Context 158 - March 2019

C O N T E X T 1 5 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 9 25 Highlands and Islands SUSAN RABÉ Lord Leverhulme’s Hebridean experiment After a generation of uncertainty, Lews Castle has been reinvented as a new cultural and heritage hub for the Isles of Lewis and Harris (which together form a single island). The industrialist, colonialist, politician and phi- lanthropist William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), was most famous for creating Lever Brothers and founding the model industrial village of Port Sunlight, a fine example of English town planning and house design named after his famous brand Sunlight Soap. His endeavours as proprietor of Lewis and Harris between 1918 and his death in 1925 are probably less well known. At the age of 67, the phenomenal wealth he had amassed enabled Leverhulme to under- write his venture into Highland landlordism. He negotiated the purchase of the Isle of Lewis (400,000 acres, inhabited by 30,000 people), including the pseudo-Tudor Lews Castle, with Colonel Duncan Matheson between August 1917 and May 1918. The agreed purchase price was £143,000. In 1919 Leverhulme bought the adjoining Isle of Harris (a further 170,000 acres, home to a population of 4,750) for £56,000. South Harris was sold to him by the Earl of Dunmore and North Harris by Sir Samuel Scott. This purchase made him the biggest private landowner in Britain at that time. Lews Castle, overlooking the harbour, became his base in Stornoway. Leverhulme wanted to use his vast wealth and experience as an indus- trialist to address the socio-economic problems that faced the islanders after the traumatic losses of the first world war. Leverhulme had found a project to occupy his mind in semi-retirement. He planned to revolutionise Lewis and its 30,000 inhabitants, by reviving and modernising the fishing industry which had flourished in the 1800s. Stornoway had been the major herring port in Britain in the 1870s. Exploiting the abundant marine resources would regenerate the island as a thriv- ing centre for fishing. He planned to improve the port and attract fish landings from visiting ves- sels, along with his own fleet of modern trawlers and drifters. Construction on a state-of-the-art cannery and an ice plant was begun to process the catch. Spotter planes would be deployed to search for shoals of herring, and refrigerated holds would reach mainland railheads ensuring that the catch was fresh when it reached his new MacFisheries chain of fishmongers. New road and even a railway would be constructed to improve connections between the East (Minch) andWest (Atlantic) sides of the islands. The new museum and archive building links to a glass- roofed courtyard within the castle which includes a café and shop (Photo: Susan Rabé)