Captain Fraser’s Folly, Uig, Isle of Skye.

Captain William Fraser purchased the Kilmuir estate in the north of the Isle of Skye in 1855. For £80,000 he was reported to have acquired an estate which was ‘one of the most susceptible to improvement in the Highlands’ and one which was sure to be a ‘profitable investment’ – a euphemistic way of saying that the tenants could be evicted and the land used for more lucrative purposes. Soon after purchasing the estate Captain Fraser erected this round tower overlooking Uig Bay.

The original purpose of the tower is not clear, although it must have been both belvedere and eye-catcher. It is named simply as ‘Tower’ on the 1875 Ordnance Survey map, but it may have had a defensive purpose: it was described as a ‘Martello Tower’ in 1880 when it was bedecked with flags, and a cannon salute fired from it, to welcome a grandee to Uig. By 1882 it was in use as an office for the estate factor, and this is where the crofters came to pay their rent.

Fraser was keen to capitalise on his investment and, like other landlords involved in what became known as ‘the Clearances’, he withdrew the grazing rights of the traditional crofters and doubled their rents. The aim was to force the crofters off the land in favour of more profitable sheep-farming. Unsurprisingly there was ‘agitation’ on the estate, and the crofters demanded the return of their hillside grazing rights or a reduction in rent.

In April 1882 ‘dramatic scenes’ occurred when the crofters marched up to the tower on the day their rent was due. Led by a piper playing a ‘lustily stirring air’, they waved their money under the factor’s nose, but refused to pay a penny until their demands were met. In 1884, as the dispute dragged on, hundreds of Marines and constabulary landed at Uig with a view to ‘over-aweing the people’. In 1887 the North British Daily Mail, firmly in support of the crofters, called Fraser (by now promoted to the rank of Major) ‘the most conspicuous example of a sordid, avaricious and peremptory land-merchant, hungering for a big return on his capital’. There is not space here to tell the whole story, but eventually legislation was passed protecting the rights of tenant crofters in Scotland.

The tower had become known as Captain Fraser’s Folly, but by the later years of the nineteenth century it had a new purpose as a dwelling known simply as ‘the Tower’. In December 1908, William Ross, gamekeeper, got married and took his bride to his unusual circular home. They are recorded there in 1921, sharing their home with their son and daughter and two grandsons. When the photographer John Peat Munn visited in 1938 he found William Ross, who must by then have been in his early eighties, ‘at home’ after 45 years in the tower.

For some years the tower was in the ownership of the Uig Hotel, just across the road, but it is now in separate ownership and the ‘keep out’ signs suggest that a warm welcome will not be on offer. It can however be viewed from the roadside.

There’s an excellent history of crofting on the Isle of Skye here.

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