Architecture Notes

Event ID 820894

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Architecture Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/820894

Port Ellen Harbour:

ENGINEERS: L.Gordon and L.Hill - improvements 1845

PLANS: Copy of plan in possession of Mrs Ramsay of Kildalton.

(Undated) unformation in NMRS.

This village was founded in 1821 by Walter Frederick Campbell and was named Port Ellinor or Eleanor in honour

of his wife, the name being later abbreviated to Ellen. (Storrie 1981; MacNeill) It was established principally as a herring fishery and the planned settlement was formed around the natural haven of Loch Leodamais. According to Lord Teignmouth, the expectations of a successful fishery along this coast were initially disappointed, and in 1836 he noted that although 'several tradesmen have settled, . . . none of them thrive as yet, except masons and wrights, who are employed in building the houses'. (Teignmouth) However, as a local centre of communications which served a number of distilleries in the district. Port Ellen grew thereafter to become the largest single community on the island, having a population of about one thousand for the rest of the 19th century. (New Statistical Account 1845; Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer; Islay Stent Book; MacNeill) The layout of the village in its early stages can best be appreciated by reference to a plan which was drawn up in 1838. (Islay Estate Papers)

The layout comprises a series of terraced rows of houses ranged around the shore of Loch Leodamais; two

principal roads, Charlotte Street and New Street (later Lennox Street), radiate NW and NE respectively from this

crescent, and a lane gives access to the quay on the W side of the bay. Individual house-frontages are shown as

conforming to a standard width of about 10.2m and most of them are associated with an area of garden ground at the

rear. Access-lanes ran behind the rear garden-walls, and the four-acre lots lay mainly to the E and NE of the village.'

There is much evidence of later developments in and around this original scheme, but a number of early houses

still survive relatively unaltered in external appearance, especially on either side of Charlotte Street. These are for the most part plain two-storeyed structures with symmetrical three-bay frontages, measuring up to about 10.6m in width

and constructed of harled or rendered rubble masonry with painted margins and slated roofs. The only group of early

single-storeyed cottages that survives relatively intact forms part of a stepped terrace, originally known as 'Fisher Row',

on the E side of the bay. Each cottage has a high wall-head to accommodate a loft.

RCAHMS 1984, visited August 1977.