2622

TODAY FRIDAY 4th April
ULLAPOOL HIGH SCHOOL
25th Year Anniversary

Re-creation of the procession of pupils that took place 25 yrs ago from the old secondary to the new, walking down Quay Street, along Shore Street and up Mill Street with Ullapool Pipe Band

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Lochbroom Community Renewables (BroomPower)
are interested to hear from members of the community who are interested in supporting our Lael Community Woodland land purchase project, supporting us on the Board or as a volunteer.
We are also interested to hear your views about possible future renewable generation projects.
If you are happy to help us with this then please email
elsier@broompower.org

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April is the time to commemorate the battles at Culloden and Littleferry on their anniversaries,
I came across an interesting item in several Highland newspapers of the 1840s about a man called Donald Ross, who was originally from Lochbroom and played a small part in the ’45 Rising. I believe he may have been the last person alive in Scotland to have done so.
D Shaw

A Lochbroom Veteran of the ‘45
Donald Ross from Lochbroom was probably the last person alive in Scotland to have played an active part in the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46.
Well past his hundredth year, he was living in poverty in 1844 with his aged and infirm daughter and son on a small patch of land at Drummore near Evanton in Easter Ross, as the Inverness Courier reported. “He is a native of Lochbroom but has lived in the parish of Kiltearn for half a century. Although cheerful and contented, he lacks many things which could make his latter days more comfortable.” Donald remembered “being sent as a special messenger with a letter from Lochbroom to Dingwall during the Rebellion.
Just a boy, he had to carry this letter across the hills, alone and scared as the Rising moved towards its tragic end.
What was in the letter? Donald never knew. He would not have opened it, from a sense of honour, and anyway he could not have understood its English words.
Donald was probably a Jacobite at heart, and knew many Lochbroom men who were fighting for the Earl of Cromartie, George Mackenzie. A hundred recruits from Ullapool and elsewhere in Coigach were part of his Jacobite regiment. Unfortunately, it is possible that Donald’s letter was written by someone on the other side. In March 1746 the Lochbroom minister, James Robertson, helped a Government commander, the Earl of Loudon, whose men were on the run after being defeated by Jacobite forces near Dornoch. Loudon sent word to Robertson that his troops were coming from East Sutherland, along with a letter to be forwarded. The minister just managed to get this into “safe hands” before being questioned by local men who were always naturally suspicious of him.
The messenger with that safe pair of hands may have been Donald Ross and, if so, his long journey across the hills may have taken him to Brahan Castle near Dingwall, home of Kenneth Mackenzie, Lord Fortrose, whose clansmen were part of Lord Loudon’s force. The Lochbroom lad would have delivered it with shaking hands when he finally reached the grand surroundings of Brahan.
Tragically, most of the Lochbroom Jacobites were killed or captured at Littleferry near Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland on 15 April 1746. The next day, the Battle of Culloden was lost, and the Rising in which Donald Ross played a small part, for good or bad, was over. His home parish of Lochbroom faced terrible reprisals.
Donald died in August 1845, exactly 100 years after the start of the Rising.

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