Isleornsay Inn

Menu:

Sub-sections

Isle Ornsay Shop
The Lighthouse at Isle Ornsay
A Seafaring Family
Testimony to the Napier Commission 1883
Fishing in Tarskavaig
On the Yachts
Boatyards and Boats

Sleat At Sea


Isle Ornsay Shop

My memory of Isle Ornsay shop is of it being fully stocked with groceries, boots, shoes, pails, brooches and beads and the big bread hampers from Glasgow standing on the shore - the bread unwrapped. The bread and goods came by the Claymore at that time and the ferryman, Donald Macpherson and John Beaton, would bring the goods ashore to Isle Ornsay pier - and people too! Of course the earlier shop in Isle Ornsay was extremely busy, the people coming from Glenelg and all the places roundabout, from Broadford and the rest of Sleat. Mainly by boat. Beautiful steam yachts and sailing ships came into the harbour in the middle 20’s and of course fishing boats passed up and down the channel, but there was no convergence of herring boats, as there had been in my grandfather’s time, when it was said you could walk from one side of the bay to the other from boat to boat. When my husband was a boy in Camuscross, his uncle Donald - ferryman - (Charlie’s father) had a boat and there was much fishing. Going out to the banks and sometimes to Kylerhea where on one occasion they were storm bound for two night.

(Information provided by the late Mrs Margaret Grant in her talk to the society on Camuscross and Isle Ornsay).