The house and clan

Tirindrish - traditionally a farm belonging to a tacksman, a senior figure in the MacDonell family of the Keppoch clan. This clan was particularly rumbustious and boasts the great chieftain"Col of the Cows" and the renowned "Iain Lom" celebrated Gaelic bard amongst their members. Refusing to bend to any authority, the clan regularly attracted the wrath of government and was victim to many a brutal burning by annoyed authority. Just behind Tirindrish Steading is the site of the battle of Bunroy in 1658 between the Keppoch Clan and Clan Cameron which was the last recorded clan battle.

"Bodachs" of the local farms and crofts would assemble each year to clip the sheep with handscissors, drink whisky and tell taller stories. As they aged, their skills slowed and a young man with electric shears could clip five sheep for every one by hand. He of course was sent off to the corner, with his noisy tools interrupting the conversational flow.

An enormous old wooden thresher sat in the corner of what is now the living room and would have been propelled by a steam engine on the outside of the barn. When the building was being renovated, a substantial hole was made in the wall in order to get it out - hence the enormous south facing living room windows !

The kitchen and downstairs bedroom were until recently the haunts of two old milking cows and a turnip bay. The upstairs rooms sit on what was once a flat hay loft. Old lean tos barricaded the collies of the shepherd living at Steading Cottage on the other side of the courtyard.

The narrow slit windows and large spaces still relate to the original task of this fabulous building and the thick stone walls and neat Ballachulish slate roof are testament to a time when buildings were created well to last.

If you want to know more about the area, ask the owner's father who lives up the hill at Blarour. He knows who lived in which house in the entire glen at any point in the last five hundred years - and we suspect he prefers their company!