Lugworm at Ensay

It is always exciting to come across an old book that describes someone's experience on a small Scottish island. Especially if it's an island I've been to, and one rarely written about.

Such a book is Lugworm Island Hopping, by Ken Duxbury (Pelham Books, 1976). I just discovered this book, and was delighted to find an extensive section on the island of Ensay. (My one, and only, visit to Ensay is described in Chapter 13 of Book 2). That visit in 1998 was all too short, just a few hours, but I did manage to see the inside of Ensay house and its restored chapel. Reading Duxbury's book made me very jealous: he lived for a month or two in the house, and attended a wedding in the chapel. 

One (of many) interesting events in the book involves the old burial ground at the north end of the island. (I have written about the burial ground and chapel at Manish before - see the May 30, 2013 post). The chapel and cemetery were excavated and extensively studied by Dr A.E.W. Miles, and the findings written up in the British Archaeology Review, Series 212, 1989 (ISBN 086054673X).

Manish Chapel and burial ground

Dr Miles stored many of the bones and skulls he found in the burial ground in a room of Ensay House. Duxbury did not know that until one night when he felt something odd. He went exploring, entering a room he'd never been in before. Here is an excerpt from the book:

...ranged row above row on shelving from floor to ceiling were scores of grinning human skulls. On more racks in the centre of the room were piles of skeleton bones - tibias, fibulas, clavicles, humeri, ribs, pelvic saucers...clutch yourself - it was there, even down to the phalangea of the fingers and the ghastly eloquent mandibles, thier teeth leering in silent laughter.

    But what gave the whole nightmare a touch of the macabre was the fact that every skull, every pile of sifted bones, was enclosed in a transparent polyethylene bag neatly stapled at the top. It was hideous...Alfred Hitchcock hadn't got a look in, and Psycho seemed a health resort by comparison. 

Must have been quite eerie to be living alone in an old mansion on a deserted island and stumble upon a room of skulls.

Ensay House

My interest in Ensay was rekindled a few months ago when I someone recommended I look into the photography of John Mayer. On Mayer's website the first photo is an incredible shot of Ensay Chapel seen from one of the bedrooms of Ensay House. (You can see the photo here.) And it was one of the on-line comments on that photo that led me to Ken Duxbury's book.

Now I really need to get back to Ensay. I've been on two cruises in the past ten years that tried to anchor nearby, but conditions were not right. What I'll have to do is spend a week on Harris, wait for a calm day, and try to get a day trip to the island. An adventure to look forward to. For more on Ensay see The Friends of Ensay website.

Ensay Chapel