Lawrence MacEwen worried about television, cars, crowds of nosing tourists and shuttered second homes. On the other hand, visitors meant income. He struggled with this dilemma
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskIt was a tiny place at that, not quite a mile long and two and a half miles broad, the smallest of the Small Isles off Scotland’s west coast. His family had bought it in 1896 and made a decent living from it, for its deep volcanic soil could provide fine hay, corn and vegetables, as well as grazing. Yet it was also left behind by the world and benighted by the weather, sometimes cut off entirely by autumn storms.
This being so, he did not want to change it much. He worried about television, cars, crowds of nosing tourists and shuttered second homes. On the other hand, visitors meant income. He struggled with this dilemma. Under his aegis there was only one tiny hotel, built by his younger brother, in the single settlement at Port Mor, along with a tea-room selling his wife Jenny’s wonderful cakes.
The hub of his philosophy was the island’s nursery-and-primary school. Attendance sometimes sank to one pupil, but it was vital to keep it going. Children were the future, even though at 12 they were bound to leave for schooling on the mainland. Those earlier years were a precious training in the love of nature and simplicity that he had; when people applied to him to settle on Muck, those with infants came first.
In fact he did not see himself as a laird at all, but as a steward and a farmer. His usual dress was a dung-smelling boiler suit and wellies, his normal conveyance an ancient red Massey Ferguson tractor, and his chief friends and companions his 40 red Luing cattle. He kept 600 sheep too, mostly dark-fleeced Jacob-Cheviots of which he was very fond. But the cows were his passion.
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