Side schools and shepherding in spring’s Kintyre Magazine
What was a side school, who was the last MacAlister of Largie and when did a whole host of shepherding families settle in Kintyre?
Those are just some of the questions that are answered in the spring 2023 edition of the Kintyre Antiquarian and Natural History Society Magazine.
Edited by local writer and historian Angus Martin, the publication is bursting with the variety of reports and articles, written by a wide range of learned authors.
The cover image – a section of fank wall at Innean Gaothach, looking southwest to the Antrim coast, taken by Judith Hamilton in August 2022 – gives a hint of some of the agricultural content within.
In the opening article, written by Murdo MacDonald with assistance from Mr Martin and Dr Rory Crutchfield of liveArgyll Archives, readers will learn about side schools, often used by children from remote farms and crofts, and where Gartnacopaig is – spoiler: it is in Kintyre.
This is followed by a piece about Largieside ploughing matches of the past. The passage begins by recounting Largieside Agricultural Society's annual meeting of 1941, during which long-standing president Peter McSporran resigned from the role amid the Second World War. He would return to the position after the conflict and remain in post until his death in 1952.
A later article – The Mull Farms and the Coming of the Shepherds – by Mr Martin takes readers through the timeline of the rise and fall of sheep farming at the Mull of Kintyre.
This leads on to a list of settlements in the area – the names of some of which are still commonly used while others have perhaps been lost to time as their inhabitants vacated them – as well as a list of incoming shepherding families.
Another article included in the magazine is titled The Dewar Project, and it tells of John Dewar who visited Kintyre as he travelled in Argyll, Arran, West Perthshire, Lochaber and Dunbartonshire in the 1860s and 1870s, collecting historical tales from Gaelic speakers.
Duncan MacAlister, the last MacAlister laird of Upper Largie, is the subject of a report included in the magazine which was translated from Mr Dewar's Gaelic into English.
In the regular By Hill and Shore feature, Mr Martin recalls his travels around Kintyre since the publication of the autumn 2022 magazine and provides a summary of his observations in terms of the weather, flora and fauna he and his family
members encountered. A now relatively rare sighting of two basking sharks at Tarbert by Mr Martin’s daughter and grandchildren leads him to provide some history of the creatures in Kintyre within this feature.
The Campbeltown Courier’s almost 150-year-old archive is often referenced as a source of information featured in the magazine.
In this edition, a series of excerpts from articles published in the newspaper in 1910 offer some humorous reminiscences, with topics ranging from winter ceilidhs and the Keil Ghost, to a man nicknamed Rickles.
These and several other articles feature in the latest edition of the Kintyre Magazine which is available to purchase from The Old Bookshelf, The Kintyre Larder, Made In Kintyre and Coastal Design in Campbeltown, in Muneroy Stores in Southend and in Carradale Community Shop.