Since 2021, photographer and historical researcher Estelle Slegers Helsen has been wandering around Lochaber in the footsteps of the Scottish photographer W.S. Thomson MBE (1906-1967). She takes photographic remakes roughly 70 years after Thomson initially captured the landscape and talks to local people along her journey. Every fortnight, Estelle takes our readers to various places in Lochaber. This week, she focuses on Cill Mhoire, Gaelic for Kilmory.
I used to go to Kilchoan Ferry Stores almost daily during my trips to West Ardnamurchan.
As is the case in many villages, the village shop is where the locals and visitors meet and chat, either inside the store or on its doorstep.
Three years after my first visit to the peninsula, I find that the Ferry Stores, which includes a convenience store, a post office, a petrol station, a food kiosk and a private dwelling, has been up for sale since late February 2024.
David and Morag Doherty have run the place since 2018. They will be leaving a thriving business at the heart of village life, which was also a lifeline for many of the 150 locals during the Covid pandemic.
In Kilchoan, Morag was my connection to her mother, Chrissie MacLachlan (née Cameron), who told me the story of Kilmory, one of the hamlets of West Ardnamurchan.
Chrissie, born in 1930, lives in Kilmory, in the house with the pale brown roofing and tainted white walls in the centre of the remake. It is called Caalmojo.
Chrissie is still an active crofter and cares for her sheep. Unfortunately, several attempts to visit Chrissie with Morag or a family member failed. People in faraway places, like West Ardnamurchan, are also often busy.
I decided to take the remake and look for people to interview later. Finding where W. S. Thomson took the black-and-white photograph in the late 1940s was straightforward. He placed his tripod and camera on a knoll for a good view of the hamlet.
The knoll can be found just off the road at a red phone box before entering Kilmory. This phone box, an iconic feature in the landscape, is away to the left, out of the shot.
After I took the remake, I drove into the hamlet and hoped Mary Khan (née Stewart) would be at home. She lives in Balnaha, at the very end of the road.
Unfortunately, I had no luck again. However, I met Mary when I returned to Kilchoan in September 2022 to present the results and she was happy to meet a few days later.
Mary explained her connection with the hamlet: “My mother was Margaret Mackenzie, born in Kilmory. She had three siblings: Annie, the oldest, Hugh, her younger brother, and Joanna.
“My roots are here, but I was born in Tayvallich, Knapdale, where my mother was a teacher and my father, Kenneth Stewart, a minister.
“We came to Kilmory for the summer holidays. My parents put my older brother, sister and me on the train from Glasgow to Oban. We took the boat that sailed up the Sound of Mull to Tobermory and got a little boat across to Kilchoan.
“We stayed in Uncle Hugh’s house. My parents joined us in August.”
The main road lies at the fore of the photograph. It curves like a snake around the knoll to Kilmory and continues behind the houses.
Mary said: “In the late 1940s, the road was just a track. There wasn’t a proper road through Kilmory until about
1965 when they extended the tarmac road from further up to Kilchoan.”
The house on the far right is Ceol Bheag, built in the 1930s. Between Ceol Bheag and Caalmojo lie 19th-century thatched houses, which are now just ruins.
On the right lived Kate Mackenzie. Some members of the Campbells lived in another house on the left.
After the families had moved to more comfortable dwellings the old houses were used as byres. A 19th-century Ordnance Survey map indicated that there was a limekiln.
In around 1910, the Mackenzies constructed a house to the left of Caalmojo, behind the electricity pole. This was also used as a post office in the past.
From there, our eyes lead to a small white dot in the background. Flora and Sandy Cameron lived in that white house.
This cottage, now known as Camus Sealladh, is hidden from view by a new large house called Sealladh An Eilean. The road turns to the right between these two properties and ultimately leads to Balnaha.
In Thomson’s photograph, one of the Balnaha sheds can just be seen on the far right. However, in the updated version, you can see the roof of another new dwelling called Torr Soluis.
In 1948, roughly around the time Thomson took the photograph, large areas of the existing Ardnamurchan Estate, including Kilmory, were parcelled up by its owner, Lord Trent.
The old photograph shows haystacks on the croft land that stretches to the right, opposite the road. Now, the land is fallow and used for grazing sheep, as you can see in the remake.
Because the quality of that land was poor, each croft was given one or more strips of better land at the southeast end of the hamlet, near the graveyard. This area is believed to be the site of the original Cill Mhoire, Gaelic for Mary’s Cell or Church of Mary.
The cemetery is surrounded by a large, circular, drystone wall, and an outline under the grass is thought to be part of that demolished church.
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