'Of the islands'

An improving landlord in the Outer Hebrides created a remote Georgian house that has just undergone a stylish, but unpretentious remodelling, as Mary Miers reports

-  Mary Miers

"Slated and limemortared, these plain, regular buildings would have stood out as strikingly modern'

SEAFARING is central to the story of Rodel House. Overlooking a natural harbour at the eastern approaches to the Sound of Harris, it stands beside its little dock as a wel-coming haven in the treeless, rock-crazed landscape (Fig 1). From its upper windows, the house surveys the sea highway of the Little Minch and, across the strait to the south, the Duirinish wing of Skye, a visible reminder of Rodel's historic links with the MacLeod chiefs, whose vast landholdings included Harris and St Kilda. They would sail over from Dunvegan to visit kinsmen and hunt deer; the swashbuckling Ruairidh Mor spent time living at Rodel before inheriting the chiefship in 1595.

During his visit in about 1580/90, the map-maker Timothy Pont recorded a house—possibly fortified—and the magnificent church dedicated to St Clement that the 8th chief built at Rodel in the 1520s. It was here that he was buried in 1547, his canopied wall tomb surviving as the finest example of late-medieval carving in the Hebrides.

These buildings form an outstanding ensemble, as William Daniell depicted so evocatively in 1818 (My favourite painting, page 46). The historic settlement has now had the heart put back into it, thanks to the former seafarer and present owner of Rodel House, Anderson Bakewell. This article reflects his painstaking achievement.