Walking on Rum and the Small Isles. Peter Edwards

found on Rum at a site near Kinloch. Concentrations of bloodstone microliths indicated the manufacture of stone tools and roasted hazlenut shells were radiocarbon dated to 6500BC. A shell midden at Papadil, cave middens at Bagh na h-Uamha and Shellesder and tidal fish traps at Kinloch and Kilmory are also characteristic of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

      The Stone Age to St Columba

      Peat core samples from Kinloch revealed soil erosion and a decline in tree pollen, suggesting that woodland clearance for cultivation occured during the Neolithic (New Stone Age), from around 2700BC. Bronze Age traces on Rum are limited to hut circle sites and finds of barbed and tanged bloodstone arrow heads. Like many marginal Bronze Age settlements, Rum may have been abandoned during a period of harsh climatic conditions prevailing in northern Europe after the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Hekla, about 1150.

      Iron-working skills and characteristic structures including brochs, duns, wheelhouses, crannogs and souterrains were introduced to Scotland around the middle of the first millenium BC by Celtic people migrating from continental Europe. Rum possesses only a few crude promontory fort sites at Kilmory, Papadil and Shellesder. Decorated pottery sherds are the only other Iron Age artefacts retrieved on the island.

      The first written references to the early Caledonian people come from the Romans, following Agricola’s expedition north in AD81. References to the ‘Picti’ first appeared in Roman accounts around AD300, though it is probable that the Picts were an assortment of racial and cultural groups – including the aboriginal Bronze Age peoples – bound together by the threat of the Romans. It is likely that the population of Rum at this time was Pictish in origin.

      Early in the third century an Irish tribe – Scotti of Dál Riata – began the colonisation of Kintyre and the Inner Hebrides. The process of conquering and colonisation continued until late in the fifth century when the kingdom of Dalriada established its capital at Dunadd, following the decisive invasion of Argyll. St Columba came from Ireland to Iona around 563 and established a monastery that became an important centre of learning and spirituality. Columba’s followers, the early Celtic Christian missionaries, set about converting the populations of the islands and the mainland. One of their number, Beccan the Solitary, became a monk at Iona in 623 and then a hermit – probably on Rum.

      The Viking era

      In 794 Iona suffered the first of many Viking raids, which gradually forced the monastery into decline. In common with many Hebridean islands, Rum came within the Norse sphere of influence. The Norsemen ruled the Small Isles from 833 until the Treaty of Perth in 1266, when the Isle of Man and all the Hebrides were ceded to Scotland. The only tangible evidence of a Norse presence on Rum to date is a piece of carved narwhal ivory unearthed at Bagh na h-Uamh in 1940.

      The Norse legacy is most obvious in the toponymy of the island, whose name may itself derive from the Old Norse rõm-øy, meaning ‘wide island', or the Gaelic ì-dhruim, meaning ‘isle of the ridge'. The name ‘cuillin’ also comes from the Norse kiolen, meaning ‘high rocks'. Several of the principal peaks have Norse names, with ‘-val’ deriving from fjall, meaning ‘hill': Askival (812m) and Ainshval (781m) ('spear-shaped hill’ and ‘rocky ridge hill’ respectively), Hallival (722m), Trollaval ('mountain of the trolls', 700m), Barkeval ('precipice hill', 591m), Ruinsival ('stone-heap hill', 528m): Gaelic names are Sgùrr nan Goibhrean ('goat hill', 759m) and Sgùrr nan Gillean ('peak of the young men', 764m). The place-names Dibidil and Papadil are Norse.

      The Middle Ages to the Macleans

      During the 13th century the island was in the possession of the powerful Macruari clan for a brief period until 1346, when Rum was chartered to Clanranald – known as the Lords of the Isles – who ruled much of the Hebrides from Finlaggan on Islay for 150 years. The Lordship came to an end after John MacDonald II’s duplicitous treaty with Edward IV of England against the Scottish Crown, which led to the forfeiture of all MacDonald land.

