Coll

Geography and geologyEdit

Coll is about 13 miles (20 km) long by 3 miles (5 km) wide and has a population of around 195. Coll's sandy beaches rise to form large sand dunes. The highest point on Coll is Ben Hogh in the mid west of the island, a ridge with two tops running NW/SE, which rises initially to a height of 104 metres (341 ft) with a triangulation pillar, and to 106 metres (348 ft) 450 metres (492 yd) to the southeast.

SettlementsEdit

Arinagour (Scottish Gaelic: Àirigh nan Gobhar), is the main settlement on the island located at the head of Loch Eatharna, on the east coast. Other inhabited locations include:

EtymologyEdit

Coll is sometimes derived from Gaelic coll, 'hazel'. However, this does not match the early recorded forms of the name. The name of Coll is given as Colosus in the Life of St Columba by Adamnán, the seventh century abbot of Iona. As /s/ between vowels had been lost in Celtic before Adamnán's time, Watson suggests that Colosus may represent a pre-Celtic name. Richard Coates has proposed that the name may be related to Greek kolossós and may have referred to a humanoid standing stone located on the island, like those still seen on North Uist and Lewis. As Kolossós is not originally a Greek word, Coates suggests that the name could have been given to Coll at a time when the kolossói of Mediterranean culture were well-known, or named "by speakers of a language in which the ancestor of the word was the native term." In Icelandic, the word kollur (Old Norse: kollr, Norwegian: koll or kolle) means "a rounded protrusion, such as a rounded mountaintop, or a tussock".

HistoryEdit

Coll was home to a branch of the Clan Maclean for 500 years, not all of which were peaceful. In 1583 the Macleans of Duart invaded their cousins on Coll with the intention of taking the island for themselves. A battle was fought at Totronald near Breacachadh Castle where the Coll clan overwhelmed the Duarts, chopped off their heads and threw them in the stream, which is still known as "the stream of the heads". The Macleans of Coll retained their baronial fief and Castle of Breacachadh until 1848 when Alexander Maclean of Coll emigrated to Natal, South Africa where he died unmarried.

In 1549 Dean Monro wrote of "Coll" that it was "ane mane fertile Ile inhabite and manurit, with an castell and ane paroch kirk in it, gude for fishing and fowlers, with ane utter fine Falcons nest in it".

Coll, like other Hebridean islands, has several crannógs (artificial islands) located in some of its lochs. One such crannog is Dun Anlaimh, which is thought to date to at least the later Middle Ages. Local tradition states that the dun was the fortress of a Norse chieftain who was defeated in battle by the Macleans.

Breacachadh Castle on the south coast dates from the 15th century. It was restored by Nicholas Maclean-Bristol, founder of Project Trust. An 18th-century mansion house stands nearby.

The population of Coll was much higher in the past. In the late 18th century there were about 1,000 people supported by agriculture and fishing. During the Highland clearances of the 1830s and 1840s, half the population left, many of them moving to Australia, Canada or South Africa. The population at the time of the 2001 census was only 164 but by 2011 the island's population was 195 as recorded by the 2011 census an increase of nearly 19%. During the same period Scottish island populations as a whole grew by 4% to 103,702.

TransportEdit

There are only two main roads on Coll. The main hub of the island is the island's largest settlement—Arinagour. Just over a kilometre (0.7 miles) south of Arinagour is the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry terminal. The ferry travels from Oban to Coll to Tiree; and a return trip from Tiree, to Coll, to Oban. The ferry between Oban and Castlebay on Barra goes via Coll and Tiree once a week.

The airport on the island, (IATA: COL) is located between Uig and Arileod. Highland Airways who originally operated the route to Oban went into administration in 2010, but a new operator, Hebridean Air Services now operates the route under a PSO with flights to Oban, Tiree and Colonsay. The aircraft used for the flights are a BN2 Islander (G-HEBS). Hebridean headquarters are at Cumbernauld Airport, North Lanarkshire.

EconomyEdit

In July 2012, Princess Anne formally opened the Isle of Coll's new community centre, An Cridhe, and hostel, Coll Bunkhouse. Owned and managed by the community-led organisation Development Coll, the new facilities were built to provide much needed amenities on the island and a social hub for the local community. An Cridhe now hosts a series of annual events such as a half marathon, the Coll Show, a basking shark festival, a bird festival and a chamber music festival, as well as a range of music, comedy, theatre and dance throughout the year.

In December 2013 Coll secured 'dark skies' status, only the second location in Scotland to do so. The island has no street lights and little other light pollution, allowing spectacular views of the night sky on clear nights. In winter the Northern Lights are often visible.

The charity Project Trust, which organises overseas volunteering and gap-years, has been based on the island since 1974.

WildlifeEdit

There is an extensive RSPB reserve towards the west end of the island. One of the main attractions is the rare corncrake. Traditional local farming practices have helped this once common British bird survive.

In 2010, a colony of short-necked oil beetles was found on the island. The beetle, thought to be extinct in the UK, is now known only to occur in southern England and Coll. It is parasitic on ground-dwelling bees, and is also flightless, raising the question of how it arrived on the island. It does not appear to be found on neighbouring Tiree, possibly because of a difference in terrain. Modern farming methods had partly caused its demise elsewhere.

In fictionEdit

Mairi Hedderwick, the illustrator and author, used to live on Coll and has used the island as the setting for her Katie Morag series of children's books. In the books, Coll is known by the fictional name of the Isle of Struay.

In Alexander McCall Smith's The Charming Quirks of Others the protagonist, Isabelle Dalhousie, discusses Coll as a place for a honeymoon.