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''Please note: There is also a "Rum Island" off Sea Lion Island in the Falklands''
'Rùm' (a Scottish Gaelic name which is often anglicised to ''Rum'') is one of the Small Isles of the Inner Hebrides, administratively part of Lochaber, Highland, Scotland.
For several decades the name was spelt ''Rhum'', which was coined in the 1900s by the former owner, Sir George Bullough, because he did not relish the idea of having the title "Laird of Rum".

Contents

Geography

History

Ecology

Television

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Geography

With an area of about forty square miles, Rùm is the largest of the Small Isles. It has no indigenous population, but is inhabited by about 30 people — employees of Scottish Natural Heritage and their families, together with a number of researchers, and a school teacher. All the residents live in the village of Kinloch, in the east of the island, which has no church or pub, but does have a village hall and a small primary school. It also has a small shop and post office, which is manned by volunteers and keeps irregular hours.


The main range of hills on Rùm are known as the ''Cuillin''. They are usually referred to as the ''Rùm Cuillin'', in order to distinguish them from the Cuillin of Skye. They are rocky peaks of basalt and gabbro, similar in many ways to their better-known namesakes. Geologically, Rùm is the core of a deeply eroded ancient volcano. Two of the Cuillin are classified as Corbetts: Askival and Ainshval.
A Caledonian MacBrayne ferry, MV ''Lochnevis'', links Rùm and the neighbouring Small Isles of Canna, Eigg and Muck, to the mainland port of Mallaig (2½ hours away). The Lochnevis has a landing craft-style stern ramp allowing vehicles to be driven onto and off the vessel at a new slipway on Rùm. However, visitors are not normally permitted to bring vehicles to the Small Isles. During the summer months the islands are also served by Arisaig Marine's ferry MV Sheerwater from Arisaig, 10 miles south of Mallaig.

History

Rùm was historically the possession of the MacLeans of Coll. The island was cleared of its human population for sheep farming in 1826. The population at this time was 450. 300 were cleared and had passage paid to Canada that year, with another 100-plus the following year. The sheep venture was a failure and the island then passed in the 1840s to the Marquess of Salisbury, who converted it to a sporting estate. Although retaining many of the sheep he reintroduced the red deer which had become extinct on the island in the 18th century.
The island had a number of short-term tenants until George Bullough's father, John Bullough (a self-made millionaire cotton machinery manufacturer from Accrington, Lancashire), acquired the island in the late 1870s and continued the island's use as a sporting estate. By the time of Sir George Bullough, who built the castle in 1900, there were about 100 people employed on the estate. This included 14 under gardeners in the extensive grounds which included a nine-hole golf course, tennis and squash courts, greenhouses, turtle ponds, aviary etc.
The island was bought by the Nature Conservancy Council (now Scottish Natural Heritage) in 1957 to be a National Nature Reserve. It contains the Edwardian Kinloch Castle dwelled in by the Bulloughs, made of red sandstone from Annan, Dumfries and Galloway.

Ecology

Rùm is an important study site for research in ecology. Its red deer population has been the subject of research for many years, recently under the leadership of Tim Clutton-Brock of the University of Cambridge. The research is based at the remote bay of Kilmory in the north of the island. It has been important in the development of sociobiology and behavioural ecology, particularly in relation to the understanding of aggression through game theory, i.e. the theory of the evolutionarily stable strategy as developed by John Maynard Smith.
Rùm is also noted for its bird life — for its eagles, and especially for its manx shearwaters. These are migrating birds which spend their winters in the South Atlantic off Brazil, and return to Rùm every summer to breed in underground burrows high in the Cuillin Hills.
The island came to widespread attention with the 1999 publication of the book ''A Rum Affair'' by Karl Sabbagh, a British writer and television producer. The book told of a long-running scientific controversy over the alleged discovery of certain plants on Rùm by botanist John William Heslop Harrison — discoveries that are now considered to be fraudulent. Heslop Harrison is widely believed to have placed many of these plants on the island himself to provide evidence for his theory about the geological development of the Hebrides islands.

Television

In the summer of 2002 a reality TV show titled ''Escape from Experiment Island'' was filmed on the Island. This short-lived show (6 episodes) was produced by the BBC in conjunction with the Discovery Channel. The show was to piggyback on the success of ''Junkyard Wars'' by having the teams build vehicles to escape from the island.^[4]
In October 2006 the popular ''Autumnwatch'' series on BBC television once again attracted wider attention to this remote island, through coverage of the deer rut at Kilmory Bay on Rùm.

See also

★ Religion of the Yellow Stick

References

1. 2001 UK Census per List of islands of Scotland
2. Haswell-Smith, Hamish. (2004) The Scottish Islands. Edinburgh. Canongate.
3. Ordnance Survey
4. US gets new BBC realilty show

Further reading

★ Karl Sabbagh, ''A Rum Affair'', London: Allen Lane, 1999 ISBN 0-7139-9277-8

★ John A. Love, ''Rum: a landscape without figures'', Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2001

External links

★ Photos

★ Isle of Rum website