MUSEUM MAKES HISTORY Chris Robinson 2022 is the 100th birthday of the West Highland Museum! Would you believe it? And we are celebrating this achievement (amongst other things) with a major exhibition of Stuart Paintings imported especially from Europe for a three-month Exhibition opening in August. But back to our origins – it was a series of summer exhibitions of dyeing and weaving, weapons and autographs which was our foundation from 1922 to 1924. In 1925 a major exhibition of “Prince Charles Edward and the ’45 campaign” brought together a collection of Jacobite relics, medals, paintings, documents, maps and books, and first raised the profile of the museum on the national stage. The museum was the brainchild of Victor Hodgson of Culilcheanna, Onich, whose family are still actively involved in supporting the museum. One of the first items in the collection was “The Secret Portrait” which he found in a London junkshop. It’s still one of the prize pieces in of the collection and has been loaned for exhibitions in Paris and Amsterdam over the years. In 1928 the Strange Plate was purchased at auction – a copper plate commissioned by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746 to print banknotes to pay his
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floor became the Royal Navy Officers Mess for four years. The museum building dates from about 1850 and keeping it habitable was a constant struggle. Four stoves were bought in 1937 and eventually central heating installed in 1950. As an old building, there were problems with damp, subsidence, and dry rot needing regular attention but these were finally addressed in a major redevelopment in 1996/7 with a new roof, staircase, exhibition cases and exhibition. There had once been a army. After Hodgson’s untimely proposal from a local estate death in 1929 there were some agent to buy over the difficult years. The museum museum, “because it was a attempted to purchase the valuable property”, and move it British Linen Bank Building for to the redundant fever hospital £1,000 but could only raise half close to the original Belford the money and so a crippling Hospital. This was fortunately mortgage gave concern for fended off as was a proposal to many years. Donations from demolish the upper part of the the Carnegie Trust helped but museum to allow a new relief there are repeated comments road at the back of the town! in the Annual Reports that the Footfall increased steadily Town Council gave no support over the years but dipped in whatever! some years, put down to petrol But other ingenious schemes rationing in the early fifties kept the museum going, and in 1964 to the Typhoid including annual dances which outbreak in Aberdeen! sometimes made a profit and Visitor numbers peaked sometimes didn’t. Then fund in the early seventies with raising dinners and even a busy tourist seasons – but lady’s football match in 1954 decreased thereafter as which raised £10! package holidays abroad drew The footfall was slowly visitors to the sunny south. increasing year by year with a School visits and the Saturday policy of a low entry fee until club for children became a the Second World War when regular feature and we had the most valuable items were locked away and the first a visit from the Queen and
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Lochaber Life January 2022.indd 22
03/12/2021 15:00:34
