Rum: Nature's Island

By Magnus Magnusson

Containing practical advice for visitors to what was once termed the 'Forbidden Isle', this comprehensive guide brings to the reader an idea of Rum's history, geography and geology, fauna and flora and culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luath Press
• Release date: May 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913025908

Magnus Magnusson

Magnus Magnusson is an Icelandic national who has spent most of his life in Scotland. After studying English at Oxford, he joined the ‘Scottish Daily Express’ in 1953, and ‘The Scotsman’in 1961 as Assistant Editor. Since 1967 he has been a freelance writer and broadcaster, specialising in history, archaeology and environmental affairs. He has presented many programmes on BBC TV including ‘Mastermind’. He has published more than 20 books.

Book preview

Preface

FOR FORTY YEARS NOW, the island of Rum in the Inner Hebrides has been in public ownership and managed as a National Nature Reserve. It is a marvellous national asset, owned and administered by Scottish Natural Heritage on behalf of the people of Scotland. This book tells the story of Rum, from earliest geological time to the present day.

It used to be called ‘Rhum’, not Rum; indeed, until relatively recently it was recorded by the Ordnance Survey as ‘Rhum’. No one now knows what its original name was. The earliest written record is in the seventh century Annals of Ulster, where the name was written as ‘Ruiminn’. There have been suggestions that when the Norsemen arrived in western waters they called the island Rømøy, meaning ‘Roomy Island’, but there is no documentary evidence to support this. A simple shortening of ‘Ruiminn’ to Rum seems more likely

As for the ‘Rhum’ spelling – that was a spurious late Victorian whim. Perhaps ‘Rum’ was felt to be rather a plebeian name for a sporting estate, or that it needed embroidery with some phoney Celticism by adding an ‘h’, on the ground that all Gaelic words seemed to contain an ‘h’ in every second syllable. In fact, Gaelic has no words beginning ‘Rh-’. Nonetheless, the last private owner of Rum, Sir George Bullough, was most insistent on spelling it ‘Rhum’ (perhaps because his wife, Monica, was a lifelong teetotaller!). When the island was ‘inherited’ by Scottish Natural Heritage in 1992, the old spelling was revived to bring it back into line with Gaelic usage, although it should more accurately be shown as ‘Rùm’ and pronounced ‘Room’.

The spellings of all the other Gaelic place-names in this book have been standardised in line with a comprehensive review undertaken on behalf of Scottish Natural Heritage in 1996 by Peadar Morgan of CLI (Comunn an Luchd-Ionnsachaidh), who regularised the orthography and established a correct form for each of the island’s place-names.

This book is a celebration of the 40 years of public ownership of Rum. To that end it tries to place the island’s story into the context of its geological origins and its human inhabitants and owners down the centuries. I can claim little personal credit for it – it is essentially a compilation of the work of others, a formidable array of experts who have laboured for years on the many fascinating aspects of Rum: its history, its natural history, its archaeology, all its life and earth sciences, in fact. They have generously allowed me to make unrestricted use of their published and unpublished endeavours.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to them all, and their names are duly listed in the Acknowledgements and Sources. Suffice it here to highlight the major contributions, both general and particular, made by Martin Ball, John Baxter, John Morton Boyd, Tim Clutton-Brock, Roger Crofts, Martin Curry, Clive Hollingworth, Ben Leyshon, John Love, Peter Mackay, Alan McKirdy, George Randall, Michael Scott, Chris Smout, Chris Sydes, Des Thompson, Rob Threadgould, Michael B Usher, John Walters, Jeff Watson, Caroline Wickham-Jones and Peter Wormell, with special thanks to Iain Sarjeant for his line-drawings. I am also grateful to Elaine Dunlop, SNH Publications Manager, for her help with the illustrations, to Mary McNab, SNH Secretariat, for her sterling preliminary work on the Index, and to my secretary, Marion Whitelaw, for much patient work in tracking down contacts and checking vital facts and figures.

Magnus Magnusson KBE

August, 1997

Introduction

THE INTRODUCTION to any book on Rum, even by the Chief Executive of the body which owns the island, cannot be written in the dispassionate language of a management plan. For anyone who has visited Rum there is a sense of awe at the grandeur of the landscape, a sense of expectation of the wildlife to be seen and heard, a sense of curiosity about the secrets still locked in its rocks and landforms, a sense of sorrow at the impoverishment of the island and of its indigenous inhabitants before their unseemly clearance to Canada, and a sense of incredulity at the Edwardian transformation of it.

Driving through the native oakwoods of south Morar and Arisaig does not prepare one for the first sight of the Small Isles as one reaches the coast at Arisaig village. On a clear day the sentinel-like Sgurr of Eigg and the jagged peaks of the Rum Cuillin dominate the seascape and dwarf the rest of these islands; on a less clear day the helm clouds on the Rum Cuillin could easily be mistaken for the effusion from the great volcano which dominated the landscape some 60 million years ago. Mystery and allusions to past times abound. Passing through the Sound of Rum, with Eigg to starboard and Rum to port, the eastern flank of the Rum Cuillin towers above you and the coast looks severe and inhospitable. Turning into the haven of Loch Scresort, however, one enters another world: tree-clad slopes (the result of inspired initiatives by former owners) and the turrets of an incongruous castle built of alien stone.

