This article (presented here in a slightly edited form) originally appeared in issue 22 (July 2004) of the Society’s magazine, then known as the Journal.
Half a century ago Forester’s House was situated within Lady Lever Park, adjacent to Willowglen Road and immediately across from Canada Crescent. At that time, it was reputed to be two hundred and fifty years old, but we were never able to verify this. It was originally called Bayhead Cottage and, in my time, both postal addresses were in use. It was probably Bayhead Cottage before Sir James Matheson purchased the Isle of Lewis with his ill-gotten gains, in the mid-nineteenth century, and housed a forester in the premises.
Forester’s House comprised four bedrooms, a sitting room, kitchen-cum-living room, pantry and scullery. Eight of us, the MacIver family, lived within its walls; Calum (Calum Arnol) and Marion, our parents, together with six children, Kenny, Donny, Caley, Mary, Roddy and myself, the youngest, Alasdair. In Victorian times an average family numbered about twelve, presumably to allow for war losses, and a generation or so later six children became par for the course. Father lost an eye in the First World War and later on he was rather unkindly referred to as Goosey Eye. However, the loss of his eye gained a pension of per week which made all the difference between a needy state and sufficiency.
Our home had an eerie reputation in the community and this reputation went back for generations. On one occasion, just after the second World War, a woman stopped by to inquire if the house was still haunted. It transpired that she had emigrated to Canada in the early Twenties and said that the house had been known to be haunted way back into the nineteenth century. Growing up in such a dwelling the paranormal was accepted as the norm. The manifestations were sporadic and inexplicable. The aged paint on door hinges would protest loudly when doors opened for no apparent reason. Room temperatures would drop appreciably when a discarnate presence passed through.
One Sunday evening when father and mother were in church, Roddy, Mary and I were seated quietly on the Victorian sofa in the living room, with our cat and Skye Terrier asleep at our feet The black-leaded range glowed warmly, and peace reigned. Suddenly both the cat and dog wakened abruptly the cat screeched and sought refuge under an armchair, while the terrier, hair bristling, teeth showing, backed slowly, growling fiercely. Its head faced the door from the scullery then slowly turned until it faced the door into the rest of the house, and, after a slight pause, it dashed to this door and barked frantically. Dogs can hear sounds above the human aural range so is it totally improbable that they may also be able to see things outside our visual scope? All that we humans noticed was a drop in temperature.
On another occasion, a Saturday morning it was, when father and mother did the week’s shopping, five of us were playing in the living room, Angie (Macarthur), Boyan (Macdonald), Donny (Macleod) and Roddy and I, when footsteps were heard descending the stairs We knew that there was no one else in the house and after eleven treads on the steps downwards were counted, a muffled thud on the mat at the bottom of the stairs was heard. It was at this point that someone snapped and led the rush outside. Later, father’s explanation of the incident was that a rat had taken a potato from the store in the closet on the landing and then rolled it downstairs and carted if off to its nest. This sounded feasible until it was realized that the rat would have had to be about three feet tall in order to unsnib the closet door and then apply the snib again. Word of this manifestation got around, and many people were, thereafter, disinclined to enter the premises. On another occasion, during the early years of the war when black-our regulations were in operation, returning in the late evening from securing all the access gates to Lady Lever Park, father was dismayed to see a blaze of light emanating from a bedroom window in the west wing of the house which lit up the whole garden. Because of his agitated state, caused by this light, it did not register that an oil lamp could never have generated such a result. He rushed to the room in question and found it in darkness. Nothing can be read into the fact that, some six years later, father died in that room.
The paranormal did not blight our lives, indeed we generally ignored it and when odd sounds were heard these would be attributed, usually by Donny, to ‘The Man in the chains’. Other, lighter incidents come to mind such as the following. At the start of Second World War father acquired an Ekco wireless set which was operated by a battery and an accumulator. The latter discharged rather quickly when it to be recharged in Hilton’s shop. This wireless was the only one in the neighbourhood so several people, from the new houses in Canada Crescent, came to the nine o’clock news each evening except, of course, Sunday. When the news bulletin finished father had to translate the salient points into Gaelic, because of those present were not bilingual.
Our parents addressed us in English and always exhorted us to learn the English – “to get on” but spoke together in Gaelic. Curiosity in a child is natural and I was able to pick up some of what my parents said in Gaelic through cause and effect. Verbs and nouns would be used which led to certain actions and thus my Gaelic vocabulary increased over a period until I was able to follow what was being said well. I still understand the spoken language but, unfortunately, have never used to communicate. On one occasion, when the war at sea was at its height and many ‘Sips were being lost, one late arrival asked if anything fresh had been on the news. Father retorted that not much had been heard because the accumulator went down. Sot unnaturally this bodach asked if many lives had been lost on it! This classic made the Gazette later, probably through The Moortrotter, who had a feature in the paper each week, and who was a frequent visitor to Forester’s House.
Ch another evening when the fall of Benghazi was a headline father explained to present ‘Thuit Benghazi’ Presumably ’tuit’ has some connection with death and, as it happened, there was a man in the community nicknamed Gazzi so this dear, old woman asked if Gazzi himself was still alive. I have always envied her simple view of this world of ours.
