An Iolaire Survivor

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

[singlepic=969,382] Translated from an interview with An Geal, John Maclennan, born 1896 at 15 Kneep and married at 4 Aird, Uig. The Admiralty ship the Iolaire taking servicemen home to Lewis grounded on the Beasts of Holm outside Stornoway, on the 1st of January 1919. Almost two hundred men perished. Translated ...

Scramble for Rural Houses (1949)

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

"The wanderlust of the Uigeach", from the Stornoway Gazette, 30 December 1949. Swedish timber houses allocated to West Uig are not to be built there. Owing to the depopulation of the district there is very little chance of finding tenants. When this news was given to the Lewis District Council by ...

The Long Road to Stornoway (1893)

Friday, June 12th, 2009

To mark the expectation that our new Enaclete bypass will opening soon (surely), here's a further extract from the unpublished memoirs of Rev Col AJ Mackenzie, who was born at Kinresort in 1887, son of the gamekeeper Roderick Mackenzie.  The family moved in to the gamekeeper's house at Uig Lodge ...

Mac an t-Srònaich: Not as Bad as All That

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

James Shaw Grant, in one of his many books about the folk and tales of the Islands, reckoned that the evidence available does not support the idea that Mac an t-Srònaich was the vicious murderer of popular legend.  Mac an t-Srònaich was a native of Garve on the mainland, and ...

Enterprise of Four Uigeachs

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

Stornoway Gazette, 30 December 1949. It is many years since there was a fishing boat of any size in Uig but four Uigeachs arrived in Stornoway on Tuesday of last week with a 45-foot motor-boat which they have purchased in Inverness. The boat will take her new name from the initials of ...

Waiting for the Barlow

Friday, August 29th, 2008

The Barlow sailed from Lewis in 1851 with 287 emigrants on board, one of several emigrant ships that year.  Like the Marquis of Stafford it carried people who had been removed from their land and offered paid passage to Canada by the proprietor, but unlike the Marquis, which sailed in May, ...

After Uig: Letter from Rev Macleod to Lady Hood, 1844

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

A letter from the Rev Alexander Macleod (formerly Established Church minister in Uig, who had taken his congregation to the Free Church in 1843 and left Uig shortly thereafter for Lochalsh) to Lady Hood, his previous patron.  See also a letter from 1824. Lochalsh 19th March 1844 My very dear and much respected friend, ...

Macpherson the Wheelwright

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Photo by rojabro. This isn't strictly an Uig tale, though one episode takes place on the Flannans, and there is a suggestion that Macpherson may be the grandfather of Kenneth Macpherson the catechist from Bayhead, who married Ann Smith from Strome and Valtos and lived in Ness.   It's offered in the hope ...

Peigi an Irish and Morgan

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Peigi an Irish (nee Macritchie, b1890) from 8 Kneep was married twice; her first husband Murdo Mackay was killed in the Great War, and her second was Donald Matheson (Buckie) from 4 Valtos.  She was the tenant of 5 Reef, after her father.  Murdo Macdonald (Morgan, b1866) was born to 4 Kneep ...

Rev Maclennan’s Speech on TB Day

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Pic: some of the worthies of Uig and Stornoway at the ceremony. TB Macaulay, president of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Montreal and descendent of the Macaulays of Uig, visited Lewis in the summer of 1929 to open the new Municipal Buildings in Stornoway (replacing those destroyed in the fire ...

Uig Transport in the 1930s-40s

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

To go with the picture of Sgail and his crowd of excursionists, part of an article from the Uig News: In the 1930s there were four cars in Uig. The two ministers both had cars - one was a Vauxhall. The Doctor had a car and so did Norman Mackay, the Public ...

Nicolsons in Uig

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Willie Matheson (Mac Gille Chaluim) wrote in his Families of Lewis series that Nicolson was "perhaps the oldest surname in Lewis" and that the Macleods came into possession of the island by marriage into the family.  The name disappears and does not surface again until the 18th century, when Angus Nicolson is ...