As a geomorphologist by training, for me the real Rum is found in the very heart of the island. Standing on the Cuillin ridge one can see the island in its proper setting, with the Long Island hazy to the west and the other volcanic remnants looming to the north (the Skye Cuillin) and south (Ardnamurchan and Ben More, Mull). Close at hand are the magnificent exposures of banded stone which have stimulated the interest of so many geologists. On the western hills one marvels at the strange landforms for which Rum is rightly renowned.

Harris is an extraordinarily evocative place: a raised beach created by ancient waves which shaped large pebbles and dumped them high above the shore; the vestiges of the community of forty households of two centuries ago, eking out a subsistence living from the land; the vivid remains of one of the most extensive series of ‘lazybeds’ in Scotland; and the utter incongruity, in the setting of this abandoned crofting township, of the burial mausoleum of the Bulloughs, owners of the island for a mere 70 years. It symbolises the island’s long cultural history: the first recorded settlement in Scotland (at Kinloch), the changes of ownership, the development of crofting and its clearance in favour of sheep and then sport, and ultimately its acquisition by a Government nature conservation agency.

Similarly, the woodlands at the head of Kilmory Glen are symptomatic of a new, or at least a revived, world of humid West Coast woodland, with native trees and an abundant woodland flora and fauna. Walking through them now is an unforgettable experience.

The combination of cultural and natural history is one which has attracted visitors for years, despite the island’s former reputation of being ‘the Forbidden Isle’. Those who come to this Hebridean gem, whether scientists, climbers or tourists, seldom fail to come again, and again.

But despite all the efforts of our colleagues over the past 40 years, the ecology of the island is not what it should be: the gem is tarnished and has had some bits knocked off. On Rum we see the effects of millennia of misuse: the removal of trees and shrubs for fuel and for other domestic uses; the burning of the vegetation to increase its palatability (only to find that it was done far too frequently and probably too harshly, so that it left the soil impoverished); the effects of grazing and browsing by sheep, goats and deer to a point well beyond the carrying capacity of the land, and certainly to the detriment of the islanders who depended upon its produce. The gradually worsening climate over the last few millennia, with increased precipitation and lower temperatures, has certainly exacerbated the damage, further reducing the quality of the soils and the carrying capacity of the land.

No less significant for Scottish Natural Heritage as the owners of Rum is the poor state of the properties which survive from the Bullough era, particularly Kinloch Castle itself (see CHAPTER 6). Looking after historic buildings is no part of our natural heritage remit. Having failed to transfer these onerous responsibilities to a more appropriate guardian (see CHAPTER 16), we have been able only to keep the castle wind- and -water-tight; we have not yet been able to make any real progress towards making lasting improvements for the future.

Our legacy

This book rightly salutes the pioneers who made possible the acquisition of Rum, like Max Nicholson (then Director-General of the Nature Conservancy), John Arbuthnott (now the Viscount of Arbuthnott, who was the NC’s Land Agent for Scotland), and the late Joe Eggeling, the Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Officer (Scotland). It pays merited tribute, too, to the work of those who saw to the early implementation of the vision for Rum: Peter Wormell, the first Warden/Naturalist, and the late George McNaughton, the first Warden and, later, Chief Warden (CHAPTER 7).

The responsibility placed on the Nature Conservancy, the first of SNH’s predecessor bodies, was immense. The early Management Plans outline the primary objectives of ‘research aimed at recreating the natural characteristics of a Hebridean island’ (1960-64) and ‘to bring the island to a higher level of biological production than at present and one that can be sustained naturally by the environment’ (1965-69). The Plan for 1970-74 specified the objectives much more closely, gave scientific research a lower priority and heralded the importance of grazing by both domestic and native animals. The 1977-82 Plan, by the newly established Nature Conservancy Council (NCC), implied a broadening of the objectives to include education and public access.

The final revision of the management objectives for the Reserve by the Nature Conservancy Council for the period 1987/96 again summarised the guiding principles of restoration through management and manipulation of nature:

to allow natural development of the island ecosystem under the minimum management necessary to maintain and enhance nature conservation interests, the latter by habitat and species manipulation and restoration, to encourage use of the reserve by outside organisations for research (both applied and strategic) and for education, and to maintain the current level of public access.

Over the past 40 years some very significant achievements have been made:

·The successful establishment of 1050 hectares of woodland through the planting of more than a million trees, the vast majority grown in the tree nursery and latterly using seed from Rum sources ( CHAPTER 8 );

·the reintroduction of the white-tailed (sea) eagle ( CHAPTER 10 );

·the recording of the flora and fauna so that Rum is the best documented of all of the islands ( CHAPTER 9 );

·the successful undertaking of critical research on the volcanic complex ( CHAPTER 1 ) and on the biology of red deer ( CHAPTER 11 );

·the encouragement of visitors both to learn about and enjoy the island ( CHAPTER 15 ).

