Ulva: the marriage of history, culture, school, community

Ulva and Ulva Ferry – how many people elsewhere in Argyll knew much of these places before ‘Ulva’ became known as the name of one of the 26 schools (now 25) Argyll and Bute council hopes to close in 2011?

Children, schools, communities and culture

At the heart of the ethos of the rural school is the hard wired relationship between person and place. That relationship sees young people breathing in the nature, history and culture of the place they live in as they grow up. It feeds their imaginations on a daily basis, as places of historic note take on new life as opportunities to climb, hide and picnic.

The stories of place leak into the consciousness of the person, becoming embedded and shaping a sense of identity, unbidden and organic

This is what is lost when a school is lost. The legacy of time and culture is cut adrift. It can no longer inform the sensibilities of the young and it dies without being reborn in them and carried forwards in their lives.

Education is intended to enable and enrich. There is no more enabling foundation than belonging. There is no more enriching experience than running the paths, touching the stones and the walls and listening to the voices that themselves carried the stories of those before them.

Each time a rural school is closed, more of the very stuff of Argyll is lost, the stuff that feeds its future.

Ulva and the parish of Kilninian

The Ulva area is geographically isolated, sparsely populated, on the west coast of the northern half of the Isle of Mull, between Kellan and Burg.  It includes the islands of Ulva and of Gometra.  It is not a village.

Ulva School is the only school on Mull in this kind of location – not in a village but on the roadside at Ulva Ferry, where the tiny open-boat ferry crosses to the Isle of Ulva.

The area has no other community building – no church, no shop.  The school is the only public building and is the focal centre of the area. With out this school, there is literally no community. Closing it will shut down the community at once.

The island of Ulva, off west Mull, is around the same size as Lismore, north of Oban in Loch Linnhe – shorter but wider. Ulva Ferry – home to the school, is across the short sound the island’s cattle used to be swum across on the way to the mainland market. The area became Christian quite early as the name of the parish of Kilninian to which Ulva and Ulva Ferry belong, testifies. The Gaelic Cill loosely translates to ‘church’.

The population were mainly Roman Catholic but were converted to protestantism more forcefully than was the case in parts of Ireland. There, in times of hardship, the local grandees offered soup in exchange for conversion and those who accepted – and their descendants – became known as ‘soupers’.

In Ulva, the Laird visited his tenants accompanied by a man with a yellow stick and inquired as to their interest in conversion. The message did not need to be verbalised. Protestantism in Ulva – and in the Small Isles, became known as ‘the religion of the yellow stick’.

Ulva – ‘wolf island’ in old Norse or ‘ready ford’ in Gaelic – shares a multicultural past with the rest of the territories in the former kingdom of Dal Riata, spanning much of coastal and island Argyll and of the north east of Ireland.

This part of the world may be topographically shredded by water but its shared heritage is the fusion of the viking and the gael and the confusion over the specific origin of Ulva’s name underlines that fact.

Ulva is part of a series of islands and skerries – stepping stones between Iona, off the south west of Mull  and the Atlantic isles of Tiree and Coll – a maritime hopscotch alien to the landbound.

60 million years or so ago , this area was volcanically active and Ulva’s geology – with the great basalt cliffs of The Castles in its south end (below), proclaims its part in this development from Ben More (above), an extinct volcano on Mull, to the more famous Staffa, whose columnar Fingal’s Cave inspired Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture.

The archaeological remains on Ulva – standing stones, dolmens and duns – tell part of its tale, dated to 1500 BC, but a shell and bone midden in its Livingstone’s cave takes human habitation back to 5650 BC, older than Edinburgh.

Johnson and Boswell, Lachlan MacQuarrie and David Livingstone

In modern times the island was visited by Johnson and Boswell on their famous Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland. They’d really wanted to stay the night of 16th October 1773 with Sir Allan Maclean on the very couth island of Inchkenneth (owned afterwards by the Redesdales of Mitford girls fame).

