Morar

Having established a residence in Morar, and conscious of his tenants moving westward, Simon Lord Lovat decided that the time had come to provide ‘a more suitable place of worship than the former inconvenient and unsightly chapel at Bracara.’  The site he chose lay at the foot of Cruach Bheoraid looking across to the islands.

Then on 6 September 1887, while out shooting with the Mackintosh of Mackintosh, Lovat had a heart attack and died on the hill.  His intentions were carried forward with full vigour by the widowed Lady Alice.  Father Walker’s log for 1888 emphasised local discontent:  ‘In April the Lord Lovat Memorial Church was begun by Lady Lovat at her own expense.  The times were bad and the contractor, Mr Michie, took advantage of the circumstances of the people and paid the labourers at 14/-per week, dearly earned.

The most of the stone for the building was taken from the Kinlochmorar Quarries.  Boats were paid for carriage at the rate of 5/- and 6/- per day.  The people were displeased with this payment.’  Paul Galbraith assembled all the available detail, much of it from family sources.  Remarkably Muriel the youngest daughter, who was a Sister of Charity aged 104 at the time of the 1989 centenary, remembered men wheeling barrow-loads from boats.  Grey basalt was rowed down the loch’s twelve miles to be dressed on site by the mason Archibald Clachair MacLellan of Mallaig.