25868: Crobeg Farm, Crobeg

Crobeg was the centre of a tack, or farm, with Allan Ruadh Ross, born about 1730, as the first Crobeg Tacksman that we know about. Allan was allegedly married to a sister of Evander Maciver, the Tacksman at Gress, though some doubt attends this. Allan Ruadh was followed by his son, Roderick, born about 1758 and we know about a family of two sons and two daughters. Apart from the Tacksman, Crobeg Farm provided work for several families who were given a small area of land to cultivate.

In 1886, Lady Matheson added the lands of Steimreway, Orinsay and the Shiant Islands, an area of over 3,000 acres, to Crobeg Farm because she could not find a tenant for the Park Sheep Farm. Rather than give land to the landless crofters, she converted the whole 42,000 acres of Southern Park into a deer forest, except for the 3,000 acres she added to Crobeg Farm which was already a viable unit

Latterly the farm was bought by Charlie MacLeod, who worked on farms as a young man and returned home to start up business as a wholesale and retail butcher in Stornoway in 1947 on the site where the shop still stands. In 1958 he purchased the Crobeg Farm, including St. Colm’s Isle, from Roderick MacLeod Ruaraidh Mor, a native of Balallan. The stock and equipment included in the sale lists a new boat valued at 50, 78 ewes, 72 sheep and 78 lambs on the Island and 67 ewes, 48 lambs, 2 rams and 4 bullocks in Crobeg. Charlie decided to invest money in regenerating the land and building up the stockholding on both sides of the Loch, In the early 1960s, a coaster was chartered to bring a cargo of lime up from Glasgow.