Coll

From Free net encyclopedia

This article is about the Scottish island. For the letter of the Ogham alphabet, see Coll (letter).

Coll is a small island (about 21 km long and 5 km wide) in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, west of Mull. It has a population of less than 200. The island has a small village, Arinagour, from which ferries sail to Scarinish on Tiree and to Oban on the mainland.

Coll is known for its sandy beaches, which rise to form large sand dunes, for its corncrakes, and for two castles, both named Breachacha Castle. The older dates from the fifteenth century.

Coll was home to a branch of the Clan MacLean for 500 years, not all of which were peaceful. In 1590 the MacLeans of Duart invaded their cousins on Coll with the intention of taking the island for themselves. A battle was fought at Breachacha Castle where the Coll clan overwhelmed the Duarts and 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 Breachacha until 1848 when Alexander Maclean of Coll emigrated to Natal where he died unmarried.

The population of Coll was much higher in the past; in the late 1700s there were about 1,000 people supported by agriculture and fishing. During the Highland Clearances of the 1830s and 1840s, most of the population left, many of them moving to Australia, Canada or South Africa.

Image:Traigh Mhor - Isle of Coll.jpg