Once in a while, a post in The Diary results in someone drawing attention to what can only be called a gem of information. Sunday's post, The Road to Plocaig, is an example. Sue Cheadle, who lives at Sanna, in her researches into that village, has come across an article in the December 30th, 1921 edition of The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, which she drew to the Diary's attention. Under the title 'Long Road Fight', it is all about a petition, addressed to the queen, from the 104 women who then inhabited the villages of Sanna and Plocaig. Quite why the Singapore Free Press should give some 600 words to the plight of the villagers in a remote part of the west coast of Scotland is a complete mystery, but it's a fascinating piece.
In those days the road, such as it was, ended at Achanaha. Beyond, the tracks both to Sanna and Plocaig are described as 'rocky and boggy', and 'climb up the hillside, over boulders, burns and bogs', the tracks being so bad that, 'provisions, fuel, building materials and everything else have to be carried from Achnaha by the crofters themselves - perforce mostly by the married women in the absence of the men, who are chiefly engaged in the merchant service, the younger women also being out to earn a living.'
The article describes Sanna as being, after Kilchoan, the largest township on West Ardnamurchan, with twenty crofts, 'each of which graze two cows', while Plocaig 'has but four, grazing three cows, a pony, and a few sheep.'
The article ends by saying, 'But it is the distressing spectacle of a funeral procession that most forcibly brings home to those more fortunately circumstanced what it means to be without even the roughest road, for the best in Ardnamurchan are bad. The burial ground is six miles distant from Sanna, and for the first two miles the bearers of the coffin must struggle and scramble over rocks, sometimes sinking knee-deep into bogs. And yet the crofters are called upon to pay road rates.'
To the petition, the queen replied 'expressing sympathy, and indicating that she is drawing the attention of the proper authority to the matter.'
A tarmacked road wasn't to reach Sanna for another twenty years, but at least the information in the article explains why it went to Sanna rather than Plocaig, for the latter was already in terminal decline. By 1932 it had died.
Top picture shows Sanna, lower Plocaig.
Many thanks to Sue Cheadle for the article.
I am very grateful to Helen Ferguson at Sonachan for this comment, which may go a long way towards explaining the mystery -
ReplyDeleteDonald Gillespie, the late laird of Plocaig, had connections with the rubber planations in Malaya. I think his father lived over there.
His uncle, Dr Murray, was the doctor in Kilchoan around that time. His aunt, Margaret Murray, lived in Glasbhein Cottage until around the late 1970s. Margaret Murray's sister was Jean Macdonald and I think it was Jean's father who was out on the plantations first. They were good friends of my grandparents, Captain Hugh MacPhail and Mary MacLachlan, who lived in Grianan, Ormsaigmore. My father, John Hugh MacPhail, was managing rubber plantations on Penang Island for 10 years - my sister was born in 1962 in Penang. I was born in Oban while they were home on leave which I was never very impressed with as a child. They then bought Sonachan Farm in 1963, so in fact I only ever moved from Oban to Collie Bheag in Achosnich then to Sonachan!
I am guessing this might be an explanation as to why there would be an article about Plocaig in the Singapore Press. Perhaps the Singapore Press was the newspaper for Peninsula Maylaysia and Penang.
I think Donald Gillespie's daughters still own Plocaig, and John Alex Cameron is the tenant crofter.
Perhaps some other diary readers will have more accurate information and dates about this.