BLUEMOMENT

An anchorage;

Garbh Eileach?

Nope...

No, looking again, it isn't Garbh Eileach - far too much room!

OK, second try: Glen Garrisdale, Jura?

DaveS wrote:Glen Garrisdale, Jura?

Good guess, but again, nope.

The place in the pic is near an abandoned township.

From one of the abandoned houses;

Cregaig Bay on south side of Ulva! One of our favourites, especially at low tide where therer are lots of mini beaches on the islands. I could post an identical photo, if I knew how.

Yes Cragaig Bay on the south side of Ulva.

I have vague connections with the Ross of Mull, and while I know that my late parents enjoyed a holiday on Ulva (probably not long after the war), the island was effectively a closed area for visitors until relatively recently. As though it held some sort of dark secret. Well, in a sense, it did.

There were several townships on the island at one time. In his book, "The Scottish Islands", Hamish Haswell-Smith's records that in the mid 19th century, the island's new owner, Mr Francis William Clark, evicted many of the island's tenants by burning the roofs of their cottages and seizing their livestock.

The anchorage is pretty magnificent; we slept well in a strongish SE. The Ulva Estate now appears to have a very welcoming attitude to visitors.

I should have got that! I anchored there 4 years, to do Ben Chreagach - a superb viewpoint, BTW. I don't remember seeing the ruins, though. I suspect that other than doing the hill we didn't wander around too much. We'd started from Coll, done Little Colonsay on the way, and were probably keen to get back aboard for dinner. It was an excellent anchorage and I'd definitely go back - and now there's an added reason!

A very interesting place, especially given the brutality of the evictions which took place just after the starvation of the potato famine. While on this trip, we anchored off Feall Bay on Coll, near where my own great-grandfather was born at around the same time. Shortly after, the tenants there gave up their farms in the fertile south of the island because of crippling rents imposed by a new owner. I don't know the circumstances but I suppose that's why his parents moved to Mull, and my great-grandfather later to Govan.

The old mill at Cragaig;

I understand that the potato famine in Ireland was not concerned with failed crops

They forgot where they planted them

That's a tatty joke. Read John Prebble's 'Highland Clearances' as a teenager. Still remember the brutality although it was probably par for the course in it's day. It always seemed to be the women who took a stand against the factors and the evictions..

Shard wrote: the island's new owner, Mr Francis William Clark, evicted many of the island's tenants by burning the roofs of their cottages and seizing their livestock.

.......
We visited Ulva by car and ferry some years ago and recollect reading the estate's account of the clearances in essence denying much wrong doing but blaming economic conditions... if my memory serves me. We noted at the time the estate's version of events contrasting with the picture Haswell-Smith paints (so we must have visited the east end within the last 10 years)

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