The 'sadness and gladness' of abandoning life on a Scottish island

One of the last residents of a Scottish island which was abandoned by its last family 53 years ago this week has recalled the “sadness and gladness” of leaving his home behind.

Scarp, which sits off Harris, was once home to 200 people in the late 19th Century but by December 2, 1971, just one family remained following a flow of people from its shores.

Life had become increasingly hard to manage with a lack of working-age men making it more difficult to pull boats ashore. Storms that ripped through the narrow sound which separates it from Harris could leave the island cut off in winter, sometimes for weeks at a time.

The slipway on Scarp, which sits off the west coast of Harris. More than 200 people lived there in the late 19th Century. Today, just three properties are occasionally occupied. PIC: Anderson Burr Bakewell. | Anderson Burr Bakewell

Donald MacDonald, of Back on the Isle of Lewis, left Scarp on July 31, 1970 in a 14ft dinghy with his parents, brother and sister.

Their departure brought to an end four generations of life on the island.

Mr MacDonald said: “I remember the day very well. We were putting the last of our belongings on the boat to Hushinish, things like our chairs and bedding - the last of the house.

“It was quite a sombre mood. There was a touch of sadness but also a touch of gladness. It was a relief to get off.

“It was alright during the summer months when there was plenty of light and the sea was calmer but in the winter you could get cut off for a week or maybe sometimes two.

“There were less men all the time and, aye, it was a necessity to leave in the end. My father was just losing a lot of help as the neighbours went.”

Many had gone before him. The family who ran the post office left the island in 1969, with the post office dismantled and taken to Amhuinnsuidhe on Harris and used as a byre.

Meanwhile, the tin house where Mr MacDonald and his family lived still stands today. It was later sold to a man from Dusseldorf who uses it as a holiday home, which is one of three cottages on the island that are occasionally used. Remains of the blackhouses of the Scarpachs are all around.

Anderson Burr Bakewell abseiling at Geodha Isligea on the island in the 1960s. He went on to buy a house there and became the owner of the entire island in 1995. PIC: Anderson Burr Bakewell. | Anderson Burr Bakewell

After leaving Scarp, Mr MacDonald and his family moved to a brand new council house in Tarbert in Harris.

“We knew Tarbert as we had stayed in a hostel there while going to school. The house was brand new, it was good. There was plenty of hot running water. My mum was quite happy,” he said.

While Mr MacDonald, 71, who went on to work in the construction trade, has frequently returned to Scarp to croft sheep there, his mother never returned to the island after leaving in 1970.

“Since the day we moved off, she never went back. She never, ever wanted to go back. I think it was just too difficult to go back,” he added.

As the Scarpachs left, a new generation of visitors who had been captivated by its beauty and way of life started to forge deep and lasting connections with the island.

Among them was Anderson ‘Burr’ Bakewell, a composer and founder of the Isle of Harris Distillery.

He first visited Scarp in the late 1960s as a teenager following an invite from his friend, Andrew Miller Mundy, whose father owned North Harris Estate.

Mr Bakewell said: “I stepped onto the island from the crofters’ boat and I was home.”

Scarp looking across to Loch Resort on the west coast of Lewis and Harris. PIC: Anderson Burr Bakewell. | Anderson Burr Bakewell

The island took a profound hold of Mr Bakewell. He bought a house on Scarp in the 1970s and the entire island in 1995 after it was put up for sale by the executors of Nazmu Virani, a Ugandan businessman and director of the failed BCCI bank, who was jailed for fraud.

Mr Bakewell said: "I bought it more to preserve the way of life and look after the island, I suppose. “

He described the final abandonment of December 2, 1971 as a “very sad day”.

“While not as remote, Scarp shared much of the traditional life as lived on St Kilda. The Sound of Scarp separating it from Harris is not very wide, but conceptually it can seem immense.

“An older Scarpach who died a few years ago would drive weekly from Tarbert to the jetty at Hushinish and silently gaze across to the island for a few hours - and Scarp was all that mattered to him,” Mr Bakewell said.

Mr Bakewell described a “very tight community” from which he “learned so much about how to live on the island”.

He said: “It can be a place of difficult access. There was a telephone line but it was severed after the island was abandoned.

“Not much had changed for a very long time and it was a relationship between people and place that I had never encountered before .

“The old ways survived to some extent. I remember hearing from DJ MacInnes (a former islander) somewhat jokingly that Scarpachs were aristocracy.

"And it is an elevated experience being there.

“In my dreams I behold Scarp. And I think everyone who has experience of Scarp feels the same.”

The north coast of Scarp off the west coast of Harris. PIC: geograph.org/Tony Page. | Tony Page/geograph.org

Mr Bakewell is due to return to Scarp over winter. Days are spent on repairs and exploring the island “to see what has changed and what has remained the same”. A stag may have swum over the sound from Harris, driftwood may have collected on the shore for fuel.

He added: "There are only two things that matter on Scarp and that is the strength of the wind, and the direction of the wind. Because that determines everything. It determines what you do.

"During the winter, it is wonderful. I have quite a good library and with the Tilley lamps and the peat fire, well I want for nothing.

“But there is always something that needs done and you sort of slot into the groove of that.

"You become totally focussed on the moment and the world sort of falls away after three or four days and the priorities change. You are focusing on what you need to do more than anything else.”

Mr Bakewell described Scarp as “the centre of my world”.

"That is how I feel. When I am there, I am at the centre."