Context 158 - March 2019

26 C O N T E X T 1 5 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 9 Stornoway would be reinvented as the ‘Venice of the North’. Leverhulme intended to sweep away old, unsanitary housing, constructing imposing beaux-arts-style avenues cutting against the grain of the old grid pattern and creating garden suburbs. A new war memorial, town hall and art gallery were included in the development vision. Leverhulme’s plans to develop the fishing industry in Lewis and Harris were welcomed by many; his improvement schemes provided much needed jobs after the war. However, some doubted that his ambitious plan to revive the fishing industry would succeed. People remem- bered past times when the fishing failed. When that happened, they always had the land to fall back on. Economic realities Leverhulme’s grand scheme, while aimed at relieving the life of the crofters on the island, took little account of the reality of their lives. What the crofters most needed was casual work to supplement their subsistence farming; what was proposed was regular employment in an industrial process. They did not want to be dependent on any landlord, even a millionaire philanthropist, for their livelihood, and most preferred to take control of their own destiny. Leverhulme was keen to reform housing in the islands, and he condemned the vernacular Lewis blackhouse as an unsanitary anachro- nism. In Lewis around the turn of the century 80 per cent of dwellings were still of the black- house type, which were regarded by govern- ment inspectors as unfit for human habitation. These traditional thatched buildings, thought to have derived from Viking long houses, were well adapted to the harsh Hebridean climate. Built with double dry-stone walls packed with earth, they were very solid and very low, with tiny windows to protect the inhabitants from the weather. In Lewis they often incorporated a byre to shelter livestock and had a central peat fire perpetually making the interior smoky but cosy. The name ‘blackhouse’ was used to distinguish the older-style house from the newer ‘white-houses’ which had harled (rough- rendered) walls. A number of global and local factors beyond Leverhulme’s control conspired to wreck his development plans. The old markets across the North Sea to St Petersburg had been closed due to the war and the Russian Revolution in 1917. They did not revive. After the war the market for fish, including salt-cured herring, declined in Britain and was not strong enough to drive that part of Leverhulme’s plan forward. Poor business decisions made in Nigeria sig- nificantly dented the finances of Lever Brothers, impacting the flow of money for investment in island projects, resulting in revisions, delays and setbacks. Despite the growing tensions, Leverhulme spent over £1 million in Lewis. Two model housing schemes were built in Stornoway, one on Matheson Road and another on Anderson Road, to house Leverhulme’s managers and employees. New roads were built in Lewis: a concrete bridge, now known as the Bridge to Nowhere, was constructed in Tolsta as part of a scheme to create a coastal road linking Tolsta to Ness at the north tip of the island.The road was never completed. At a local level, there was a deep land hunger, lack of employment and opportunity. Although many appreciated the construction work that Leverhulme was offering, the land issue began to divide the community. The impact of the first world war on Lewis and Harris was devastating. From a population of 35,000, around 7,000 went to war. More than 1,100 men from Lewis and Harris lost their lives in the conflict. Another 201 souls, including 174 from Lewis and seven men from Harris, were lost within sight of Stornoway Harbour when HMY Iolaire was wrecked on the Beasts of Holm on 1 January 1919. These overwhelming events compounded the pressure for land reform. Fit for heroes Leverhulme found himself in conflict with the returning servicemen who had been promised ‘a land fit for heroes’ by the government; they had no alternative but to protest when this promise was not met. Leverhulme was not a William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme of the Western Isles (Portrait by William Strang, 1918, University of Liverpool Art Gallery and Collections; by courtesy of Tasglann nanEilean)