Jura
Jura is an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, adjacent and to the north-east of Islay. Compared with its fertile and more populous neighbour, Jura is mountainous, bare and infertile, covered largely by vast areas of blanket bog, hence its small population. In a list of the islands of Scotland ranked by size, Jura comes eighth, whereas ranked by population it comes thirty-first. It is in the council area of Argyll and Bute.
Evidence of settlements on Jura dating from the Mesolithic period was first uncovered by the English archaeologist John Mercer in the 1960s. There is evidence of Neolithic settlement at Poll a' Cheo in the southwest of the island. The modern name "Jura" dates from the Norse-Gael era and is from the Old Norse Dyrøy meaning "beast [wild animal] island".
In the sixth century, it is believed that Jura may have been the location of Hinba, the island to which the Irish founder of the Christian Church in Scotland Saint Columba retreated for prayer and contemplation from the monastic community which he founded on Iona.
The Viking occupation of the Hebrides began in the ninth century, and was formalised when sovereignty was secured in 1098. From this point, Norse rule continued until 1266, when the Hebrides, together with Kintyre and the Isle of Man, were ceded to Scotland in the Treaty of Perth. A key figure during the Norse period was the warlord Somerled, whose descendants, for around 150 years from the mid-fourteenth century, styled themselves Lords of the Isles.
The Lordship of the Isles was dominated by Clan Donald, whose seat was at Finlaggan on Islay. The Lordship came to an end in 1493, but Clan Donald continued to rule the southern part of Jura, through the MacDonalds of Dunnyveg. The north of the island, however, was owned by this time by Clan Maclean, whose seat was at Aros Castle in Glengarrisdale. In 1647, this was to be the site of a notable battle between the Macleans and the Campbells of Craignish. For many years in the twentieth century, a human skull stood on a ledge in a nearby cave, and it was traditionally said to have been the remains of a Maclean who had been killed in this battle. The skull is no longer there, but the latest editions of Ordnance Survey maps still mark the location as 'Maclean's Skull Cave'.
The demise of the Lords of the Isles at the end of the fifteenth century was shortly followed in 1506 by the Treaty of Camas an Staca, which removed MacDonald rights on Jura and gave them to the Campbells. Despite this, the sixteenth century was a period of skirmishing between the warring clans: McDonalds, Campbells, MacLeans and others. Then in 1607 the Campbells finally bought the island from the MacDonalds. This was the beginning of some three hundred years during which the island was ruled and largely owned by eleven successive Campbell lairds. The north of the island, however, remained in MacLean hands until 1737, when it was sold to Donald MacNeil of Colonsay.
From the mid-eighteenth century, long before the notorious Highland Clearances of the nineteenth century, there were a number of waves of emigration from Jura. In 1767, fifty people left Jura for Canada, and from that point the population gradually shrank from over a thousand to its twentieth century level of just a few hundred. Mercer notes that although relatively few forced clearances were recorded as taking place on Jura, the emigrations were far from voluntary, and were the result of factors such as hunger and spiralling rents.
During the first half of the twentieth century the Campbells gradually sold the island as a number of separate estates, and the Campbell connection with Jura ended in 1938 with the sale of Jura House and the Ardfin Estate. There are now seven estates on Jura, all in separate ownership, with six of the seven held by absentees: Ardfin, Inver, Jura Forest, Tarbert, Ruantallain, Ardlussa, and Barnhill. There is also a relatively small area owned by Forestry Commission Scotland.
Barnhill was the home of British novelist George Orwell, who lived there intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1950, and who completed his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four while living there. Despite its isolation, Barnhill has in recent years become something of a shrine for his readers.
The Ardfin Estate is situated at the southern tip of the island, between Feolin and Craighouse. For some seventy years from 1938, Ardfin belonged to the Riley-Smith family, brewers from Tadcaster in Yorkshire. In 2010 the estate was bought by Greg Coffey, an Australian hedge-fund manager. and since then the famous walled garden of Jura House, which had previously been a popular tourist attraction, has been closed to the public. Having also wound up the estate's farm, Mr Coffey then submitted proposals for the construction of a private 18-hole golf course on the estate, which is due to be completed in 2016.
North of Ardfin, and flanking the Paps of Jura, lie the estates of Forest and Inver. Forest Estate, on the east side of the Paps, belongs to Samuel, 3rd Baron Vestey, Chairman of the food and farming business Vestey Group Ltd, and Master of the Horse of the Royal Household. Below the west slopes of the Paps lies Inver Estate, which belongs to Sir William Lithgow, Vice-Chairman of the Glasgow shipbuilding group Lithgows.
North of the Corran River, and stretching as far as Loch Tarbert, is the Tarbert Estate. Prime Minister David Cameron has visited the estate on several occasions. It is sometimes reported that the 20,000-acre estate is "owned by his wife's stepfather Lord Astor" although the ownership of the Tarbert Estate is in the hands of Ginge Manor Estates Ltd based in Nassau in The Bahamas and there is "no means of verifying" who the beneficial absentee owners are. North of Loch Tarbert is Ruantallain, which was created when the northern half of the Tarbert Estate was sold off in 1984. It is owned by businessman Lindsay Bury, who is a former president of the influential wildlife charity Flora and Fauna International. The north of Jura belongs to two members of the Fletcher family. The owner of Ardlussa is Andrew Fletcher, who lives at Ardlussa House with his family - they are the only estate owners to be permanently resident on Jura. And at the northernmost tip of Jura, overlooking the famous Corryvreckan Whirlpool is the Barnhill Estate, which is owned by Jamie Fletcher.
With an area of 36,692 hectares, or 142 square miles , and only 196 inhabitants recorded in the 2011 census, Jura is much less densely populated than neighbouring Islay and is one of the least densely populated islands of Scotland. Census records show that Jura's population peaked at 1,312 in 1831, and that, in common with many areas of western Scotland, the island's population declined steadily over the ensuing decades. However, there has been a small increase since 2001. During the same decade Scottish island populations as a whole grew by 4% to 103,702. Alongside the long-term decline in Jura's population has been a decline in the number of Gaelic speakers. The 1881 census reported that 86.6% spoke Gaelic. In 1961, for the first time less than half spoke the language and by 2001, this figure had dropped to 10.6%.
The main settlement is the village of Craighouse on the east coast. Craighouse is home to the Jura distillery, producing Isle of Jura single malt whisky. The village is also home to the island's only hotel, shop and church.
Between the northern tip of Jura and the island of Scarba lies the Gulf of Corryvreckan where a whirlpool makes passage dangerous at certain states of the tide. The southern part of the island, from Loch Tarbert southwards, is one of 40 National Scenic Areas in Scotland.
