Image Details
This corrugated iron house, a type at one time common in the Scottish Highlands but few remain now, is situated at Upper Sandaig not far from the village of Glenelg. I had spent most of the day at 'Camusfearna', Gavin Maxwell's name for Lower Sandaig, and at the end of the day having walked back up the hill I took the photograph of this house.
Gavin Maxwell who wrote Ring of Bright Water, an international best selling account of his life at Camusfearna with his otters, is the reason I visit this place from time time, always with the aim of capturing a photograph that reflects some of what I felt on reading his book.
This house, named "Tormor", was originally the home of Gavin Maxwell's nearest neighbour John Donald MacLeod, the local roadman and keeper of Sandaig Lighthouse, and his wife Mary. Gavin Maxwell wrote the immensely successful book Ring of Bright Water in 1960 about his life at Lower Sandaig with his otters. Lower Sandaig is a very isolated spot, a long walk down a steep hill from the house shown above, and Gavin became very friendly with his neighbours. In fact the book, Ring of Bright Water, contains the dedication "For John Donald and Mary MacLeod of Tormor".
There is a moving account in his book of how Mary Macleod waded out into the small lochan next to the house to rescue a cygnet that had become trapped by some submerged object. He said that Mary had the greatest affinity with animals he had ever experienced, and as she approached, the cygnet struggled towards her and stopped the thrashing of his wings.
Mary was able to free the cygnet, whose leg had become clamped to a submerged fox trap, and as she held it and it lay in her arms the parent swans swam in on either side of her as tame "as domestic ducks". The cygnet was fine, and afterward, until the swans left, they would call to her each time she appeared outside the house.
The book is a joy to read and can be read again and again. A few years after taking the above photograph, at an exhibition in Gairloch an elderly lady stopped to look at it. She surprised me more than somewhat by saying "Oh yes, I knew Mary well, she was our servant you know, a very kind person." She then went on to lament the fact that they had granted Gavin Maxwell the land at Lower Sandaig (called Camusfearna in his books), saying "It was a little bit of heaven".
I was so amazed at this chance encounter that I had not the wit to ask who she was, but subsequently I did a little research and concluded that she may have been a member of the Wills family (of tobacco fame) who had a large estate at Eileanreach not far from Sandaig.
Copyright © 1995 Gordon C Harrison All Rights Reserved