows a deep, fertile green. During coast of Pembrokeshire, was sold to cooking on hydropower instead—just a viable population, as a mainstay of the breeding season, these birds spend the Welsh Wildlife Trust after 350 years one of the obvious changes islanders the rejuvenated Small Isles community. their days at sea, their scythe-shaped in the same family. are starting to explore,” says Lesley wings almost cutting the water, hence When it comes to Rum, there have Riddoch, the journalist and broadcaster An injection of fresh blood makes for their name. At night, the shearwaters been two problems with its otherwise in charge of the Rum Task Force that a sea change in the island’s history—a land with a thump before scurrying romantic story: money and people. And co-ordinated the scheme, “Housing is history, for the most part, of tragic departures. For all its rugged allure, Rum cuillin and you can Kinloch Rum has not been well constructed see the rain moving away Castle, by nature for human habitation. A belt from you in waves, carried built by the of beeches and wych elms surround across the bay. Bullough Kinloch Castle, survivors of a mid- family; 19th-century planting. But otherwise Ever since man first came (below) the island is mostly bracken, bog, rock to Rum in 5500BC, he some of the and river, fertile ground only for the has battled with its in- diverse scourge of the Highlands and Islands: hospitable nature. Until artefacts the midge. Midges love rain and there’s this latest scheme, the collected by a lot of it on Rum. The mountains trap island has always won, Sir George a good chunk of the stuff coming in and the owners and their Bullough from across the Atlantic. It then sluices poor tenants have fled or down the mountainside in brown, peaty been ruthlessly evicted. burns that cut across the overgrown Signs of a fleeting human hill paths and the track that skirts the presence are scattered coast round Kinloch. Stand on top of a across the island—beehive dwellings, Iron Age forts, two seventh-century cross stones and a Norwegian burial site—but not a sin- gle descendant of these old inhabitants is on the island today. The longest period of sustained classic Scottish sporting estate. He later gallery for the band has not heard occupancy was for 400 years from handed it over to his brother, the third music for some time. the 1400s, when the Macleans of Coll marquess and prime minister, before it The faded charm of this forgotten farmed with the help of workers was sold to the Bulloughs in 1888. island world spreads beyond the castle housed in 400 shielings, the simple These days, a not-unpleasing air of gates. An overgrown kitchen garden stone-built local houses. When cattle neglect still hangs over the island. The has been given over to pigs, foals and a prices fell after the Napoleonic Wars, castle has been left just as it was after rusting Nissen hut, sheltering farm Dr Alexander Maclean “cleared” all the Bulloughs left in 1957, as if they had equipment. The roads round the island but one tenant to Nova Scotia—8,000 stepped out into the gloaming for an are only negotiable by Land Rover. black-faced sheep took their place. The evening stroll and never returned. The And even a Land Rover takes an hour to weeping of the islanders could be hand-embroidered, silk wallpapers tackle the nine miles of broken track heard from one end of Rum to the are slowly shrinking with the damp; to Harris on the other side of the island, other. From then on, Rum was known enormous tropical fish caught on a where the only resident humans are as the Forbidden Island. tropical pre-war cruise are still nailed dead ones. Harris is dominated by the In 1845, the Marquess of Salisbury to the wall, a little moth-eaten; the 1906 Bullough mausoleum, a Tuscan temple bought the island, stocked it with pianola still cranks out a creaky waltz; where the last Bullough—Monica, red deer and Rum began its life as a the ballroom with its little minstrel’s Lady Bullough—was buried in 1967, aged 98. Even in the boom years of the Kinloch—now the breeding spot of brought up when I retire,” said Fliss marked out for the new generation of Bulloughs, oceans of money weren’t seagulls and oystercatchers—is called Hough, chairman of the Rum Commu- Rum immigrants. Just in front of that enough to flatten the roads. The metal Port of the Turnings because no one nity Association. patch of land is Rum’s port, where the skeleton of one of Sir George’s ruined stayed there long. That sad history of As well as their castle, the Bulloughs Caledonian MacBrayne ferry drops off sportsters lies by the side of the road turnings is coming to an end, with left behind another magnificent legacy and picks up residents and hillwalkers to Kilmorey, where the Bulloughs kept the prospect of islanders staying on that will invigorate Rum’s future: the four days a week. The idea of it drop- their laundry. beyond a single generation for the quarter of a million tons of Ayrshire soil ping off more people than it picks up first time in half a century. “It will be they imported a century ago to fertilise on a permanent basis, for the first time Some deserted hamlets don’t even wonderful for me to say to my eight- the land round the castle. It is here, on in living memory, has inundated this have roads to them, broken or not. year-old daughter that she will not the only real level bit of land on the distant island outpost with a tide of One such hamlet on the coast near have to leave the island where she was island, that the five crofts have been tremendous hope. ●

Wild red deer hinds and calves on the north of Rum, with the Isle of Skye on the horizon