The area has a very rich history, much of it familiar to people the world over. We include here just a few snippets. The local museums and visitors' centres have very interesting displays and information available if you would like to know more.

The Hotel History

I have been thinking for some time about the hotel’s long history and how nice it would be to have the time to delve into its long and interesting past.

Ballachulish means village on the narrows. There has always been a settlement here at the narrows as far back as Neolithic times as the soil was fertile from the deposits brought down after the last ice-age and it was the most likely place to cross. There is evidence of Crannog constructions in the backfield behind the hotel that was once a fresh water pond. These early buildings were constructed on water as some protection from marauding tribes.

In the early days and right up to the nineteen hundreds, the crossing would only be possible at high or low tides. The old drovers would have their animals swim across while they would cross in little curricles (small wooden framed boats wrapped in leather) Since there would often be time to wait before a crossing could be made, the need for temporary shelter, an inn and a stable, arose. The original stone building, the Ferryman’s Cottage is still evident. This would have had a heather thatch. Of this building, only a wall and a gable end have survived. This early building was added to over the centuries and would have been the original inn.

The beginning of the Loch Leven Hotel, four hundred years or so ago would have been the old bar and the old cellar. There is evidence of an old flight of stairs leading to the original rooms, Room 6 and Rooms 4 and 5, which were probably one room. From the roof configuration and the awkward upstairs corridor, you can see that Rooms 8 and 9 and the cellars, kitchens and stores beneath were probably of later construction. The kitchen and Room 9 shared a chimney.

This would have been a very poor time in Scotland with much oppression and famine. In this time the old inn owners farmed the land as well, with the ancient ferry crossing to augment their income. This was the time James of the Glen was hung, his skeleton later wired together in chains remaining on the gallows on the promontory above the crossing for all travellers to see, grim times indeed!

Later, with the dawning of a more affluent and enlightened age, the fast stagecoach would take passengers up to Fort William. There would be several staging posts at 10 to 15 miles intervals, Kingshouse in Rannoch Moor and the Ballachulish Hotel in Argyllshire to change horses and bring shelter and refreshment for the passengers. The passengers would then cross in a rowboat and take up their journey with the Fort William coach and fresh horses at the Loch Leven Hotel. There was no other way up the westcoast as the high road to Kinlochleven was not built until the early nineteen hundreds.

These would have been the glory days when the third phase of the hotel was built, the Victorian bit of the hotel with the bay window to the south, the original Resident’s Lounge, now Room 2 and the Dining Room and Drawing Room out to the west with the best views over Loch Linnhe to the hills of Ardgour. The old Resident’s Lounge had a grand piano where guests would adjourn for social evenings!

This remained unchanged and when the affluent travellers turned up in their chauffeur driven cars and the early trucks and lorries, they had to be taken over individually at high or low tide until the old rowboat with its running board was replaced by a motorised boat that could plough the narrows whatever the state of the tide. This too was superseded with the six-car passenger ferryboat, two of which would cross the water dealing with the growing number of cars and lorries until the bridge was finally completed in 1975. We have a very interesting picture of the hotel before the bridge was built. It could take up to two hours to cross and as long to go the long way round the loch and people would look at the queue and debate which was the best option! The road was twenty miles of single-track road.

We have found two rather wonderful videos of the ferry crossings in both 1926 and 1962:

I have spoken to many who remember the hotel when it was a farm as well. During the war the hotel farm played its part with the war effort and land army girls were posted here.  The old outbuildings were an assortment of cotter houses for the farm labourers, milking sheds, a pig sty, hen houses, barns and stables. The Clydesdales horses that pulled the plough lived in what is now the Capercaillie. They were called Vic and Bess.

This old stable building had been called into service as many things. It was once a Steak House, even a bowling alley and then a dance hall. Many of the locals remember fondly the Ceilidhs that were held there. Now we are waiting permission to turn it into a bunkhouse with central heating, drying facilities, its own kitchen with washing machine and tumble dryer and the all-important Wifi access! It has come a long way from its original residents!

The 1745 Rising

The historical event most closely associated with the Lochaber area has to be the second Jacobite Rising of 1745. It was at nearly Glenfinnan that Prince Charlie raised his standard to rally the Clans and set out on the romantic but ill-fated quest for the crown of his fathers. Although his dream lay shattered on the moor at Culloden in the spring of 1746, it was undoubtedly the greatest campaign in the history of the Highlands. The story, which started in Lochaber, also ended here. It was among the rugged hills and glens of this district that the fugitive Prince took refuge, protected and sheltered by the loyal Clans until he could be smuggled over to the Isle of Skye by Flora MacDonald, before finally reaching the safety of France and living out his life as an exile around Europe.