But the road across Mull took them a lot longer than they’d imagined and they were advised to take their chances with The McQuarrie on Ulva – chief of the clan that had by then owned Ulva for not much less than a thousand years.

Then, as now, you called or rang a bell to attract the ferryman’s attention on the island. For Johnson and Boswell there was no response to their shouts so the crew of an Irish boat from Derry, moored in the sound, came over and took them across.

They liked the MacQuarrie but not his house, finding it ‘mean’. Boswell’s account of what happened to Johnson when he was getting into bed tells us just what they meant by ‘mean’: ‘… he said, that when he undressed, he felt his feet in the mire: that is, the clay-floor of the room, on which he stood before he went into bed, was wet, in consequence of the windows being broken, which let in the rain’.

Nevertheless, this MacQuarrie family bred the man known as ‘The father of Australia’ – General Lachlan MacQuarrie, Governor General of New South Wales (NSW) from 1809-21, credited with turning Australia from a penal colony into a modern democracy. Sydney’s Macquarie University is named for him. His mausoleum – at Gruline on Loch na Keal on Mull – is maintained by the National Trust of Australia.

On 5th September 2010, Professor Marie Bashir, the current Governor General of NSW, came to Mull to lay a wreath at the mausoleum in tribute to MacQuarrie. BBC Scotland was to transmit a documentary, The father of Australia, sometime this month and, if this is still their intention, we will publish the transmission details.

Lachlan Macquarrie may have been both in Ormaig, later one of the clearance villages on Ulva; or perhaps on the nearby mainland, possibly at Lagganulva where today Bert Leitch, Regional Chair of the National Farmers Union of Scotland, farms.

The Scottish missionary who also explored Africa, David Livingstone, was of Ulva stock, related to the Macquarries and grandson of a Neil Livingstone who, as many after him, had to leave his homeland to find work paying enough to help him support his family. He brought his wife, four sons and three daughters to the Blantyre Cotton Works near Glasgow, where both he and his sons were employed.

David Livingstone’s father was another Neil, second son of the Neil who left Ulva for Blantyre.

Ulva school and the Livingstone Walk

The pupils at Ulva school today have been involved in working with the National Library of Scotland on a research and creative project around the area’s links with David Livingstone.

As part of the Mediascapes initiative, they have produced 2 interactive guided tours, both promoted by VisitScotland for visitors to use.

One of these, The Livingstone Walk, shares facts, information and stories about the history of Ulva in relation to the internationally known figure of Livingstone.

Ulva, the clearances and Starvation Point

In the first part of the 19th century, the potato crop provided the staple diet for the population and a surplus for export. Alongside this, kelp collection and processing was a major occupation sustaining the population of the island.

The seaweed industry operated in late spring and early summer, essentially from May to July because the harvested kelp could be dried at that time, When it was dry it was burned – there is a derelict kiln at the south end of the island whose active life may have been involved in this. The ash used to make fertiliser and iodine.

In 1835, Ulva was bought by an FW Clark. Seen as an energetic participant in the clearances – he cleared Ulva and also bought and cleared the nearby islands of Gometra (reached by a bridge from Ulva) and Little Colonsay.

However, it is also claimed that this was not his initial intention and that the failure of the kelp market, followed by the potato blight in the 1840s – the same blight that hit much of Europe and caused the Great Famine in Ireland – forced his hand by leaving him with too many unoccupied tenants.

The manner of the Ulva clearances was traditionally inhumane – those to be evicted were often given no warning but were burned out of their homes by having the thatch set on fire.

However, the dates would seem to bear out the argument that Clark did not come to Ulva with the intention to clear it but however responded to adverse circumstances with the prevailing carelessness for the lives of tenants.

