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Tuesday 27 June

LUCT Walking, Wheeling and Cycling proposed route

Public Drop-in Meeting to be held at Braemore Hall  between 6-7.30pm

Wednesday 28th June

LUCT Walking, Wheeling and Cycling proposed route

Public Drop-in Meeting to be held at Macphail Centre between 2-6pm

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Another Award for the Youth of  Ullapool

Well done to the Ullapool Sea Savers for winning the Surfers Against Sewage Youth Activists Award 2023. It was amazing to be selected out of over 500 nominations. Well done to Poppy and Abbie (and Suzanna and Nannette) for representing USS and Ullapool at Bristol for the awards.

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Charity Acquires Site for Social Housing Development

Coigach Community Development Company (CCDC) are delighted to announce the acquisition of the former Hydroponicum site in Achiltibuie from Moulton Ltd.

A number of years ago Moulton Ltd developed a new and innovative strategy for the site, providing for much needed local housing. Moulton Ltd obtained Planning Permission for eight homes for occupation and letting. Their work in securing this consent now enables CCDC to evolve and progress that strategy, and to build a mix of social housing in the community, with a reduced risk profile.

CCDC has been supported in the acquisition of the site by the Scottish Land Fund with a grant of £285k towards the land price.  The company will now bring forward detailed proposals and consult with the community on the mix of homes to be developed.

CCDC is delighted to have been able to work together with Moulton Ltd to conclude a deal that works for Moulton Ltd, CCDC and the wider community.  The ability to build these houses will significantly improve the sustainability of the Coigach community, creating a fitting and lasting legacy to Moulton’s Ltd involvement and investment in the site.

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Ullapool’s First Hotel

What is the oldest business in Ullapool still trading today under its original name?

Take a bow, the Royal Hotel, which will be 160 years old next month.

Admittedly, the Arch Inn stands on the site of Ullapool’s very first inn, which opened when the village was being built by the British Fisheries Society. But that inn later changed its identity.  In the early 1800s, it was known as Macdonald’s, as Alexander Macdonald tenanted it along with the attached small farm and various outbuildings.  But later it became the Commercial Inn, run successfully by the Mackays, mother and daughter, both named Isabella. Both sadly died in the early 1860s.

By the 1840s the Society wanted to sell Ullapool and in July 1847 a buyer was found at last.  James Matheson already owned Achany (near Lairg) and the Isle of Lewis.  It emerged that some local people had contacted him to invite him to make a bid, as one newspaper reported: “The fulfilment of their wishes was received by the people of Ullapool with unfeigned joy…  The health and prosperity of Mr Matheson was drunk by more than 200 persons on the top of the hill over-hanging the village, around a huge bonfire which was kept blazing all night in honour of the occasion.”

Matheson and his wife Mary Jane paid a visit to Ullapool that autumn on their way to Lewis from Achany, and were warmly greeted.  Times were very tough, and the local people were entitled to hope for better times with this wealthy Sutherlander as laird.

The Blue House becomes the Royal

Matheson’s main estates were Lewis and Achany, but he knew Ullapool well.   In the 1870s he would successfully bid for a contract to ship the mails between Ullapool and Stornoway, a move which must have brought a lot of welcome trade to Ullapool.

But before that he built a hotel.  In 1859 an advert was placed for contractors to convert the ‘Blue House’ into a new hotel, to be known as the Royal.

The ‘Blue House’ had been a prominent building in Ullapool for decades.  A sailing guide of the 1820s had advised yachtsmen to take a bearing on the blue house when anchoring off Ullapool.

In the 1840s and 1850s the Munro family lived there:  Alexander and Hannah and children.  A farm was attached to the house, perhaps the last remaining part of the original Ullapool farm.  The Munros had two farm servants and two domestic servants, including Elizabeth Bain from Blughasary.

A newspaper advert in July 1863 announced that the Royal was now open.  The first manager, Hector Charleson, lasted two years, and when he left there was an auction of his personal possessions, including farm animals. Peter Macintyre took over as tenant, arriving from the Inchnadamph Hotel. He was followed by Miss Isabella Whyte in the 1870s who, like Macintyre, died young, with her brother Alexander taking over. The Macphail brothers and the Macphersons kept the hotel flourishing in the 1890s.  Meantime Sir James Matheson had died in 1878 and his wife in 1896.  At the turn of the century his nephew Donald owned the hotel, along with much of Ullapool.

In 1902 a new era began.  Donald’s son Duncan Matheson was now the owner.   And a new tenant came in.  William D.

Mackenzie already owned the Garve Hotel and operated the Garve-Ullapool mail-coach service, as he had done since the 1860s. The Royal was a good fit for him.  He got on well with the people here, presiding over the annual Volunteers’ Ball at the Drill Hall in 1906. And he must have got on well with Matheson, as the laird requested his horses be taken over to Lewis to be used during a visit by the king.

I attach a small advert to illustrate how the Royal and Garve Hotels were marketed together, after W.D. Mackenzie became the tenant of the Royal in 1902.  His family had already tenanted the Garve Hotel since 1855 and now he had the two hotels at either end of the mail-coach service which he operated between Garve and Ullapool, so advertising them together made sense.  He continued to be the tenant of the Royal Hotel until 1935;   and his family clocked up a century at the Garve Hotel, selling it in the 1960s to the Scottish Bus Group along with the W.D. Mackenzie bus operation.

By the way, in his advert, N.B. stands for North Britain.  That went back to the days after the Union in 1707 when the term Scotland was being discouraged!

In 1913, W.D. Mackenzie established a motor car mail service which replaced the old horse-drawn coach service between Garve and Ullapool.

The Royal Hotel was still owned by a Matheson 72 years after its opening. The sixth and last Matheson laird was Peggy Matheson (officially Mrs Ethel Gladys Trower) who sold the hotel to Miss Catherine Mackenzie in 1935. She was a Gairloch woman who had done well in hotel management elsewhere. She married John A. Mackenzie in 1937.  She would still be the proprietor in February 1960, with Kenny Maclean as her manager, when much of the hotel burnt down.  Later that year she sold the business and took over the Clansman by Loch Ness.  But the Royal was in her blood and she came back in 1964, forming a partnership with the well-known contractor R.J. Macleod, who himself had Ullapool and Elphin connections, to see through an ambitious rebuild of the hotel.  Meantime the business had continued to operate, after the fire, in an undamaged part of the old hotel.   17th June 1966 saw the grand opening of the present building.  The Mackenzie / Macleod partnership proved very successful, with notable hotel managers such as Rod Stenson, whose wife Geraldine incidentally edited the Ullapool News between 1973 and 1979.

D.S.

 

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