Expedition 226, 13th February 2010
Finding the houses

 


This was an unusual expedition: a couple of weeks before I had been given a copy of a map of the Samalaman area drawn by the then parish priest Father John Mackintosh in 1922. The map showed the position of thirteen houses and gave details of the people living in them at that time. Our expedition was to find all the houses.

We only had our three regular explorers, Fern, Robbie and Rowan, ably assisted by six adults, John Dove, Nicci, Pamela, Richard, Sandra and Sharon, with Ellie to investigate the undergrowth.

We started out at Samalaman Beach, where we examined the old pier, the boat winch and the site of a hut once occupied by the MacBride family. Then it was back to the car and up to Samalman where we found the next three houses, belonging to the Captain, Sarah Fraser and Mrs MacPherson. Then we drove on, passing the next two houses (Joan Macdonald and Ewen MacNeill) before stopping to walk to the other houses at Allt Ruadh and Smirisary.

The first house at Allt Ruadh, number six on the plan, was Angus Macdonald’s and was now used as a shearing shed. On the other side of the burn was number seven, a house with two central chimneys and formerly occupied by Widow Sine Thomhullach(? Father Mackenzie’s writing is small and spidery).

Then we walked back up the burn to house number eight, which has recently been renovated. I knew this as Angus and Jean MacIsaac’s house but before then it belonged to Wendy Wood. In Father Mackenzie’s time it was slated but Wendy Wood said it had a tin roof and was later thatched, so it went through all the normal roof developments in reverse order. It is now slated again.

The next house was a problem, but fortunately Sandra knew where it was and we had a wet climb up the hill to get to it. House number nine now has a tree growing out of it but in 1922 it was occupied by ‘old grannie’ Jessie Gillies. By this time we were well on the way to Smirisary and it was a short walk to the top of the settlement where we found the 1922 house of the MacIsaac family high up on the hill. Below it and against the hill was the house of another MacNeill family, this house also having two central chimneys like number seven.

The last two houses were down near the shore; on the far side was the home of Iain MacPherson and below and to the right was that of his cousin Angus MacPherson. The last house was the one later occupied by Margaret Leigh and featuring in her book ‘Spade among the Rushes’. She gave a map of the village in her book and we used it to try to locate the old well, but with no success.

This completed out tour of the old houses and we were happy to be able to return once more to the Blue Parrot for our refreshments.

John Dye



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