Cuil History

Cuil is situated in the south-west part of the Ardsheal peninsula in the district of Duror which is now in the Highland Region, having been part of the County of Argyll.  Gaelic dictionaries give the meaning of Cuil as recess, corner, niche or nook but is perhaps best described as a secluded, pleasant place.

The history of Cuil began seven hundred million years ago when layers of mud were laid down in an ocean and by four hundred million years ago these layers had been compressed to form slate. Sixty to fifty million years ago when there were active volcanoes on Mull and Ardnamurchan the slate was lifted, turned and twisted to form the present-day slate formations.  Magma broke through the mantle to form dykes and pipes.  Twelve thousand years ago the ice age ended and Cuil as it now is started to appear through the retreating glaciers to reveal an area rich in geological formations.  Since then the sea level has fallen leaving raised beaches in Cuil Bay and the Back Settlement.  Parts of Cuil are designated as an Area of Special Scientific Interest because of the geology.

When humans first started to settle in the area is not known but just to the east of Cuil there is a Standing Stone between the river Duror and the house of Achara. It has been here for about five thousand years and it seems certain that people from Cuil would have been involved in its erection and have known its significance.  On South Cuil there is a possible prehistoric burial cairn but this has never been properly evaluated, nor has a possible kerb cairn on the island of Balnagowan in Cuil Bay.  These are probably about two thousand years old if found to be genuine.

A curtain was drawn over Cuil until the late middle ages when a small window opens.   Among the stories related in the Dewar Manuscripts, a collection of folk tales collected between 1860 and 1870 for the Eighth Duke of Argyll one tells that the Lord of the Isles had a hospitality house in Cuil.  There were others not too far away at Dalness in Glen Etive and at Glasdrum in Glen Creran.  The tenant of the hospitality house paid no rent but had to entertain the Lord of the Isles and his entourage from time to time.  

On one occasion the tenant, MacTavish, was told that he would have to prepare a feast on a particular day.  As luck would have it the River Etive was in spate so the Lord of the Isles was delayed.  Dugald MacIain Stewart (1st. Of Appin) told MacTavish who was described as “but simple” that the visit would not take place and that his friends and neighbours could eat the feast that had been prepared.  When the Lord of the Isles turned up a few days later there was nothing for him to eat.  Stewart had foreseen this and had prepared a feast between Kentallen Bay and Lettermore.  As a reward Stewart was given Cuil.  The Lord of the Isles said “O! Big gluttonous MacTavish/Whose ways are filthy/Though I have taken from you Cuil/Dear, do not harm yourself.”

Stewart had brought with him two people, one called Buchanan from Dumbarton and the other Colquhoun from Loch Lomondside.  A family of Buchanans were still in Cuil according to the 1851 and Colquhouns until the 1901 one.  Just where the hospitality house was has not been ascertained.  In the Dewar Manuscripts there are several stories which mention Cuil.  Some of these can be found in a book published sixty years ago. Dewar Manuscripts: Volume 1.  There was no volume 2!  However these stories will be published sometime in the next dozen years.

It isn’t until the end of the sixteenth century that we have anything else written about Cuil.  One of Timothy Pont’s maps shows Choul with salmon heading for the mouths of the River Duror and the Salachan Burn.  In the accompanying text he says “Salmond ar in thios smal rivers.”  Many of the names shown on this map are still in use though some are no longer known locally.  The River Duror is named but the Salachan Burn is called Auo Quhoultyr (Abhainn Chuiltie).  Bleau’s map of 1654 marks “Durrour” but not Cuil and the Ardsheak peninsula  not apparent.  On Roy’s map of 1747 there is a collection of houses in the region of South Cuil and arable land between the two burns.  Cuil itself is not mentioned but Dourar, Ardsheal, Acher (Achara) Kil-columb-Kill (Keil) and the Water of Coultie are there. Murdoch Mackenzie’s marine chart of 1775 shows “Cule” with three houses in the region of South Cuil and one in North Cuil.  These maps are represenational and do not indicate the exact location of buildings.  Langland   (1801) shows “Cowls” with four buildings at North Cuil and three at South Cuil.  Two buildings are shown at the “Back Settlement,” the first mention of this place apart from a gravestone just outside the ruined late medieval chapel at Keil where “lies the corp (sic) of Dougal Stewart from Lechnasceire.” Leacnasgeir is the Gaelic name of the place.  It is not until we get to E.J. Bedford’s marine charts of 1861 and 1867 that we get any accurate positioning of houses.  In the first of these maps “Salmon Fishery” is shown.  The first Ordnance Survey map (surveyed 1871) shows accurately most of the buildings present at that time though one at the base of Rudha Beag and the Lime Kiln on Rudha Mor are missing.  

