Jura Lives

I’m getting set to test drive some of our work on an unsuspecting mainland audience this week. Will they be interested in the same things we’re interested in on Jura? Will they get an idea of the place through hearing first-hand clips of its heritage? Will we, compared to other archives in Scotland, have our digital shit together? 

Thursday will tell…. Edinburgh here we come!

I went up the north end early one morning this week, having heard a rumour that there would be a dramatic pipe drop-off into Ardlussa bay for the hydro-electric scheme.  As it happened, welders and tides combined to keep the boat back in Oban, so instead I hung out a bit with the Fletcher family over breakfast.

Scarlett was hopping about using a fork-topped walking stick having a had a piece of glass through her foot on fell-race weekend. Three new silver legged chicks were peeping away from under the incubator in the study and the girls were sent to feed the other chickens and ducks in the orchard. Out there, I was proudly introduced to four older chicks of the gold-legged variety, while Kitty came waddling over carrying a large white duck to show me.  Tabitha was running around looking for feathers and scraps of wool with which to build her own nest, and Molly was scattering the feed under the blossom trees with a flock of hens and 4 barking Cayoga ducks behind her.  

The lady of the house, Claire, was away to water the poly-tunnel strawberries, and came back with a beauty for my second breakfast. 

Andrew was at the kitchen table leafing through an antique hand-drawn calendar with verses for each month about life on the estate written in his grandfather’s handwriting. Scarlett was using it to learn to read.

Off to make the beds for the arriving guests, and Fergie the cat had been releasing some of his prey in the smart half of the house - cries of ’Catch that rabbit!’ rang down the corridor outside the Laird’s bedroom….

Of course, it would be good to capture something about the installation of the hydro scheme up there for the oral history project; but an amazing morning in the everyday life of a busy family caught up in diversifying the estate, how could I do justice to that?

The one thing that is very apparent from the oral history postcards and from conversations with people about what is important to them here - whether they have been here 5 years or 55 years, and whether they like or dislike what is happening on the island today - is that every individual has a deep and timeless love for this place.

Now that the consultation phase of the project is all but over, we know what the eight themes of our collective ‘living history’ of the island will be: Childhoods, Community, Change, Activities on the estates, the Landscape, Animals (wild and farm), Ceilidhs, and Transport. To me, the list seems a good mixture of social history, economic history and natural history. People were asked what the significant features of a life on Jura were, and also about their strongest personal memory. Everyone who lives here or is connected with the island will have the opportunity to expand on their own strongest memory for the archive, so we can get some personal history in there too!