Laird who triggered scramble for Eigg dies at 90
Car-loving ‘Mr Toad’ said to have inspired buyout
HE was the millionaire laird whose running of a Scottish island was so controversial that he is credited with inspiring a revolution in land ownership.
Not that Keith Schellenberg, who has died at the age of 90, would wish that to be his legacy.
An opponent of land reform, the colourful former owner of a Hebridean isle used to say the place had been taken over by ‘freeloaders’ and ‘subsidy junkies’.
Schellenberg was the last but one landlord of Eigg before the island was bought by the community in 1997. While he claimed they ‘forced’ him off the island, they accused him of neglecting the homes they rented from him and lording it over them in his vintage Rolls-Royce.
Relations between the landlord and some of his tenants became so strained that when a fire broke out in a shed housing his beloved car – destroying it – police were convinced it had been started deliberately.
For their part, islanders steadfastly refused to help investigating officers with their inquiries.
Even a quarter of a century on, memories are still raw on the inner Hebridean isle eight miles from the mainland.
On hearing of his passing, Maggie Fyffe, a key figure in the £1.5million community
‘Drunken hippies and drop-outs’
buyout, said: ‘It’s sad to hear when anyone dies and my sympathies go out to Mr Schellenberg’s family, but his story is part of the island’s history now and is very much in the past.
‘We’re very much about looking forward and making Eigg the best possible place to live for residents.’
In his time, Schellenberg may well have claimed he was trying to achieve something similar.
A former Olympic bobsleigh racer who made his money in the motor industry, shipbuilding and livestock feed, the Yorkshireman’s goal for the island he bought for £274,000 in 1975 was self-sufficiency through tourism and crofting.
At first, he had much of the community onside. By the mid-1970s the population had dropped to an all-time low of 40 and early Schellenberg measures restored some much-needed community spirit.
He re-opened the previously locked community hall so that it could be used for badminton and dances and, hoping to attract new residents, placed job adverts in national newspapers.
He also revived the inter-island games and within four years had helped attract 20 more residents to the island.
But by the following year Schellenberg had divorced his wealthy second wife and, as financial problems set in, so the state of much of the island’s property decayed.
Though hardly a typical aristocratic laird – Schellenberg was a vegetarian who abhorred shooting – resentment grew as the goggle-wearing island owner dashed around in his car. Some dubbed him Mr Toad.
Relations deteriorated through the 1980s, with residents accusing him of running the island like a despot and the laird describing his detractors as ‘drunken hippies and drop-outs’.
Finally, in 1995, after splitting from his third wife, he decided to sell Eigg – but not to the trust set up by islanders.
Blaming them for the loss of his 1927 Rolls-Royce, he sold instead to German artist Marlin Eckhard Maruma, who was beset with financial problems.
So it was that he finally sold up to the Eigg Heritage Trust for £1.5million and residents finally won their independence. More than half of the price was funded by an anonymous donor.
Today, 109 people live on the island – five miles long and threeand-a-half miles wide – and most claim life has never been better.
But Schellenberg, who spent his final years in his native Yorkshire, remained unimpressed.
In 2005, he declared himself ‘horrified’ by the near-£10million in state handouts which Eigg had received since the buyout. He said: ‘If you are just going to live off the state then you are a freeloader – that’s all you are.’
There is no doubt the Eigg purchase started a trend. Indeed, it could be argued communities in Knoydart, Gigha, North Harris, Lewis, Assynt, South Uist, Benbecula, Eriskay and Mull all have Schellenberg to thank for inspiring resentful tenants to push for self-determination.
Doubtless the laird would prefer to be remembered otherwise.