Travel in Time - Thomson’s Scotland Lochaber series - Acharacle and Ben Resipol

For a year, photographer and history researcher Estelle Slegers Helsen has travelled around Lochaber in the footsteps of W S Thomson MBE, 1906-1967.

 

She has made a series of photographic remakes roughly 70 years after

 

Thomson originally captured the landscape. She has talked to local people along her journey and each week Estelle will be taking our readers to a different place in Lochaber.

 

This week she focuses on Acharacle and Ben Resipol.

 

An article published in the Dundee Courier on Friday August 12 1949 describes

 

the journey of an American visitor who was at Acharacle Pier having just disembarked the small steamer Clanranald II that sailed daily from Glenfinnan and back. Acharacle is about the halfway mark of this adventure.

 

The trip she was referring to was from Fort William by bus to Glenfinnan, then the 18-mile sail down Loch Shiel to Acharacle.

 

From there the tourist goes by bus along the crooked road that seems to have naturally found its way down the wooded shore of Loch Sunart, through bare Glen Tarbert to Loch Linnhe and to Corran, then by ferry once more to meet a bus for Fort William.

 

Around then Thomson, who was living in Fort William at the time, drove along that crooked road to Acharacle, an archetypical West Highland crofting township straggling the scrubby moss at the west end of Loch Shiel.

 

Acharacle, Àth Tharracail in Gaelic, is derived from Torquil’s ford. In 1120, the Norse

 

invader Torquil and his followers were ousted by the Celtic-Norse warrior Somerled during a battle at a nearby ford.

 

I am convinced the heavy-nosed car with the smooth curved back hidden between Scots pines in the old picture is the photographer’s vehicle, which he parked just after the school on the dirt road to Arivegaig, locally known as the old dump road.

 

The car is a Jowett Javelin, an executive car produced between 1947 and 1953

 

by Jowett Cars of Idle, near Bradford in England.

 

The exact vehicle features as a bright yellow object in a colour landscape photograph on the road in a snow-covered view of Loch Garry near Invergarry.

 

What is the chance that a car, just over 23,000 of which were produced in six years, belonging to someone else would feature twice in his photographs?

 

Identifying where Thomson took the black-and-white image is easy. I park my car in the primary school car park, walk a short way along the old dump road, pass a gate and hike uphill to the right.

 

Thomson’s panorama of Acharacle and Ben Resipol unfolds before my eyes, but there is no match. Let me explain. The hill has two knolls and I am on the wrong one. The right

 

one is over a seven-foot deer fence.

 

Two days later, I return and have to wait a few hours for the sun to come out. I love these challenges. In general, I sense Acharacle still feels like a crofting community, but most crofts are unkempt, turning into the reedy shores of Loch Shiel. The mountain

 

towering in the back is Ben Resipol.

 

The father of Alastair and Jockan MacGillivray, a trader, lived in the croft with the

 

white roof and the barn out front. The croft in the far left, now called Shielside, has been greatly extended and lies on the main road.

 

In front of the next dwelling to the right, Holly Bank, an old Scots pine has survived and now stands on the road verge. You can see another house, Torr-Beag, and a side track leading to two dwellings, Burnbank and Hillfoot.

 

Further to the right, we see more houses which look as if they are in a continuous line but are not connected by road or path and point in the direction of the Free Church of Scotland. This church from 1868 appears in the top right of the old photograph and is now concealed by trees growing on Tom Mor, the hill on the right.

 

Back to the main road opposite Torr-Beag lies Shielbridge Hall. In Thomson’s time, there was another cottage. The road swings towards Loch Shiel Hotel.

 

A narrow and bumpy road leads to Acharacle Pier where, between 1899 and 1953, the MV Clanranald II came aside. This streamer plied daily up and down Loch Shiel and I am told, summer or winter, the ‘Clan’ never failed.

 

‘A small advertisement drawing attention to the fact of the impending retirement of Captain Angus MacDonald, master of the steamer Clanranald, after 52 years of service, prompted us to put a telephone call through to Acharacle,’ wrote The Scotsman of Tuesday February 15 1949.

 

'We couldn’t get Captain MacDonald himself, but we did talk to Mr J A Campbell, an old friend with whom the captain has stayed for more than 20 years. He told us the captain was aboard the Clanranald showing the ropes to his successor.’

 

That was Sam Cameron who captained the vessel until the ‘Clan’ was taken out

 

of service, leaving only a crumbling hull beached at Acharacle.

 

* Travel in Time - Lochaber Series is supported by the West Highland Museum

 

and the Year of Stories 2022 Community Fund.

 

Estelle has published a 64-page book with 30 side-by-side then-and-now pictures, which you can find in local shops or buy online. More information is available at www.travelintime.uk.

 

CAPTION: W S Thomson's photograph of Acharacle is on the left, with Estelle's modern day recreation on the right. NO-F48-Travel-in-Time-Acharacle