Cuil is not mentioned in the First Statistical Account (1791) but in the Second (1841) the author, Rev. Gregor McGregor, writes “the Bay of Cuil, about five miles north of the Sound of Shuna, is of a beautiful semicircular form, the cord being about a mile in length. It has a fine sandy beach, and is often frequented by large shoals of herrings who visits to that quarter are of the greatest benefit to the inhabitants along the shore.”  Nowadays herring are a rarity in Loch Linnhe.  This has been blamed on destruction of the seabed by dredger trawling over a hundred years ago.

After the Battle of Inverlochy in 1645 Daniel Colquhoun was granted lands in Duror but it seems that most of the land remained in the hands of the Stewarts of Appin until 1766 when the whole of the Appin Estate (most of the land between Loch Creran and Loch Leven) as sold to Hugh Seton of Touch, near Stirling, for £13,900.  He was an improving landlord and caused the River Duror to be straightened and deepened in three places to reduce flooding, for a much needed bridge to be built over the river between Inshaig and Achara and for a stone dyke to be built between Ardsheal and Cuil.  There is a gap in this dyke because the Commissioners of the Forfeited Estate of Ardsheal (government) did not have enough money to match what Seton had spent!   Due to problems arising from his attempts to drain the Carse of Stirling Seton ran into financial ruin.  He left the country and is said to have spent the rest of his life in the Middle East or India, often dressed in native garb!  

Appin was sold to the Marquess of Tweeddale in 1783 for £41,000 as a speculation.  According to M.E.M. Donaldson in her book Wanderings in the Western Highlands and Islands he sold it at an excellent profit to another “alien”  who insisted not only on current rent being paid but also all arrears.  She says that this led to many being unable to pay and therefore leave their homes.  This was before the first reliable census and is difficult to tell just how many people did leave.  This alien was Robert Downie who had made a fortune in Bengal.  On his death in 1841 the Appin Estate was divided into three parts and his unmarried daughters drew lots.  Marion Agatha drew Duror which comprised Cuil, Keil and possibly other parts of Duror nearby.  She married James MacAlpine-Leny and it remained in this family’s hands until 1931 when Keil was bought by James Stewart.  In May the next year Cuil was bought by Harold Malcolm whose descendants still own it.

Prior to the census of 1841 census the population of Cuil is not known but some of the names of occupants can be obtained from several sources.  One source names nine persons as being recruited to join the Appin Regiment in the 1745 rebellion but the book No Quarter Given, being the muster roll of the Jacobite Army only gives five.  After Culloden seven men from Cuil stubbornly refused to give up their arms according to James Hunter in his book The Last Clansman.  The Trial of James Stewart in Aucharn in Duror of Appin, an early example of spin doctoring, names ten but it is not certain if any of their descendants were here in 1841, the year of the first reliable census.  

The Episcopalian Robert Forbes, Bishop of Moray and Caithness, confirmed eighteen people from Cuil at Ballachulish in July 1770.  Three people from North Cuil and one from South Cuil had to pay two shillings tax on their horses in 1797.  Gravestones at Keil and Annat in Strathappin give several names of people from Cuil but it is only after censuses were started regularly in 1841 that names and numbers were reliably recorded.  In the first census 119 people were recorded living in Cuil but it does not tell us which part.  However, the valuation of Downie’s estate that same year lets us know where eleven of the twenty-five heads of households lived.  From then there was a fall in number of people living in Cuil.  In 1911 (the last readily available census) the population had fallen to 24 along with some people who were obviously visitors.   The number of households had fallen from twenty-five in 1841 to four on South Cuil and one North Cuil plus the fisherman’s bothy.  Now there are fifteen on South Cuil and twelve on North Cuil plus the bothy; the Back Settlement has been restored.  The population is now probably a little over fifty.

