Harris (Rùm)
Harris is a deserted settlement on the south-west coast of Rùm, set in a green bay at the foot of the island’s mountains. It is best known for the Bullough Mausoleum, a tomb in the style of a Greek temple built for the family who owned Rùm and built Kinloch Castle.
History
Harris was one of the largest townships on Rùm before the island was cleared of almost all its people between 1826 and 1828, when around 400 inhabitants were shipped to Nova Scotia to make way for sheep. The ruins of their houses and the ridges of their lazy-bed cultivation can still be seen across the bay. Later, the Bullough family, Lancashire industrialists who bought Rùm in 1888, built their mausoleum here; the first Bullough tomb, lined with mosaic tiles, was blown up on the orders of Sir George Bullough, and the classical mausoleum replaced it.
Visiting
Harris is reached along a rough track of about eleven kilometres from Kinloch, crossing the island past the mountains of the Rùm Cuillin. Wild Rùm ponies and red deer graze around the bay, and the beach and mausoleum make a memorable destination for a long day’s walk.
About island abandoned villages
All abandoned villages →All over the islands of Britain and Ireland stand the roofless houses, overgrown fields and empty streets of villages whose people left. Some were cleared by landlords to make way for sheep, some emptied slowly as the young went to find work, and some, like St Kilda, were evacuated when life became too hard to…