He bought the island in 1835. In 1837 the population had grown to 604. It is said that at that point there were sixteen townships, with boat builders, merchants, carpenters, shoe makers, tailors, weavers and black smiths. By 1841, with Gometra, the population was 859. Then the potato blight struck, putting an end to lives, crofting – and to tenancies, with Clark, who employed no factor, carrying out evictions himself.

By 1848 these factors had driven the population down to 150. By 1921 nine of the townships were in ruins. Five more were inhabited by a single family and one by two families.

Those who could not be cleared, because, old or disabled, no place elsewhere could be found for them in Scotland, Canada or Australia, were gathered together in a terrace of low houses at Ardglass Point. They were left to eke out what they could from the seaweed and the winkles on the shore. That terrace, for good reason, is known as Starvation Terrace and has usurped the name of the Point, now generally referred to as Starvation Point.

Ulva school and Starvation Point

The second of the two Mediascape projects which the pupils from Ulva schools worked on with the National Library of Scotland was another researched production of an interactive guide on Starvation Point.

Also promoted to visitors by VisitScotland, this guide focuses on the life of crofters at the time of the Clearances.

Both of theses mediascapes involved the children embracing new technologies, using different media to illustrate what they had learned, using illustrations tied in with spoken recordings of their own writing; and performing and recording their own music.

in a separate Crofting project, the children got hands on experience of peat cutting, cheese making, bread making, fire making, and Gaelic singing. The photograph, left, shows them with potatoes they grew during this project – and doing some maths at the same time.

This led to them writing and performing a play entitled Moving Times which they performed at school and in An Tobar, the Tobermory Arts Centre. It also led to them performing Gaelic singing at the Mod in Tobermory. They were able to reach this standard because of the attention that can be given to each individual in a small class.

The experience of performing in Gaelic at the Mod notably helped them to become more confident individuals.

The Ulva School catchment area today

The population in the catchment area for Ulva school today is about 80 adults, with 20 school age and younger children and babies.

The area is currently seeing an increase in the number of young families coming to live there and planning to send their children to the school.

A number of families from other parts of the island are looking to move to the area because there it has a school. This offers hope for economic and social growth in this remote place.

Ulva school now has a stable school roll and one that, with its community’s newest current members, can be assured of stability for at least  five years.

When the council tried and failed to close Ulva School 10 years ago, it had 2 pupils. Now it it has 8 and there are more tinies in the local pipeline to grow it further.

This is of course one of the arguments for rural schools. If they are there, people with families will come to the area. Once they’ve closed, the community cannot hope to live on.

Some of the professions taken up by former pupils of the schools include

• Vet
• Farmer
• Soldier
• Marine
• Airline pilot
• Chef
• Music Producer
• Dental nurse

Many of the people who have moved into the area have brought their businesses and professions with them. Many are self employed and some of their businesses have the capacity to employ others. This is the normal pattern of economic life in remote rural communities.

In the Ulva area employment covers:

• Fishing
• Farming/land management
• IT/computer based employment (working from home)
• Craftspeople
• Specialist teachers
• Engineers (working from home)
• Fish-farming
• Home based/self employed
• Crofting
• Home helps
• Fencing contractor
• Wildlife guides
• Printers
• Vet
• Tourism business

Ulva today

The Clarks held on to the Isle of Ulva for 90 years and, in 1945, sold it to the Howard family who still own it.

There are a few handsful of residents, some cattle, sheep and fishing, modest self-catering and camping facilities and the Boathouse, a licensed tea room serving anything from coffee to a three course meal from 9.00-16.30.

There are no children currently at the school who live on the island of Ulva. There is one High School pupil there and one of the babies mentioned above.

Jamie Howard, manager of the island of Ulva, has long term plans for the island, which the area hopes will result in more families moving in.

School and community

One of the great strengths of rural schools is the way they are woven into the warp and weft of their communities. Many of their seniors will have been to the school themselves and will have left reputations behind them.

The school that was part of their lives as youngsters remains part of their lives as adults. They contribute experience and skills to the latest pupils and they offer support and opportunity.

