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

Through the Sea-Gate - Ensay

One of my favourite island books is Alasdair Alpin MacGregor's Searching the Hebrides with a Camera (1933). I acquired the book in 1992, and while reading it I first learned about the island of Ensay. 

Searching the Hebrides with a Camera was one of MacGregor's earliest books. In 1993 I came across his very last book: An Island Here and There (published in 1972, two years after his death). In it is a chapter entitled Enchanted Isles, where MacGregor reminisces about his visits to Ensay some 40 years after they occurred. Ensay made such an impression on MacGregor that I had to visit the island. But five years would pass before the opportunity arose in 1998 (see chapter 13 of book 2).

Ensay House, Chapel, and standing-stone (upper right)

The way MacGregor described arriving on Ensay via the sea-gate, struck a chord in my mind: words I found memorable.

I enter the precincts of Ensay House by the sea-gate, which is reached by a stone staircase leading up from the sands, and the fringe of straws and shrivelled seawrack left by high tides.... For a moment I am back in the Middle Ages when I gaze at the old wall flanking the garden, and the chapel standing nearby.

Ensay House and the sea-gate (1998)

And so when I landed on Ensay in '98 I made a point of entering the grounds of the house via the sea-gate. I was fortunate that there were people staying in the house at the time. They invited me in and handed me an ancient set of rusting keys, pointing out the one for Christchurch chapel. The chapel is mostly 16th century, but bits date to the 11th. As I entered it, it felt like I, too, was back in the Middle Ages.

Christchurch Chapel (1998)

In the chapel

The keys to Ensay

Although I've not been back to Ensay since 1998, I've sailed by a dozen times in the intervening years. The most recent was in May of 2016 aboard the ship Hjalmar Bjorge. After a visit to Boreray in the Sound of Harris, we motored past Ensay on our way to the Shiants. The sun was shining, and Ensay looked beautiful. Oh how I wished we'd had time to go ashore so that I could ascend the sea-gate once again after an 18 year absence, and nearly ninety years since Alasdair Alpin MacGregor.

Ensay House and Chapel (2016)

A young visitor at the sea-gate in '98

Teampull Easaigh - Ensay Chapel

Ensay chapel, also known as Christ Church, is an interesting little building. What you see today mostly originated in the 16th century, but bits of it are thought to date to the 11th century.

Christ Church - Isle of Ensay

The chapel, which is dedicated to St Columba, sits in a beautiful site above a small beach on the sheltered east side of Ensay. Also standing here are Ensay House, which dates to the 18th century, and a standing stone which can just be seen atop the knoll at the right side of the next photo.

From left to right - Ensay House, chapel, and standing stone (atop the knoll at right)

The Ensay Stone

When I visited Ensay the first thing I went to see was the little church. Its massive oak door was locked, and so I went over to Ensay House and asked if I could get the key. They invited me in, and I waited in the kitchen while they searched for it. With the key happily in hand I returned to the church. But even after unlocking the door I could not get it to open. The base of the door was swollen, and it did not want to budge. I gently pushed for a few minutes, and was about to give up when it finally opened.

The stubborn door - finally opened

The inside of the church was beautiful. The chapel had been misused as a barn at some point, but was restored in 1910. That restoration is commemorated in a stone plaque mounted above the door (you can just see the bottom of the plaque in the previous photo). According to a another plaque mounted on one of the inside walls another restoration occurred in 1971 (next photo).

Plaque for 1971 restoration

On the floor was something quite interesting, a stone piscina.

Piscina

In 1931 the chapel was bequeathed to the Episcopal Bishop of Argyll and the Islands on the condition that at least two services be held each year. I do not know if they've kept that up, but there is a service held here every June - near St Columba's Day, which is June 9 - by members of Harris Christ Church, which lies off the A859, four miles south of Tarbert. See this Scottish Episcopal Church page and this Isle Of Harris Page for more on the beautiful little church of Ensay.

The altar

Uidhe Bothy - Taransay

It was back in 1992, while perusing the dusty shelves of a second-hand bookshop in Vancouver BC, that I first saw Seton Gordon's book Afoot in Wild Places (1937). The second chapter in the book is on Taransay, and in it was an amazing photo of St Taran's Cross at Uidhe; a 4-foot-tall standing stone with a large cross etched deeply on one side. The photo also showed a roofless, derelict croft house nestled at the base of the hill behind the cross.

I had to see the cross, but back then Taransay was, for me, as out of the way as the moon; I had no idea how I'd ever get there. But six years later, in 1998, I found myself on Harris after a planned trip to St Kilda fell apart. I was desperate to get to some remote islands, and so I managed to get to Taransay (see book 2, chapter 13).

The cross-stone was magnificent, and the derelict croft house behind it now had a roof, and had been fixed up as a bothy. I would later learn that this had been done by the Mountain Bothies Association in 1985. The Castaway TV show would invade Taransay after I visited, and the bothy was locked so that only participants in the show could use it. These days it remains unlocked, and below are some photos I took during visits in 2004 and 2011.

Note: The Mountain Bothies Association does not maintain the bothy. Uisinis on South Uist is the only one they have in the Western Isles (see Sept 18, 2013 post).

St Taran's Cross (2004) - Uidhe bothy in the distance

Uidhe bothy (2011)

Inside the bothy - 1

Inside the bothy - 2

Inside the bothy - 3

Ensay Burial Ground

Before we leave Ensay I want to show you this beautiful hand-lettered sign mounted on the rusting gate of the burial ground. It made me realize I was on sacred ground, and I did walk over the site with care. I took this photo in 1998. Is the sign still there?

The Buried Chapel of Ensay

This photo is of the sand buried chapel at Manish on the north end of Ensay, which is visited in chapter 13 of book 2. The chapel was 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). If you are interested there are some copies out there for sale, only $185 or so. A bit pricey for me, so I managed to find a copy of it in a library. There is a fascinating photo in the report that shows the altar of the chapel when it was excavated in 1971. I did not want to post it without permission, which would be hard to get as Dr Miles passed away in 2008.