I remember about 1937, father’s brother, Norman, was on holiday with us from Glasgow, where he served in the police force. He had been one of those who had survived the Iolaire disaster. It was wintertime and the inadequate light from the oil lamp created an atmosphere which gave his narrative of the disaster added cogency, the gamut of emotions displayed on the faces of the listeners became magnified by the shadows- I listened in the background, hanging on his every word, and the —native has remained in my mind ever since. He mentioned, if I remember that one or more men, who knew the approach to the harbour, went to the captain that the ship was on an incorrect course but were summarily off the bridge. Uncle Norman testified at the inquiry into the disaster, the result, of which was, not unexpectedly, a whitewash. Nothing, it seems, will ever change.
In the Thirties we kept several hens at Forester’s House, but the outbreak of war led to a rethink. With severe rationing in progress father decided to increase our stock of two about four dozen and buy a cow, which was quartered at the rear of the house, the hens had previously scratched contentedly. The hens were rehoused in the building beside Forester’s House, which was a very old structure and may have once had a religious function[i]. It had a flagstone floor which it was felt necessary to remove and replace with earth so that the hens could scratch at will. While this was done an axe head was found under one of the flagstones, the half of which had long since mouldered away. The axe head had a distinctly curved blade and I have often wondered if it had some gruesome function. Being a practical man, father fitted a new haft and therefore it was used for chopping winter fuel. It became one of the tasks of Roddy and I to clean out this hen-house with hoe and brush, each Saturday on a rotational basis. One memorable Saturday, just before Christmas-time, when it was my turn to clean the shed, I found that the door had been forced and the severed head of hens lay all over the place. Only the cockerel and a single hen survived and a note pinned to the door read, “We’ve robbed the rich to feed the poor but left you two to breed some more”. Father had a good idea that it the naval staff in the castle, which had been converted into a naval hospital, were the culprits. This became even more certain some days later when our cow disappeared. Father eventually found it secreted in a sheltered spot behind the castle where it had served as a source of free milk. Being an ex-naval man himself he must have had words with the right people for we were never bothered again. I began to wonder at that time if we were, perhaps, fighting the wrong enemy.
The strict rationing system resulted in us becoming hunter-gatherers during the war years. Rivers, loch and the sea provided us with fish all year round and rabbits became a staple part of our diet, together with venison and mutton provided by kind friends and relations. In fact our diet during that period was the healthiest in my life. A curious experiment was carried out by father, in the early Forties, when he put a clutch of mallard eggs under a broody hen. When the eggs hatched it was hilarious when the young chicks followed nature and took to the Glen River leaving a bewildered hen rushing frantically along the bank in pursuit. The mallard chicks became our pets and, if I remember correctly, none was ever consumed although father had a ready supply of material for his salmon flies. Despite their wings being trimmed regularly all the birds, sadly escaped into their natural element but each year thereafter returned to breed in the bullrushes near the Porters Lodge or, as we called it, Bayfields. I wonder if they still do?
Forester’s House, despite its atmosphere, was a grand place in which to grow up. We had the whole of the Castle Grounds as our playing fields, and we knew every inch. There were always interesting places to go and absorbing things to do and we certainly made the most of it. The happy memories have stayed with me all my life it was also a lucky house in that three brothers went to war, and all returned. Kenny served in S.O.E[ii], Donny flew Liberators for Coastal Command and Caley joined the Lovat Scouts and was the only one of his intake of about five hundred to survive the war apart from a man from the Black Isle who was invalided out minus both legs
The Glen River, which flowed by quite close to our house, periodically rose alarmingly even flooding the house on one occasion, which was before my time. The wooden bridge at the Glen was usually the first to be washed down the river in the spate and this, of course, crashed into the one by our house and took it downstream. Until a replacement bridge could be constructed a stout plan of wood, about eighteen inches wide, served in its stead One Saturday evening, as was his wont, Billy Red came strutting up the road from town, through the grounds, four sheets in the wind. He came upon this plank and stopped to consider the situation. We stood watching from a convenient window thinking he would not dare it and then betting he would not make it, when he started swaying across. Just when it looked as if he was home and dry he pitched into the stream, which was no longer in spate, and after a pause his long, white beard appeared and he dragged himself out and proceeded out our gate, dripping mightily and cursing profusely. Presumably he was sober by the time he reached Bennadrove. I am afraid we all rather enjoyed his discomfiture.
Towards the end of its days, in the Fifties, it was suggested that Forester’s House be turned into a museum. This project, unfortunately, fell through, probably because of the cost involved. In the end the house was demolished[iii], together with the building beside it. Presumably the discarnate entities sought quieter haunts. I would dearly like to know the early history of Bayhead Cottage, and the function of the interesting old building that was adjacent to it. Someone somewhere should have this information. There are now just two of us MacIver’s remaining, Kenny, the eldest of the issue being the other. Maybe Forester’s House attuned me to the paranormal, or possibly I have an over-active pineal gland, because odd experiences stayed with me through life, even in some odd corners of the world, but that is another story
Alasdair Maclver
[i] The building, often mistaken for a chapel, was likely a nursery for tree saplings. The censuses from the middle to late 19th century describe it as a nursery. This ruin was finally demolished in 1983.
[ii] The MacIver brother’s WW2 service included Kenny, an agent for the Special Operations Executive in occupied Europe; Donny was a Sgt in the RAFVR Coastal Command and Calum was a Trooper with the Lovat Scouts serving in Italy. All the family were known by their father’s nickname ‘Goosey’.
[iii] Foresters House was demolished in 1966. It likely dated from the early Matheson era.