23160: Angus Macleod
Aonghas iain Ruaidh
Angus Ease Macleod (1916-2002) was a son of John Macleod and Isabella Nicolson of 8 Calbost. Angus attended Planasker School in Marvig from 1921 and left at 14, to become a cook on fishing boats.
On October 10, 1934 he enrolled in the Royal Naval Reserve, Service Number A17785. His record indicates that he was 5ft 10¼ in tall, with dark auburn hair, grey eyes and a fresh complexion. Angus was a fisherman on Stornoway registered fishing boats including the Girl Ivy and the Trust.
In 1936 he joined the Merchant Navy and travelled to Jamaica on the SS Jamaica Progress, to the River Plate on the SS Marquesa and to Brazil on the SS Somme. In 1938 he worked as a Rigger in the shipyards when he couldn't find a ship.
He was waiting for his call-up to war when he took ill with Tuberculosis, and was hospitalised in Glasgow. He returned to Calbost in 1941 an invalid. His parents and two brothers died around that time and he struggled to keep himself going as a weaver. Angus then became a tweed buyer for a London firm, and spent many years in the industry, becoming a producer himself.
At Stornoway, in 1946, he married Anne Macinnes of 8 Gravir. Angus and Ann initially settled at 8 Calbost and they had a daughter, Ishbel. The family moved to Stornoway, first on Kenneth Street and then in Marybank, where for some years they ran a general store. Ishbel died aged 15 and the couple adopted two children. When Angus withdrew from tweed production in 1969, he and Anne ran a tourist business, offering bed and breakfast, caravans and a holiday house.
After his retirement Ease devoted his energies to voluntary work, serving on a number of organisations and becoming the Honorary President of the Scottish Crofters Union. Throughout his life he was committed to the preservation of local history and traditional ways, and he established the Calbost Collection of hundreds of local artefacts, now in the care of Museum nan Eilean in Stornoway. He also led the Cuimhneachan nan Gaisgeach project, which commemorates the heroes of the land struggle by means of cairns designed by the artist Will Maclean.
Ease also collected a vast number of books and manuscripts on the history of Calbost, Pairc, Lewis and the Highlands and Islands in general, which are now preserved in the Angus Macleod Archive in Kershader, open to the public for research.
He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1987 New Year's Honours.
Details
- Record Type:
- Person
- Also Known As:
- Ease
- Date Of Birth:
- 1916
- Date of Death:
- Oct 2002
- Gender:
- Male
- Brothers Keeper Reference:
- CEP 2335
- Occupation:
- Fisherman; Royal Naval Reservist; Merchant Naval Seaman; Rigger; Weaver; Tweed Buyer
- Record Maintained by:
- CEP
Related Media
Angus “Ease” Macleod
Angus “Ease” Macleod MBE
Angus Ease Macleod
Angus Macleod MBE