By Seonaid McDonald

When I started following the Save Armadale Facebook group, I never imagined I
would meet so many talented, passionate people. We are all united in common
cause to save this most precious of resources from the grasp of the open market. But how and why are we all connected?

Armadale represents so much. To my sister and I, born and bred Scots, it is a place we visit not just for its beautiful scenery and fantastic museum; it is also a place we go to remember our uncle, George MacDonald (1908-2010) and our Dad, Donald Alexander McDonald (1912-2002). Both George and Donnie were characters; we could write a book on those two!

Although we were born in Glasgow, our McDonald family roots lie in Glen Convinth and Glen Urquhart, near Loch Ness, in Inverness-shire. Further back in history our branch of Clan Donald was, we believe, from Glengarry. This is based on the local oral history of Drumnadrochit and Glen Urquhart. However my Dad always believed that even further back in our story we were descended from MacDonalds who had escaped the Glencoe Massacre. We certainly always felt strongly connected to that area. Every summer of our childhood was spent on 4-week camping holidays in the Highlands, including Glencoe, Drumnadrochit and Inverness, and we were always taken to Glen Convinth to visit the ruins of the old croft and the cemetery where our ancestors (MacDonald and Fraser) lie.

So why are we trying to save Armadale in the Isle of Skye you might ask?
It’s because of what it represents.

I remember at school reading a great Norman MacCaig poem A Man in Assynt.
These lines always stuck:
‘Who possesses this landscape? –
The man who bought it or
I who am possessed by it?’

Like many lowland Scots we are actually dispossessed Highlanders. Our
grandfather, a native Gaelic speaker, was born into a poor crofting family in Glen
Convinth and had to leave the Highlands to go and find work in Glasgow. This story was repeated across Scotland for thousands upon thousands of Highlanders. These were the economic clearances. Glasgow was packed full of Highlanders. So the prospect of ‘owning’ just a tiny part of the Highlands, in the Isle of Skye, on what were ancestral Clan Donald lands, is what prompted our Uncle George to become a founding member of the Clan Donald Lands Trust in 1971. He was so proud of that one act, to reclaim a tiny part of the Highlands, which he believed would be held in trust in perpetuity. He was also hugely interested in supporting the role that Armadale would play in educating visitors – wherever they were from – about the history of the Highlands and Islands.

So this is what drives us. And, I may say, this is what connects us, all across the
globe. Anger at being sold down the river – again – by absentee Trustees cut from the same cloth as those treacherous clan chiefs who expelled their own people. The Clan Donald diaspora who are taking action now: you all know that your ancestors were forced out of Scotland just as our family was forced out of the Highlands. We all know how that feels. Let’s try and save this piece of land in the name of our ancestors and forebears who held their own land so dear.

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