I stayed in the house where Bonnie Prince Charlie was dressed as a maid to help his escape 300 years ago

Nestled among crofts on Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides lies a building that once saw the disguise of Bonnie Prince Charlie as an an Irish maid to help him escape.

Nunton House Hostel, which it is named today, used to be the home of MacDonald of Clanranald.

Nunton House Hostel on Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides | Katharine Hay

It was here, after the prince’s defeat at the Battle of Culloden on April 16, 1746, the Young Pretender was likely in hiding.

Being the leader of a Jacobite Rebellion, who sought to reclaim the throne for his grandfather, King James VII of Scotland and II of England, government troops were onto him.

To evade capture, Clanranald’s wife dressed the prince as Betty Burke, an Irish maid in Nunton House, to aid his escape. With Flora MacDonald, a relation of the clan, the pair headed for Skye, a journey that inspired the Skye Boat Song. The prince then fled to France.

A remake of the cloak and dress that Bonnie Prince Charlie would have worn some 300 years ago during his escape with Flora MacDonald to Skye | Supplied

When I arrived at the hostel, Donald MacPhee, whose family have lived at the croft since the early 1900s, told me: “You’re standing in the very room where Bonnie Prince Charlie was dressed as a maid before he set sail to Skye.”

He told me Joanna Watson, a dressmaker and historian of 18th and 19th-century Highlands and Islands clothing, recently paid a visit to the hostel to recreate the dress in the very same location it was made almost 300 years ago.

If that wasn’t enough history for one room, the space also boasts an original inglenook arched fireplace that Mr MacPhee rediscovered behind plaster when renovating the building.

The inglenook fireplace in Nunton House Hostel dating back to 1700s | Katharine Hay

It is beautifully preserved, and the building, in some ways, serves a similar purpose to what it provided for the prince three centuries ago by offering a warm and safe refuge to people on the move.

Culloden saw forces loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie defeated by the Duke of Cumberland's government army. Fought near Inverness, it involved the deaths of about 1,600 men - 1,500 of them Jacobites.

After the battle, the prince and a number of his supporters went on the run across the Highlands and Hebrides. But the rich history of Nunton House doesn’t stop with the prince.

In 1838, Colonel John Gordon of Cluny purchased South Uist & Benbecula, including Nunton House, from where he ran the estate until Grogarry Lodge was built in 1870s.

It is said Colonel Cluny proved to be one of the most ruthless landlords and was complicit in the Highland Clearances - a period in the 18th and 19th centuries when tenants were forcibly removed from their homes in the Scottish Highlands and Islands to make way for farming. By 1850 his clearance policies had caused a national outcry. 

Following Colonel Cluny, Nunton House was then occupied by a number of tenants who ran Nunton Farm. The last tenant was James MacLean who lived there until 1923.

Despite the introduction of the 1886 Crofters' Act, which gave security of tenure, and fairer rent, the British government did not follow through on its promise to return land to men who had fought in the Great War. In 1923, Nunton Farm was subject to a land raid by retuning servicemen, which saw the land split into crofts.

After subsequent court battles, Nunton House was then divided into three separate properties, owned by Duncan MacLean (2 Nunton), Donald MacPhee (3 Nunton) and Roderick MacDonald (4 Nunton).

The property at 4 Nunton was extended in the 1980s, adding further accommodation for the MacDonald family and where the original fireplace is. This section of the house, now owned by the MacPhee family, is what has now become Nunton House Hostel. The remaining sections are private dwelling houses.