A Thin Place

In September of last year, I published a blog on this website titled Thin Places: Doorways to Other Worlds. In it, I explained how the use of the term “Thin Places” is used to describe places where the boundary between the physical world and a mystical, historical or spiritual world is believed to be exceptionally thin, thus facilitating a sense of connection between the two. In it, I named a few places around the Peninsula that felt “thin” to me, one of which was Bourblaige, a cleared settlement on the slopes of Ben Hiant. Since then, I have had it in my mind to spend some time there to connect with the place and am pleased to say that a couple of days there in August gave me the opportunity to do this.  

Bourblaige sits in a wide bowl beneath the south-eastern slopes of Ben Hiant, with the sea to its south, Camas nan Geall to its east and the road to Kilchoan to its north. It was from the road to Kilchoan that I made my approach, taking a well-defined farm track up over a short rise to a metal gate from which you begin to get views of the lower slopes of Ben Hiant and the ruins of Bourblaige itself. The track ends at the gate, so on passing through it, I then found myself picking my way over thick, uneven grassland and large areas of bog, down past a conical hill which has the remains of a pre-clearance sheep fank on it.

Standing on top of this conical hill gave me a clear view across the 36 or so buildings that were the houses, barns, byres and small enclosures that made up the settlement. I paused there for a while and got my first sense of a connection with the past, with my imagination ignited by thoughts of who and what has been there before me. Foremost were reflections on the hardship and trauma that the people of Bourblaige must have suffered from being suddenly cleared from their ancestral homes by the landowner on a fateful winter day in 1828.
 
Local accounts (Heritage Ardnamurchan and the Kilchoan Diary) say that the evictions were carried out with considerable cruelty with the displaced being forcedly marched to much poorer ground elsewhere on the Peninsula where it would have been even harder to eke out a living.

Continuing over the grassland and bog, I made my way to a slight rise on the northern edge of the settlement and paused once again to take in the scene before me. It is from there that you begin to get an appreciation of the extent of the settlement, with a myriad of ruinous stone walls about a metre to a meter and a half high etching out the shape of buildings and enclosures that run from there, down towards the sea.

Walking down from there, and through the various ruins, brought me closer to the sea and I began to consider how it may have played a part in the lives of the people who lived in Bourblaige and in the nearby settlements of Torr an Moine and Camas nan Geall. I reflected on how fishing may have supplemented the produce from growing crops and rearing animals as well as providing an essential transport link to other parts of the Peninsula and even the Isle of Mull, which is just across the water.

As well as the proximity and the importance of the sea, I felt the looming presence of Ben Hiant, the long extinct volcano whose steep and intricately sculpted slopes seemed to provide shelter from the prevailing southwest winds for the entire settlement, and especially those buildings that are situated in the lower part of the wide bowl in which Bourblaige is cradled.

The other thing that was ever-present as I explored the ruins of the settlement was the soft hiss of cascading water from a waterfall high up on Ben Hiant, about 600-800 metres away. Despite the distance, the sound of the waterfall continually drifted down the steep slopes of the mountain prompting thoughts of how water from its stream lower down would have sustained the life of the people who once occupied the land beneath it.

Having explored the ruins in the top part of the settlement, my eye was drawn to two hillocks at the bottom end of it and under which more ruins were nestled. To me, these hillocks had the appearance of miniature versions of Ben Hiant because the folds and creases on their slopes were similar to those that are such a striking feature of the “Blessed Mountain” under which they sit.

I made my way down towards them, carefully picking my way across grassy tussocks, water filled ditches, streams and bog. It was slow going, but the benefit of this was that my gaze was firmly downwards, allowing me to see not only where I could safely place each footstep, but also swathes of beautiful wildflowers that would have otherwise went unnoticed. Aside from the ubiquitous heather, I spotted white bog star, blue scabious, yellow tormentil and the russet orange seed heads of bog asphodel.

Colours were also to be found on stones of the ancient walls of the abandoned buildings in the form of patches of lichen which stood testament to just how long the remains of the buildings have been standing exposed to the elements.

Many of the top faces of these ancient walls were capped with vividly coloured red/green stonecrop as well as mosses whose colours ranged from bright green to grey-blue and provided me with the perfect opportunity for some basic macro photography.

Further down the hillside, a gully runs eastwards and opens up views across the entrance of Loch Sunart, then the Sound of Mull and towards Ben More, the Isle of Mull’s highest mountain, which could be picked out on the distant horizon. The western side of the entrance to Camas nan Geall, in the form of Sgeir Fhada, was visible in the mid-ground. This rocky promontory is thought to the location of an iron age fort.

Having reached the top of this gulley, I decided to begin to retrace my steps back up through Bourblaige. Turning around and looking back up the hillside I had descended gave me a completely different perspective of the settlement. 

The sea was now at my back and was no longer the dominant feature. Instead, large swathes of grassland beneath an expanse of sky gave the feel of not only wide-open space but also a sense of isolation or perhaps emptiness. These feelings seemed to build as I continued to walk up the hill, seeing many of the ruined buildings set against the cloud filled sky. Buildings that would have provided shelter for all the families for who this place was their ancestral home right up until they were cruelly evicted by in 1828 by Sir James Riddell the then owner of Ardnamurchan Estate.

As I approached the last few buildings, I noticed well defined gaps in the walls of some of them. Gaps that would have been doorways into homes of the families, who would have eked out a living on this hillside, under the shadow of Ben Hiant. I couldn’t help but wonder if one of these doorways was the one referred to in an account of the Bourblaige clearance written in 1892:
 
“In one case a half-witted woman who flatly refused to flit, was locked up in her cottage, the door being barricaded on the outside by mason-work. She was visited every morning to see if she had arrived at a tractable frame of mind, but for days she held out. It was not until her slender store of food was exhausted that she ceased to argue with the inevitable and decided to capitulate.”
 
Finally, as I left, I tried to comprehend the hardship and trauma that the people of Bourblaige would have suffered when they were suddenly evicted in the middle of the harsh Highland winter, seeing their homes destroyed, their animals shot and then forcibly marched miles across the Peninsula to a place where the land was poorer and eking out a living would be even harder.
 
This abandoned and isolated place certainly is somewhere that the boundary between the physical world and the historical world is exceptionally thin. A place where you find yourself picturing scenes from the past as if they were unfolding right before your eyes.