Author Rory Putnam on swapping England for life on a Highland croft

After leaving England for a crofting life in Scotland, Rory Putman has recounted the experience in his memoir, Life in Lethinnis, changing the names of people and places to protect the identity of his rural community

After many years working as a lecturer and research biologist in the university system, I had grown somewhat disenchanted with the way the politics of further education seemed to be developing – and indeed with the growing materialism of the south in general, where what seemed to matter most was job title and thus social status and earnings. Genuinely saddened by the changes and by what I felt was being lost in terms of a world where people mattered for who, and not what, they were, I determined to escape and move back to the world I had known through my grandparents: a world with a strong sense of community and where people cared.

This decision was not taken easily: I was at that time only in my early forties and inevitably would have to make my living in the future self-employed. As we had no family or mortgage, many of my colleagues thought we were incredibly courageous to wade so far out into the unknown, but this was not the classic naïve ‘return to our roots’ of a disillusioned townie looking to escape to the Good Life, or the pipe dream of an idealist based upon too-extensive reading of Lillian Beckwith’s Hebridean idyll. Both Morag and I were of Scots and English parentage and we both loved the west coast. I had lived most of my life in country villages, and all the time we had been married we had managed and maintained a smallholding wherever we had lived, so that we knew better than many what we were taking on and that we would at least survive.

I have lost count of the number of properties we reviewed and rejected over a search which lasted nearly five years. Part-way through that seemingly endless search, we spotted in the local Highland newspaper an advertisement for a house and garden ground in a little village called Lochuisge in Lethinnis. We had never actually been there, although on a previous occasion – returning from a visit to view some near-derelict croft house at Diabaig in Torridon – I had nearly got as far as Lochuisge, turning back some five or six miles short due to lack of time (and a growing lack of daylight). But all that was offered with that house was less than one acre and thus at the time we ignored it, since we still had our minds set on somewhere with more potential for our existing livestock. Six months later we idly noticed that it was advertised again; seeing that it was still on the market my wife persuaded me we should at least look at it – and since it was being sold off from a larger Estate, enquire if perhaps some more land might be released with it. This time we did persevere to the end of the road, and immediately fell in love with the house and the whole peninsula. Despite my repeated requests, however, the selling agents were adamant that no additional land would be available. I pointed out that clearly no one had offered on the property so far in over six months of advertising, since it was still on the market – but to no avail.

A croft in Torridon, main, perhaps not so far from Rory Putman’s fictional Lochuisge. Credit: Getty

In desperation I challenged them: ‘Have you even taken this suggestion back to the vendor? Have you even asked him?’ It was apparent that they had not; that evening I received a phone call from the Laird asking exactly what extra land we required and why we wanted it. I explained about our current lifestyle and that we wanted space for our chickens, our herd of dairy goats (by that time we were milking nine), some sheep, and space for a market garden. At once the Laird replied: ‘Oh that’s very good, that’ll be fine then.’ And when I enquired delicately about the implications for the cost he said, ‘No, no, that’s fine; we’ll simply include that within the existing price.’ We were not about to haggle.

When we had taken over Allt na Mhuillin, Lochuisge was still a village composed almost entirely of those who had been born and brought up there. Alastair, the husband of the postmistress, was an incomer (he had been born at the ferry port, some 40 miles away and had only lived in Lochuisge for 50 years) but there were only two houses actually sold away as holiday homes, and the rest of the residents lived a life almost unchanged since the disruption of Alastair’s arrival 50 years before. Doubtless, therefore, we were viewed with some suspicion, although we were made to feel very welcome; and when it became clear that we had no wish to try and change the place – as many incomers seem determined to do – and that indeed we lived a crofting lifestyle much akin to their own, any initial suspicions were quickly dissipated.

My drying-fence for hay attracted initial surprise (a structure I had copied from my observations when working in Iceland, whereby a temporary or more permanent fenceline of wooden posts and line-wires is erected, over which one can then drape swatches of cut grass to dry in the sun and sea breezes), but when, after a good mackerel run, I slung a section of old trawl net over the corrugated-iron roof of the byre and hooked the surplus catch through the meshes by the gills to dry, we had clearly ‘made it’. With tears in their eyes (I suspect to this day that they may have been tears of laughter rather than nostalgia) our neighbours exclaimed that this was a thing they had not seen since their own parents’ days.

Allt na Mhuillin had in any event lain empty for some years before we bought it, and to be truthful, many told us how nice it was of an evening to see lights again from the old house.

An illustration by Catherine Putman from Life in Lethinnis by Rory Putman

You will not find the remote peninsula of Lethinnis, or the village of Lochuisge on a map.

That said, all the people and events described in this book are real; simply the places have been disguised to some extent, to protect their identity and some names have been changed. Enough clues remain that professional biologists or those with a keen interest in natural history will readily identify the peninsula, while those personalities included will readily recognise themselves.

Life in Lethinnis, a croft in the Highlands by Rory Putman with illustrations by Catherine Putman is published by Whittles Publishing, priced £16.99, out now