The SNP land grab

Just under 100 years ago the headline in the Oban Times read ‘American family buy lodge and estate on the Isle of Jura’. They were my grandparents, who, although by then British, had both been born in America. They bought our lodge from the Campbells of Jura, who had had the misfortune to lose their heirs one terrible morning in the trenches of the first world war.

My grandparents were initially regarded with suspicion by the locals. Yet after investing in the estate, improving the crofters’ cottages, reroofing them from turf to slate, they became well liked within the community. They spent summers on Jura, and occasionally visited in winter. So did my father, my uncles and now my family — brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren and cousins. West coast Scottish estates require constant investment, but the beauty and ambiance of the place, the people and its culture have always made it all worthwhile.