Ballachulish Slate Quarries, Workers' Cottages

NM 81 22. Extensive remains of former slate quarries (Pl. 105A, B) are to be seen at West Laroch and East Laroch, about 3 km SE of South Ballachulish. The largest and most recently worked quarry is situated at East Laroch, where there is also a harbour formed out of banks of quarry waste. Two other quarries and a harbour exist at West Laroch, and many smaller workings can be seen above the village in the valley of the River Laroch.

Writing in 1841 the author of the New Statistical Account stated that the quarry-workers were accommodated in houses of stone and lime with slated roofs. 'The accommodation in each is three apartments, all plastered, with chimnies and grates in the principal one, and an open garret above. To most of them a cow-house is attached' (en.1). Numerous rows of cottages of this description were formerly to be seen at Laroch, and beside the road leading from Laroch to Glencoe, but few examples (Pl. 105C) remain today. A typical cottage measured 7.6 m by 6.1 m over all and incorporated a room on each side of a central entrance-doorway, together with a small closet centrally placed at the rear.

The Ballachulish slate-quarries were first opened by the proprietor, Mr Stewart of Ballachulish, about the year 1693, and a century later the industry employed 74 families numbering 322 persons, and slate was being exported to many different parts of Scotland, as well as to England, Ireland and America. Maximum production was reached during the last quarter of the 19th century, when the total labour-force rose to just under 600 men with an annual production of 26 million slates. The industry declined rapidly during the present century and the last quarry was closed in 1955.

RCAHMS 1975, visited July 1970

En.1. NSA, vii (Argyll), 25

En.2. Stat. Acct., i (1791), 499-500; NSA, vii (Argyll), 247-251; Bremner, D, The Industries of Scotland (1869), 429-432; Fairweather, B, A Short History of Ballachulish Slate Quarry (1968), passim.