The White House of Grishipoll

Each year the cracks in the gables of the White House widen and Grishipoll Bay seems more desolate. Yet it was once a place of warmth and hospitality, welcoming to strangers and full of life.

The house was built in the 1750’s as a home for his family by Hugh MacLean, brother of the Laird of Coll. It was a time of prosperity and optimism for the MacLeans of Coll – financial difficulties, the coming of over-population and famine and the sale of Coll lay a hundred years in the future. Almost as soon as the White House was completed, Hugh’s brother died. Now laird, Hugh moved across the island to the new castle at Breachacha also recently built. For a time the White House was deserted. Plans were put forward to use it as a school for teaching flax-spinning in an attempt to start a linen industry in coll.

This plan did not materialise. Instead the house became a family home when the farm of Grishipoll was let to a Mr MacSweyn form Skye with whom Hugh MacLean had been fostered when young following an old Highland custom. When rents were put up to and extortionate extent on Skye, the MacSweyns were brought to Coll and given Grishipoll.

There they lived in a style that has been described vividly in the diaries kept by Boswell and Johnson during their visit in 1773. To the Lowlander and the Englishman the MacSweyns’ establishment at Grishipoll confirmed their romantic notions of life in the Highlands before the ’45 and before the gentry had become anglicised in speech and customs. Mrs MacSweyn, “a decent old gentlewoman” was dressed in tartan, could speak only Gaelic, was unable to read and had been no further than Skye, Mull and Coll.

The visitors were offered hospitality of a “primitive heartiness” including according to Johnson, “the best goose I ever ate,” and whisky out of a clam shell. Boswell got drenched to the skin walking to Grishipol and was given a “good Highland coat of old MacSweyn’s, of black cloth with hollow silver buttons” and a snack of barley bread and cheese. The fireplace was decorated with pebbles, the spoons made of horn and some of the beds were of straw but some sophistication and lowland influence were already in evidence as the MacSweyns drank tea and they had a servant, a Mary MacDonald, “who had been three years in Glasgow”. Nevertheless, the impression retained by the two visitors was a home with a warm fireside, plentiful food and whisky punch and the traditional welcome of the Highlands. It is little wonder the now deserted ruin is in contrast so ‘gloom-laden’ and foreboding.

Margaret MacKay