The short distance settlers who overcame hardship to make new lives

In harsh surroundings with few belongings and even fewer home comforts, the resilient families from Lewis and Harris settled into establishing their new way of life.

But this was not thousands of miles away from their Western Isles homes.

For this new settlement, arrived at via the First World War and the government’s pledge of ‘homes for heroes’, was just a boat trip away, on the Isle of Skye.

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The 1923 exodus saw more than 400 people leave their congested communities of Lewis and Harris.

They travelled across the Little Minch – the stretch of water between Harris and Skye - to newly formed settlements at Portnalong, Fiscavaig, Fernilea and Satran in north Talisker. Created as a result of radical land reform, it brought people back to an estate which had been systematically cleared by its owner generations earlier.

The promise was the chance of a fresh start; for many, that is precisely what it was.

As initial challenges were overcome, jobs and income were found, and families lay down roots: today many descendants of original settlers still live on crofts first worked by great, great grandparents.

But, as a new exhibition timed to mark the 100th anniversary of the repeopling of North Talisker shows, building these new lives brought challenges not entirely dissimilar to those faced by those who made much longer journeys across the Atlantic.

Spinning the Wool at Portnalong (Image: Minginish CP)

While for some, as homesickness for their previous life took its toll and the brutal test became too much, their ‘home for heroes’ would fall far short of what they’d hoped.

Communities dotted across Clan MacLean estates on the Minginish peninsula had been cleared in favour of sheep a century earlier first by Dr. Lauchlan MacLean, and then by his nephew, Hugh MacAskill, a joint founder of the famous Talisker Distillery.

His clearance of dozens of families was condemned as a “reign of terror” – 16 families were cleared from Ardfreck and Heille, 30 from Fernlea, while Fiskavaig, Ardhoil and Carbost, which would become the site of the distillery, were all cleared.

Just a ‘lucky few’ islanders  remained, to be put to work cutting peats to fuel its furnaces, carrying grain and shifting barrels.

Poor harvests and the potato blight, however, eventually plunged the many island estate owners and islanders into difficulty, while the First World War disrupted life for everyone.

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“The people's need for land and the promise of a ‘land fit for heroes’ on their return was the recruiting incentive used during the First World War,” says Catherine MacPhee, High Life Highland’s Archivist at Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre, who has researched the settlements for the new exhibition.

“These promises were unfulfilled, and the servicemen decided to take matters into their own hands.”

Land raids led to confrontation with military forces and violence before the introduction of the Land Settlement Act, which gave the Government power to buy land from estates to divide into crofts and smallholdings.

On Skye, Clan Chief MacLeod MacLeod, crippled by debts, agreed to sell North Talisker to the Board of Agriculture for the equivalent today of almost £2 million.

With the land split into 68 holdings of various sizes, it set about tempting ex-servicemen from the most overcrowded areas of Lewis and Harris with the chance to resettle.

A school slide from 1947 (Image: Minginish CP)

Sixty-eight families – 400 people in all – made the journey, only to find dire conditions in an landscape left barren by extensive sheep farming and unworked for decades.

There was backbreaking work to be done on the land, while their homes were shockingly basic.

“The huts cost £70 each that had to be paid back over 20 years - reduced to £35 if the families built a permanent stone house within two years,” says Catherine.

“They were just 20 by ten metres, made from wood sheathed in tin with a partition to create two rooms. There was a stove provided for cooking but no water or electricity.

“It was very cramped, most families were made up of three to seven people, some had ten.”

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Despite the challenges, the families set about trying to establish crofts. Some of the men heading to the sea as fishermen or with the Merchant Navy, working at the distillery or  building roads and other infrastructure paid by the Board of Agriculture.

The women, meanwhile, used the skills they had brought from home to begin a small tweed industry.

But the final straw was the conditions their children were expected to endure.

“It was an old agricultural shed which was not fit for purpose, it had broken windows, the roof leaked, there was no fire and the children had to cross streams to get to it.

“The teachers wrote a letter in November 1924 saying they would not have the children at school until something was done.

Annie Sarah MacInnes (Image: Minginish CP)

“By 1926 they had a new building.”

Among the settlers was Catherine’s great great grandmother, Annie Sarah MacInnes. She discovered during her research that she had a remarkable journey that  spanned the globe before ending in Skye.

“She was born in Mile End, London, in 1876 when the Underground was under construction and the first Ordnance Survey maps were being conducted in Skye,” she says.

“In 1888, as Jack the Ripper was terrorising the city, the family moved to the Falklands to run a pub.”

Annie grew up there, eventually meeting Donald MacInnes, who had witnessed the clearances in his youth and had travelled there to work as a shepherd.

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They married and returned to Harris where, despite not being able to speak Gaelic, Annie immersed herself in the Western Isles culture.

With no croft or land on Harris, the couple took up the offer to resettle at 5 Portnalong.

“She would have arrived without being able to speak Gaelic and she wouldn’t have known how to look after a croft,” says Catherine. “She must have learned the language and learned how to pick plants and use them to make dye for tweeds – there’s a 1930s photograph of her showing the Queen Mother how to dye wool.”

Despite early hardships that saw some settlers opting to return home, most put down roots. Portnalong now has a large population that can trace their heritage to the first settlers.

The community run Minginish Centenary Project is now gathering photographs, video and oral histories to piece together a full picture of the settlers and their descendants.

Elements of the research features in the new exhibition at the Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre, ‘A land fit for heroes’.

There are also plans for a commemorative cairn to mark the centenary.

“This exhibition is an homage to all of these families: their descendants and their origins,” adds Catherine.

“Most of all, it will be a celebration of what life looked like for these families 100 years ago, and of how much change has occurred since the clearances.”

‘A land fit for heroes’ is at the Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre until 30 September.

For more about the Minginish Centenary Project go to http://www.minginishcp.uk/