Looking at the census records one can see that some families were here for several decades and others here one and gone the next. There were McLeans in Cuil in 1841, having been cleared from Morvern, and one member of the family was still here within living memory, having died in 1948.  Where did people go?  Some emigrated but the majority probably went to the urban centres of the central belt.  Of the 119 people here in 1841 all but about 35 did not appear in the 1851 census although the total population had only dropped by seventeen.  

Over the centuries history has been quiet in Cuil for the most part.  However, two months before the battle of Culloden on 14th. February 1746 His Majesty’s Sloop Serpent off Duror put ashore a boat and one of the crew was threatened by a highlander with a gun.  Captain Agnew wrote to Ludovic Cameron complaining about this as he presumed that Cameron lived at Cuil.  In fact Cameron lived at Torcastle, near Caol and Agnew did realise the difference between Cuil and Caol which are pronounced alike.  During his flight to France Charles Stewart of Ardsheal narrowly escaped capture and no doubt Cuil was searched by Hanoverian troops.  One resident, Buchanan, nicknamed “The Duke,” who had been at Culloden and was reputed to be the swiftest man in the Prince’s army ran all the way from Glen Stockdale to warn Ardsheal and others that they had been betrayed and that a contingent of troops was on its way to arrest them.  Later Buchanan complained that he had done much to help and was not going to put himself at risk any more but he did get another man to take Ardsheal to Cuil henna Pointbin Lochaber.

There is a report that on the evening of Wednesday, 4th October 1786 John Dow MacColl from Cuil was aboard a boat between Balnagowan and Shuna when it was pursued by a small boat in which were Revenue Officers who suspected them of smuggling.  In the ensuing engagement another member of the boat was shot in the arm.  The occupants of the boat were taken to Oban.  No smuggled goods were found but what happened to the prisoners is not known except that Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle (Creagan) and James Stewart of Fasnacloich went bail for them at £200.

The nineteenth century seems to have been quieter but changes did take place.  The focus of agriculture changed from cattle to sheep.  The four original buildings on South Cuil were built about 1875, no doubt replacing an older style of buildings.  The farm buildings at the Back Settlement and Greenfield were built a few decades before this.  South Cuil farm seems to have changed to four holdings, three smallholdings and a croft.  The area was still part of the Appin Estate and unfortunately when Appin House was sold in 1959 nearly all the records were deliberately burnt, something that happened with a lot of estate records at that time.

The twentieth century brought about major changes.  The first major change was the opening of the railway between Connel and Ballachulish in 1906.  This meant that people could much more readily access Oban and the central belt.  Stock could be taken by train to market instead of being driven.   The trains stopped running in 1966 so that instead of three trains each way a day (and a fourth on Saturday but none on Sunday) we now have two buses each way.  But most people now have cars.  The Duror railway station was two miles by road from North Cuil but this could be halved by using a foot bridge over the river at the junction of the South Cuil and Inshaig March dyke.  This was destroyed about 1960 and not replaced.  The river downstream from here was straightened in the mid 1930s by James Stewart who had bought the Keil Estate in 1931 to reduce flooding and erosion on the Keil side.

The following year Harold Malcolm bought the Cuil estate and in 1934-35 built his new house, Achadh nan Sgiath.  The architect was Leslie Graham Thompson who, by marriage, became MacDougall of MacDougall.  He made improvements to the farm buildings putting in

a reliable water supply along with bathrooms and lavatories.  His house was the first in Duror to have electricity.  A dam was built in the hill behind the house and water from this ran a Pelton Wheel in a small powerhouse at the bottom of the hill.  This worked well so long as electricity was turned off at bedtime and there was no period without rain for more than five days!  Otherwise the reservoir ran dry.

It was about this time that telephones came to Duror, initially seventeen houses had phones.

