Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 564320
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/564320
Loch Quoich Dam, Shearer and Annand, 1955, engineers, Sir William Halcrow and Partners The largest of its kind when built for the North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board, at 12 5 ft high and 1,050 ft long. Filled with earth, reinforced with concrete and faced with natural stone, it raised the loch by 100 ft and increased its surface from 3 to 7 square miles. Before the widespread clearances of the 1780s, the shores of Loch Quoich were fringed with settlements and good grazing land. Today, broken drovers' tracks and a lonely march of pylons carrying power for Glenelg and Skye are the principal features of the empty, rock-scarred landscape. Edwin Landseer was among many fashionable sportsmen who came here in the 19th century, and his best known paintings were inspired by the red deer of Glen Quoich. The flooding of Loch Quoich destroyed Glenquoich Lodge, built for Edward Ellice MP (Senr) in 1838; extended by Alexander Ross c.1900 for Lord Burton of Dochfour (a tenant from 1873-1905, who poured money into the place). Situated near the mouth of Allt Coire Peitireach, it started life fairly spartan, 'furnished in the simplest manner, with cane-bottomed chairs and iron bedsteads', but became one of the most fashionable shooting lodges of its day.
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
