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 their wealthy and important guests in some style. Deer stalking was one of the primary diversions for the Bulloughs and their guests and a day’s stalking on the hill would be followed by a sumptuous evening meal served at the dining suite, which had originally graced the state rooms of Sir George’s yacht Rhouma. After dinner the company would repair to the magnificent ballroom, with its highly polished sprung floors and cut glass chandelier, to dance the night away.
Harris Bay and the Bullough mausoleum (Walk 3, Day 2 and Walk 7)
This exalted era drew to a close with the coming of the Great War. Most of the estate’s male staff went to Flanders and many never came back. The estate fell into disrepair during the war and as Britain’s fortunes declined in the post-war years, the Bullough finances also gradually dwindled, along with their interest in Rum. Sir George died in France in July 1939 and was interred in the family Mausoleum at Harris Bay. His widow continued to visit Rum as late as 1954. She died in 1967, aged 98, and was buried next to her husband in the Mausoleum at Harris, having sold the whole island, save for the Mausoleum, but including the castle and its contents, to the NCC in 1957 for the ‘knock-down price of £23,000’ on the understanding that it would be used as a National Nature Reserve.
The NNR
In 2010, SNH handed over Kinloch Village to the Isle of Rum Community Trust to provide land for housing and local enterprises. The island still is owned and managed as a single estate by the NCC’s successors, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). In addition to its status as a NNR, Rum was designated a Biosphere Reserve in 1976, a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1987, and has 17 sites scheduled as nationally important ancient monuments.
The Rum NNR was originally envisaged as an ‘open-air laboratory’ with scientific research conducted into specific areas of the island’s ecology, most notably the long term study of the red deer population. Rum was also the primary site for the ultimately successful reintroduction of the white-tailed eagle to Scotland during the 1970s and 1980s. However, SNH has shifted the emphasis to re-creating a habitat resembling what existed before the island’s native tree cover was removed. This has involved the reintroduction of over a million trees and shrubs of 20 native species in the vicinity of Kinloch and Loch Scresort.
Magnus Magnusson’s well-regarded book on Rum is entitled Nature’s Island – an apposite description of this mountainous island wilderness, where it is easy to imagine a past without much human presence. However you can also revisit the isle’s more decadent human past at Kinloch Castle.
Wildlife
During the autumn rut the night air on Rum resounds with the ‘belling’ roar of stags (photo: Konrad Borkowski)
Rum’s red deer population has been the subject of a long term study by researchers from Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, based at Kilmory Bay in the north of the island. The research has focussed on the sociobiology and behavioural ecology of red deer. The island’s deer population was hunted to extinction in the 18th century, but since reintroduction in 1845 the number has grown to the currently maintained level of around 1500.
Red deer near Guirdil bothy
The island has a small herd of about 14 ponies. The Rum Ponies are an old breed, and their presence was first recorded in 1772. Shortly thereafter, Dr Johnson described them as ‘very small, but of a breed eminent for beauty'. They are of stocky stature, averaging 13 hands height, with a dark stripe along the back and zebra stripes on the forelegs. These features suggest that they are related to primitive northern European breeds, perhaps introduced by the Norsemen. It is sometimes claimed – erroneously – that they are descended from animals off-loaded from ships of the Spanish Armada. The ponies are used to bring deer carcasses off the hill during the stalking season, but are otherwise left to roam wild.
Rum’s wild goats are subject to the same Armada myth as the ponies, but are in fact descended from domestic