On the night of 18/19 October 1942 Cuil Bay was invaded by American troops in preparation for the North African landings the next month. Operation Torch.  The landing craft disgorged GIs who did not know what to do when they landed.  Junior Officers were landed and they did not know what to do with themselves or with their troops so they all stood around smoking their cigarettes.  Harold Malcolm, who had served in the First World War, saw this shambolic state of affairs and sought out the senior officer to point out the chaos.  A book published in 1956 by Harry Butcher called My Three Years with Eisenhower tells us that the senior officer was in fact General Eisenhower and he was not pleased with his junior officers’ lack of initiative.  Did Harold Malcolm talk to Eisenhower?  We don’t know but his eldest son, then aged nine, on seeing the GIs, went out and asked them “Are any of you gangsters?”

During the war Motor Launches and Motor Torpedo Boats from St. Christopher’s base in Fort William came into the Bay on exercises usually on a Wednesday.  One lost its anchor which is still at the bottom of the bay off Keil or the Station.

After the war major changes in agriculture started to appear.  The Department of Agriculture introduced a tractor and this was soon taken up by local farmers.  The day of the cart horse was over, Prince no longer pulling the plough at Greenfield or Topsy pulling the ricklifter, stopping halfway up the brae to the stackyard.  One farmer refused to make use of tractors maintaining that a horse drawn plough gave the birds more time to clean the soil.

In 1948 the Argyll County Council took over the Cuil Bay road applying two tarmac lines either side of a central strip of grass.

In1951, as part of the Festival of Britain, the West Highland Festival was held in Cuil Bay from 2nd to 7th July.  Two plays were produced.  The Lost Cause by Compton Mackenzie and Murder in Lettermore by Angus MacVicar.  Apart from the plays there was an Exhibition of Music and Dancing.  A pipe tune, Cuil House, was composed by Pipe-Major Ross of Edinburgh Castle for the occasion.  Funds arising from this festival went towards building the Duror and Kentallen Community Centre.

In 1953 electricity came to Duror.  Nearly every house was lit up; and not just the living quarters but a 60 watt bulb in the byres and barns.  Gone were the days of the Aladdin and Tilley lamps.

Public water supply was brought in in the early 1960s although some houses preferred to keep their old supply rather than depend on Fort William water!

Agriculture has been the main occupation in Cuil.  Before the First World War boats came to Cuil Bay from the north is Ireland to purchase seed potatoes.  Other crops that were grown included oats and turnips.

Salmon fishing was important.  During the mid 19th century three persons were employed tending the nets.  At one time people came to Cuil to learn how to manage the nets.  There were nets at the mouth of the North Cuil Burn,  Rudha Mor, Rudha Meadonach and at the mouth of the Salachan Burn.

In 2015  moratorium was imposed on traditional bag netting and this has been renewed several times since.  Fortunately there are plentiful langoustine in the area so the fisherman is still able to operate using creels.  

Changes in agricultural practice has led to the amalgamation of farms and smallholdings so that one person now farms all of Cuil and the adjacent farm of Inshaig.  The one Croft on South Cuil remains independent but would be a financial disaster if it was the only source of income.  Farming depends on sheep and cattle.  Crops such as oats, potatoes and turnips are no longer economically viable.  

Traces of rig and furrow (lazy beds) can be seen in many areas, even those that have been ploughed by horse or tractor for many years.  Census reports shows that in 1841 there were farms at Leacnasgeir (Back Settlement) and South Cuil and two at North Cuil.  There were also crofts at Port na Cloich, Rudha Mor and North Cuil.  By 1861 all of North Cuil, Leacnasgeir and the crofts at Rudha Mor and Port na Cloich had become one entity and that South Cuil had been divided into four holdings.  Rudha Mor vanishes from the census report by 1881 and Port na Cloich by 1891.  Leacnasgeir which had paid the highest rent in 1841 (£42 a year)  was vacated by its last tenant, a cottar, in 1909 who had paid a rent of £9 a year.  It was “discovered” by some geologists in the late 1960s who rented it and started to rescue the ruins.  They were keen sailors and were lost in Loch Linnhe at the end of November 1968.  Other geologists took over the rescue, bought the place and it is intermittently occupied lovingly although there is no electricity, sewage or running water!

A fox farm was in operation in North Cuil during the 1970s and 1980s but closed when fur went out of fashion.

One occupation that is no longer followed is distilling.  There were stories about an illicit still in the woods at the back of a South Cuil.  Its location has been identified at the bottom of a waterfall but no whisky has been excavated.

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