Bert and Chris Leitch farm at Lagganulva, the land around the school – and where General Lachlan Macquarrie, mentioned above, may have been born. Bert is NFUS Regional Chairman. His daughter Helen went to Ulva school from 1976 – 83.  During this time the school roll peaked at 22-23 as families with young children moved into the area to work.

Helen trained as a Vet, and is married to Iain Mackay and together they farm at Torloisk and help at Lagganulva.  They have the Cnoc-na-sith fold of Highland Cattle.  Iain is the Chairman of the local branch of the NFU.  Helen works as a Locum for the island vet.

Helen’s daughter Eilidh will start P1 in August. She is already familiar with the school and knows everyone there as she comes to all the school events and to a mother and toddler group run at the school. As well as that the pupils from Ulva Primary have started regular farm visits to Lagganulva so that they can learn more about farming and what goes on at different times of the year. As the farm is so close, they walk to and from the school.

Jeannie MacColl (nee Cameron), now a grandmother in her early 70s, attended Ulva school with her 3 siblings. During her time at the school there was a short time in the 1940s when the 4 Cameron children were its only pupils.

Jeannie’s 5 children attended Ulva, as did 2 of her grandchildren. Three generations of MacColls were at the community meeting held in support of the school in November 2010.  Jeannie helps with school transport and is very actively involved with and supportive of, the school.

The community had a great Hogmanay party cum ceilidh in the school last night (31st December 2010) – proving the importance of the school as a community building – bringing together the school children, parents and grandparents as well as newcomers to the area without family connection to the school.

The youngest members – aged 5 and 10 weeks – were there.

Place and person

The photographs accompanying this article catch the essence of a place that is not like any other place. And that’s the point. This is the place where its youngest children belong for the time being. This is the place whose character they will absorb, take upon themselves and give back renewed.

When they are older and go to secondary school elsewhere and later to jobs and lives which may be in other places and for the long or short term, it is this that they will take with them. This is their inner reference, their benchmark for freedom, for roots. This is what forms them and this is what they, in turn, shape.

Those who divorce people from place set loose cries through time. This is what still hurts us when we think of the clearances. This is why some parents of children now threatened, so young, with dislocation from place and friendships. call these school closure plans ‘the new clearances’.

As they say, those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

Why should small children be doomed to repeat the lessons left unlearned by their elders?

Photographs show, from the top:

• Ulva Ferry. The school is 5-10 minutes walk from here. Photo copyrighted to Carolyne Charrington.
  
• The school at the roadside, the only public building in the area. Photo copyrighted to Carolyne Charrington.
• View from Ulva playground, with Ben More in the background.  Photo copyrighted to Carolyne Charrington.
• The Castles, basalt cliffs on Ulva, Photo copyrighted to Gordon Mellor, reproduced under the  Creative Commons licence.
• Snow scene: Looking from the north end of catchment area back towards Ulva Ferry, (in cloud). The dark curve running down through the snow is the foothills of the road the Ulva children would have to travel over to Deraig. Photo copyrighted to Carolyne Charrington.
• Fishbox of seaweed – reviving history in collecting seaweed for an eco school vegetable garden at Lagganulva near the school. Photo copyrighted to Carolyne Charrington.
• The clearance village of Ormaig on Ulva. In the 1841 census, 52 peple lived here. Photo copyrighted to Chris McLean and reproduced under the Creative Commons licence.
• Ulva school pupils with potatoes grown in their crofting project and reverberating with the famine that hastened the Ulva clearances.
• The Education Secretary, Michael Russell, visited Ulva school on 13th December 2010. Photo copyrighted to Sam Jones.
• Boat on roadside between Ulva school and the ferry to the isle of Ulva. Photo copyrighted to Carolyne Charrington.
• Some of the older pupils from Ulva school working on the National Library of Scotland’s mediascape project in the ruins of a dwelling at Starvation Point on the island of Ulva.