FORTY YEARS AGO Friday April 8, 1983

Museum prepares for the season

Auchindrain has nestled in a hollow below the main road just south of Inveraray in Argyll since before recorded history. For the last several hundred years it has been a cluster of low stone-built houses and barns; part of a multiple-tenancy farm where several score of the inhabitants lived a frugal life working the few acres and tending their stock in the surrounding hills.

Overtaken by history it might have become yet another jumble of stones lost in the forests and hills of Argyll, but a trust was formed to preserve the place so that all could see how our forefathers lived.

In October 1981 the trust was in dire financial straits, because of crippling interest rates on the money spent in capital expenditure reconstructing Auchindrain.

Unless money could be found to save the project nearly 20 years of devoted effort would be lost.

The Friends of Auchindrain Society opened a general appeal which drew support from all over the country, and sponsored many local fundraising activities.

A package has been constructed with the assistance of Argyll and Bute District Council, the Countryside Commission for Scotland, the Highlands and Islands Development Board and Strathclyde Regional Council to ensure the survival of the museum. Argyll and Bute District Council, with the support of other bodies, has entered into a commitment with the trust that gives Auchindrain a sound base to face the future.

It should be stressed that despite this arrangement the trustees are still responsible for Auchindrain and the trust still retains its charitable status. Not that Auchindrain is out of the woods yet; the maintenance and reconstruction of over 20 historic buildings is a continuing and increasing financial burden.

Not to mention the reclamation of the land and gardens to demonstrate to the many visitors and children how people earned their simple living, and the preservation of many irreplaceable artefacts that constitute part of our national heritage.