A clash of cultures on Tiree

This coal store epitomises the clash of cultures between Alan Stevenson, the engineer behind Skerryvore Lighthouse, and Tiree in the 1840s. With its high walls and solid gates, the store was designed to keep out what he called ‘the inroads of the needy Celts’.

Stevenson, from a family of lighthouse engineers, had been a brilliant student at Edinburgh University and a contemporary of Charles Darwin, and was fluent in several languages.

His description of the Tiree people was unflattering: ‘The desolation and misery of the surrounding hamlets of Tyree seemed to enhance the satisfaction of looking on our small colony, where about 150 souls were collected in a neat quadrangle of cleanly houses … The regular meals and comfortable lodgings and the cleanly and energetic habits of the Lowland workmen, whose days were spent in toil and their evenings, most generally, in the sober recreations of reading and singing, formed a cheering contrast to the listless, dispirited, and squalid look of the poor Celts, who have none of the comforts of civilized life and are equally ignorant of the value of time and the pleasures of activity.’

The 1840s was a desperately poor decade for many on Tiree. The population had trebled to over 4000 following the kelp boom. The fishermen had no harbour, and there was simply not enough land to go round. Tiree had also run out of fuel. The peat banks were exhausted, and islanders were forced to scrape the money together to buy coal from Ayrshire. In fact, the Tiree minister of the time described the islanders as ‘intelligent and enterprising’. After the 1846 potato famine and the wave of emigration that followed, the island recovered and began to prosper.

Contributed by local historian Dr John Holliday on behalf of the Hynish Trust

Image credit: Portrait of Alan Stevenson. The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses