Context 158 - March 2019

C O N T E X T 1 5 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 9 27 Highlands and Islands supporter of crofting and failed to understand that it was a way of living, not an occupation. He was furious when some of these land- less men illegally occupied his farmland. The government refused to take action against the ‘raiders’, which deeply upset Leverhulme. He finally decided to cut his losses and abandon his improvement schemes in Lewis, resulting in many islanders emigrating to Canada, America and Patagonia in the 1920s. Although wounded by his failure in Lewis, rather than doing what most landlords do when things do not work out and selling up on the open market, Leverhulme made a grand gesture. In a public announcement he offered the castle and his Lewis estates to the people of the Parish of Stornoway. They accepted his remarkable gift and in 1923 the Stornoway Trust was set up to manage the new public estate on behalf of the community. Leverhulme retreated to Borve Lodge inHarris, where he continued his improvement initiatives and fishing strategy in Harris at the village of Obbe, which was renamed Leverburgh in his honour. He continued to support development in Harris, building a hotel, roads, and houses and cottages for his workers; improving the harbour; developing fish processing; and buying the whaling station at Bunavoneadar, Harris. He fell ill following a trip to his enterprises in Africa, and he died of pneumonia at his home in Hampstead, London, in 1925. Thirty thousand people attended his funeral where he is buried in the narthex of Christ Church in Port Sunlight. Following this, Lever brothers cut all ties with Harris and set about selling the estates still in his ownership. His descendants retained the title Viscount of theWestern Isles, but that is all they thought to keep. Leverhulme’s gift Lews Castle is a Category A listed mansion house, set in a historic designed landscape overlooking the town of Stornoway. Constructed between 1848 and 1860, the castellated man- sion house was designed by Glasgow architect Charles Wilson for 19th-century tea and opium trader Sir James Matheson. When Leverhulme acquired the castle from the Matheson family in 1918, he made some minor internal changes, installing an electric generator, telephones and central heating, and adding more bathrooms. An enthusiastic dancer, he altered the interior to create a ballroom, adding ionic columns and an Adam-style ceiling by Ernest Prestwich (assistant to Leverhulme’s head architect JL Simpson). Leverhulme hosted famous visitors, and invita- tions to events at the castle were eagerly sought. Initially Stornoway Trust hired out the build- ing to wealthy tenants. During the second world war it was requisitioned as a naval hospital and as accommodation for the air and ground crew of 700 Naval Air Squadron, which operated a detachment of amphibious biplanes from Cuddy Point slipway in the castle grounds. In the 1950s the trust sold the building to Ross and Cromarty Council, and it was purposed first as a college for navigation and marine engineering, then as a secondary school. Following local government reorganisation in 1975, the castle became the responsibility of the Western Isles Council (Comhairle nan Eilean Siar) and it A drawing of a plan for Stornoway by Thomas Raffles Davison, 1919 (Collection of Stornoway Port Authority). The drawing was exhibited in a Stornoway shop window – the closest Leverhulme got to public consultation.