      From the early Medieval period Rum was noted for its deer and ‘excellent sport’ and was probably used as a hunting reserve by the nobility. By the mid-16th century Rum was in the possession of the MacLeans of Coll, then in 1588 the Small Isles were assaulted when Lachlan Maclean of Duart led a raiding party including 100 Spanish marines from a galleon of the defeated Armada anchored at Tobermory. The islands’ settlements were torched and their inhabitants murdered. In 1593 King James VI received a report indicating that Clanranald had re-occupied the island, but despite these temporary setbacks the Macleans of Coll kept possession of Rum for more than three centuries.

      By the late 17th century Rum’s status as a hunting reserve had declined and the human population had increased. The inhabitants caught fish, grew barley and potatoes and raised Black cattle for export to the mainland. Conditions were primitive and the dearth of viable farming land stretched resources. The needs of a growing population led to the extermination of the native red deer during the latter half of the 18th century.

      At the beginning of the 19th century there were nine hamlets on Rum and the local economy enjoyed a boost from the kelp industry. However, in 1825 the island was leased to Dr Lachlan Maclean, a relative of Hugh Maclean of Coll. Like many Highland landlords, Maclean, in search of profit, decided to clear the land and turn it over to 8000 blackface sheep. Rum’s population was given a year’s notice to quit its homes. On 11 July 1826 around 300 inhabitants boarded the Highland Lad and the Dove of Harmony, bound for Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. The remaining 130 followed in 1828 on the St. Lawrence, along with some 150 inhabitants of Muck, another of Maclean of Coll’s properties. Then mutton and wool prices declined and the enterprise failed; Lachlan Maclean left Rum, bankrupt, in 1839.

      Into the 20th century

      In 1845 MacLean of Coll sold Rum to the Marquess of Salisbury, who reintroduced red deer and converted the island into a sporting estate, and for over a century Rum was known as the ‘Forbidden Island', as uninvited visitors were actively discouraged.

      After the Marquess of Salisbury’s death, the island was bought by Farquhar Campbell in 1870, who passed it on to his nephew. In 1888 Rum was acquired by John Bullough, a cotton machinery manufacturer and self-made millionaire from Accrington in Lancashire who had previously leased the island’s shooting rights. The prospectus for the 1888 sale described Rum as: ‘The most picturesque of the islands which lie off the west coast of Scotland, it is altogether a property of exceptional attractions...as a sporting estate it has at present few equals'. At this time the population numbered between 60 and 70 shepherds, estate workers and their families. When Bullough died in 1891, ownership of the island was assumed by his son, George Bullough.

      Sir George Bullough – he was knighted in 1901 – changed the traditional spelling of the island’s name to Rhum in 1905, allegedly to avoid the connotations in the title Laird of Rum (the spelling reverted to Rum in 1992 when SNH took over from the NCC). However, Sir George’s most striking legacy is the incongruous and often maligned Kinloch Castle, built during the last years of the 19th century and completed in 1902. The castle was built from red sandstone quarried at Annan in Dumfriesshire. A hundred stonemasons and craftsmen were brought from Lancashire, and Sir George purportedly paid the workforce extra to wear kilts of Rum plaid.

      Sir George Bullough’s collection of exotic Edwardiana adorns the interior of Kinloch castle

      The estate employed around a hundred people, including 14 under-gardeners to maintain the extensive grounds, which included a nine-hole golf course, a bowling green, tennis and racquets courts, heated ornamental turtle and alligator ponds and an aviary housing birds of paradise and humming birds. Soil for the grounds was imported from Ayrshire, and grapes, peaches, nectarines and figs were grown in the estate’s glasshouses. The interior boasted an orchestrion – a mechanical contrivance that could simulate the sounds of brass, drum and woodwind – an air-conditioned billiards room and an ingenious and elaborate central heating system, which fed piping hot water to the Heath Robinson-esque bathrooms, replete with ‘jacuzzi', while also heating the glasshouses and ornamental ponds.

      Sir George and Lady Monica Bullough usually resided at Kinloch Castle during the stalking season and would entertain