This is a photograph of a village, an exceptional village in that it stands in the most beautiful setting in the heart of West Ardnamurchan, but Glendrian was abandoned by its last inhabitants some sixty years ago - so walking around it on a beautiful day, as it was last Wednesday, was an eerie experience.
From the hill to its immediate southeast it's difficult to distinguish the village's numerous buildings as they are very dispersed, all are constructed of the local stone, and only one, the last to be inhabited, has a rendering. All the roofs have gone, and many of the walls have collapsed. Finally, as if Nature has taken pity on their nakedness, many of the ruins have been covered by bracken and brambles.
There are almost twenty buildings in all but we visited only seven of them - marked on the picture. The intention was to try to distinguish the use of each, and then to try to piece together how many different homesteads there were. In the distance are the islands of Rum, snow-capped to the left, and Eigg.
The task proved to be remarkably difficult, as is shown by buildings '3', '4' and '5'. '3' is 8m by 4.5m, with a single small window at the back and a door at the front (facing away from the picture towards the distant hill called
Meall Sanna). This might well have been a been a byre where a cow was kept with its calf, and hay stored, while '4', which is a little larger and has a door and two windows at the front, could have been the dwelling house. '5 ' was likely to have been a
fank, a place where animals are gathered, as it has an area of land surrounded by a wall, within which is a small building in which animals could have been kept or fodder stored.
This is all that is left of building '6' which looks to have been a dwelling house with a byre attached at the nearer end. It is saddening to think that this may once have been a happy family home. It, and the buildings in the previous photo, were all abandoned before 1897, as the OS map of that date has them marked as roofless.
In front of it is the track which led from the village southwestwards to the Achnaha - Kilchoan road a mile away. This distance may have been the cause of Glendrian's decline, that it was so far from the road and the services which slowly arrived on the peninsula.
Kate was born in Glendrian. As a child, she walked to and from Achosnich school. Her surname may have been Henderson. She married Hugh Cameron and together with his brother, Donald, they emigrated to Canada where they farmed, I think, in the central provinces. After they retired they returned to Ardnamurchan around 1950 and bought the house in Pier Road, Kilchoan, now called Skipper's Cottage.
ReplyDeleteKate lived until she was over ninety.
She is the main protagonist in Murray Herbert's novel for children, The Stone Men, 2001, where she is given the name Kirsten. In his introduction, Murray describes her as wizened but when she was old, although her hands were gnarled, she was still tall and dignified with white hair gathered at the nape of her neck. I would not have described her as wizened - this may be Murray's poetic licence.
Hi Barbara - Thank you for this very interesting comment. I am trying to put together a history of Glendrian - hence the visits there. If you can give me any more information about the village and its people, I would be very grateful - you can email me at kilchoandiary@btinternet.com Jon
ReplyDeleteHi Jon, my great granny Johanna Henderson, came from the village of Glendrian. I think she married aMalcom Carmichael. He built a house for them in Tarbert, Loch Fyne. Which my auntie still lives in.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, Rona, for your comment. Was Johanna related to the Hendersons who were the last people to leave the township? Jon
ReplyDelete