A decade ago, when my husband was researching a walking guidebook to Rum and the Small Isles, we camped on the Isle of Rum near Kinloch Castle, which has just been put up for sale for £1 by NatureScot, formerly Scottish National Heritage. In those days, it operated as a hostel. In the evening, we ate in the canteen and had a dram. In the morning we toured the castle, which was built between 1897 and 1901 by the Lancashire industrialist George Bullough.
With its early central heating system, orchestrion (a mechanical device that simulates an orchestra) and exotic Edwardiana, the castle’s interior is impressive, but the edifice is also a monument to the brain fizz that excessive quantities of money can engender. Built from rose sandstone quarried in Dumfriesshire by Lancashire craftsmen who were purportedly paid extra to wear kilts of Rum plaid, the castle originally boasted heated ornamental turtle and alligator ponds, an aviary with hummingbirds, and a golf course.
Bullough, who inherited the island from his father, was a snob who liked to shut people out. The castle ballroom is famous for its polished sprung floor, but it also had an ingenious hatch that allowed drinks to be delivered to his wealthy guests as if by magic, without the serving wenches’ phizogs troubling them.
During Bullough’s tenure of Rum, of which he quickly tired, he changed its name to Rhum to avoid tipsy connotations and continued the policy of discouraging unwanted visitors that started in 1845, when the Marquess of Salisbury converted the island into in a sporting estate. As a result, for more than a century, Rum was known as the forbidden island.
Today Kinloch Castle is unused, and a millstone around the neck of NatureScot, whose distant predecessor the Nature Conservancy Council bought the island from Bullough’s widow for £23,000 in 1957. The public body is keeping the castle wind and watertight, but has warned that it will be pulled down if a benevolent buyer with £20 million to invest is not found.
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The Kinloch Castle Friends Association (KCFA), which tried to buy it for £1 in 2019, and the local community hope that it can become an asset, with accommodation and catering, but fear what will happen if it ends up “in inappropriate hands”. Ewan Macdonald, the KCFA chairman, blames public-sector ineptitude , and he is perhaps right.
The castle’s advancing decrepitude was a topic when we visited ten years ago. Could it not have had the kind of makeover that has transformed Lews Castle in Stornoway into a museum and venue, with café and accommodation? The answers are many. For a start, the Lews Castle refurbishment cost less than half what would be needed to rescue Kinloch Castle, and was partly funded by the National Lottery. But perhaps the main reason is that the population on Rum, which hovers around the 30 mark, and the flow of visitors to the island is simply not enough to make the venture viable.
In that sense, Rum and its castle are a cautionary tale. Before it was cleared by Maclean of Coll in 1826, Rum had a population of more than 300. Subsequently, it was passed around from one absentee landlord to another until it was bought by Bullough’s father. His son turned the island into a rich man’s playground, and it has never fully recovered.
Blame for that can be laid at the Bullough’s door. But government failure — now and in the past — to create the infrastructure that would allow our islands and rural areas to participate fully in national life is also part of the picture.
The Rum tragedy is by no means confined to the past. In 2010, the super-rich Australian hedge fund manager Greg Coffey bought the Ardfin Estate on the Isle of Jura. Echoing Bullough, he imported sand and gravel by barge from Northern Ireland, and turf from Yorkshire to create a private golf course. Only those who rent Jura House, which looks like it’s been done up by the prime minister’s interior designer of choice, Lulu “clashing patterns” Lytle, or stay at the £1,350 per night “Quads” can play the course. Where’s the fun in that?
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Perhaps Coffey’s guests will spend lots of money on Islay and Jura, boosting the local economy. But there has been a price to pay for his tenure at Ardfin. The walled gardens at Jura House, previously open to the public, have been closed, and access to the beach discouraged.
A friend of mine used to say that people should be required to take a personality test before being allowed to own land. Excessive wealth and good behaviour are not mutually exclusive, and there are decent private landowners, but Rum’s story reminds us that allowing a large tract of our country to be a rich man’s toy is usually not for the common good.
Despite land ownership reform in Scotland, too much of our natural capital remains in the hands of a few individuals who, in the words of The Gentleman’s Journal, see it as “the most tasteful form of flash”.
This neo-feudalism is not good for our psyche or our rural communities. After the pandemic, with remote working, we have an opportunity to repopulate those communities, but need infrastructure and land for housing. Bolder reform is needed.
Let’s hope that Kinloch Castle can be saved, but let’s not weep too hard if it crumbles away.