So the gem is on the road to recovery, and anyone arriving in Loch Scresort or walking the Heritage Trail on the north side of Kinloch Glen (CHAPTER 15) can see the beginnings of the transformation. Not only is the growth of trees and the arrival of woodland ground cover evident but also the birds and insects characteristic of woodlands have arrived.

SNH’s vision

SNH’s vision for Rum is in one sense simple: to improve the biological productivity and biological diversity of the island so that it contains the whole range of habitats and species which would naturally occur at the present time on a humid West Coast Hebridean island. That is a legitimate vision in its own right; and it will result in an increase in the carrying capacity of the island, so that we and our successors will be able to make choices about the level and type of human activity on Rum without ever again undermining its natural capacity. To achieve this vision is very challenging and very resource-intensive; it will take many decades, and require input from many others. The key words are the three Ps: productiveness, protection and people.

Productiveness

Our predecessors have demonstrated that the island’s biological productivity and diversity can be increased with the planting of trees to develop a woodland ecosystem. We have identified other areas where the remnants of a woodland flora are still present; this will help to inform our decisions on where to direct our future efforts at regeneration through planting, which in time will become self-sustaining. However, we are not concerned solely with woodland environments. Rum is of European significance for its wet heaths and its high montane habitats; we shall consider what is required in order to maintain and, where possible, improve their status.

One thing is abundantly clear: grazing and browsing pressure must be reduced. It is our intention to reduce progressively the number of red deer, probably by a half. This reduction will not undermine opportunities for studying the impact of herbivores on the habitats, nor for drawing out lessons from current research for application elsewhere in Scotland.

We are also considering increasing the size of our fold of Highland cattle. Their reintroduction in 1971 has been entirely positive in terms of habitat management of the herb-rich grasses of the Harris machair and in Kilmory Glen. With increased numbers we shall be able to ensure greater continuity of grazing in these areas and at other sites, such as Guirdil and Kilmory.

Rum’s herd of some 200 wild goats is a rather different issue. Goats are undoubtedly voracious browsers and can get to places, especially rocky ledges, which no other large herbivore can reach. SNH has to determine the balance between their impact on vegetation generation and the maintenance of semi-native animal communities.

With the progressive reduction in grazing pressure we shall start removing the fencing around the plantation enclosures. We believe that on Rum we should be able to demonstrate habitat regeneration through grazing management without the use of fencing.

Protection

SNH sees ‘protection’ as a positive concept. To us, protection means that the way in which the island is managed and used not only does not damage its natural interests but also, wherever possible, enhances their chances of development and the benefits they can bring to people. On Rum, as the chapters which follow admirably demonstrate, we have features of international and European significance, foremost among them being the Tertiary volcanic rocks of the main Rum Cuillin complex and of the western area, the periglacial landforms of the western hills, and the plants and birds of the wet heaths and the high hills. This collection of interests is protected through the island being designated as an SSSI for biological and geological reasons, as a Special Protection Area under the Birds Directive for its numbers of nesting seabirds (most notably the Manx shearwater populations and the breeding red-throated divers), and potentially as a Special Area of Conservation under the EU Habitats and Species Directive (most notably for its extensive Atlantic wet heath and a range of sub-montane and sub-maritime heaths and grasslands).

But perhaps the best way of indicating the importance of the island is to log its wildlife: 590 higher plant species, 374 mosses and liverworts, 352 lichens, 889 fungi, 202 birds, 12 other vertebrates, 64 crustaceans, 72 spiders and 2,158 insects of 17 orders have all been recorded in published checklists. All of these factors make protection of the natural heritage of Rum an imperative. Truly Rum is ‘Nature’s Island’; but it will never again become ‘the Forbidden Isle’.

People

We shall continue to encourage people to come to the island to study, to apply new thinking and new theories to what they observe and measure on Rum, to develop new ways of managing land with both people and the environment as beneficiaries. We want people to be able to learn from what the experts are discovering and thereby to become more knowledgeable themselves. We want people to enjoy to the full the experience of Rum: its natural and human history, its landscapes and its wildlife.

People should visit Rum to enjoy and to reflect, to walk and to climb, to paint and to photograph, to study and to research, to learn and to educate; but all these activities and many others must be compatible with the protection of nature and the achievement of greater biological productivity. The island must be managed within an ethic of environmental sustainability. This means that the vital assets of Rum – its rocks, soils, plants, animals and scenery – should be protected now so that they can continue to be used, studied and enjoyed by future generations in perpetuity. People should therefore look after Rum.

And people should live on Rum. For many years, nearly all the residents of Rum have been the employees, and their families, of SNH and its predecessor bodies. It is our intention to continue to have staff based permanently on Rum. We certainly do not intend to become an absentee landowner; but we would like the human community of Rum to be enabled to develop on its own. We recognise that many people see Rum, along with the other Hebridean islands and the adjacent mainland, as ‘the lost land’ whose indigenous population was sent overseas against its will. We anticipate that one of the outcomes of increasing the productivity of the land will be