It is a humbling thought that despite the fact that so many Highlanders were slain in battle, many more were butchered in the aftermath of Culloden and so many were brought to ruin and lost their lands – and with a price of £30,000 on his head (the equivalent of a Lottery win today) – no-one betrayed their Prince.

The Appin Murder

This event was made famous by Robert Louis Stevenson in his novel Kidnapped. A granite monument to the south of the Ballachulish Bridge marks the spot where James of the Glen was hanged in 1752 for "... a crime of which he was not guilty".

Appin was Stewart country, and after the '45 Rising, the Stewart lands were confiscated by the Government. Colin Campbell of Glenure was the Government Factor in Appin and for years he had been evicting Stewart tenants from their crofts on the more productive lands and replacing them with Campbells.

On the day of the murder, Colin Campbell and his party crossed the Ballachulish ferry armed with eviction orders; yet more Stewarts were to be removed from Appin. They rode along the coast road through Kentallen and it was here that Campbell was shot in the back by an unknown assailant who made his escape without being seen.

At the time of the shooting James of the Glen, who had himself been evicted from his farm in Glen Duror, was sowing oats on his smallholding in Acharn and was the first person encountered by Campbell's servant who had gone looking for help. As an important Campbell had been murdered, James, an outspoken critic of the evictions and a half-brother of the exiled chief of the Stewart clan, was arrested to satisfy the Campbells' need for revenge. James's trial is remembered in the Highlands as a notorious case of legal injustice. At this time, the Campbells were the Hanoverian Government's Scottish agents. The trial took place at Inverary before the Duke of Argyll, the Lord Justice General in Scotland and the Chief of the Campbell clan.

The Duke chose the jury, which included 11 Campbells, and, with no evidence of guilt produced, the inevitable result was that James Stewart was hanged at Ballachulish on 8th November 1752. He was hung at the crossing place on the loch so all who passed there would see him as a warning. His body was chained up and left hanging there under guard for two months until it was reduced to bare bones and started falling apart. The bones were then wired together again and re-hung. It was late the following year before his bones were finally laid to rest. It is generally accepted that the name of the real murderer was known to the leading Stewarts of Appin, and that this secret has been handed down through the generations. Because the outcome was that an innocent man was allowed to hang for a murder he did not commit, it is unlikely that this secret will ever be divulged.

The Massacre of Glencoe, 13 February 1692

This treacherous event, which is never likely to be forgotten, is first recalled whenever the name of Glencoe is mentioned. It was the premeditated, pre-planned annihilation of the MacDonalds of Glencoe – connived at by those in public office as instruments of the Government – and then the treachery under which the attempted massacre was carried out, that caused such shockwaves of disgust and anger throughout Scotland.

The museum in Glencoe village and the National Trust for Scotland Visitors' Centre in the Glen have all the details for those not familiar with this affair and the events leading up to it. The facts record that when the corpses were counted there were only 38. With an estimated 400 MacDonalds living in the Glen, the planned mass annihilation obviously failed. To this day, on 13th February each year, a band of MacDonalds gather in the shadow of the Celtic Cross by the old Bridge of Coe in memory of those who were slaughtered that day. The sad, ironic twist in the history of the Glen is that a clan which had survived extinction by a Government-planned massacre was eventually decimated in 1820 by the advent of the sheep and the resultant clearances.

Further History

The history of Glencoe and Loch Leven spans over 5000 years. Behind the Hotel was a shallow inland loch, now infilled with peat. This peat has preserved the remains of posts or stilts which indicate that people may have lived here in crannogs. (Crannogs were houses built on stilts in shallow water.)

Alternatively,the site could have been a ritual platform, as close by there are the remains of a chambered cairn and further on there is a standing stone. There is evidence of an early flint factory (Neolithic age 4 - 2000 BC) in North Ballachulish. The most significant find (again, found in the woods beside the Hotel) is the "Ballachulish Goddess", a wooden figurine about 4 feet in length found in the 1890s and since dated at 626 BC. The Goddess can be seen in the Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. There are few Viking place names in the area, but the strategic nature of the narrows in front of the Hotel and the fertility of the surrounding areas would surely have made it a must for the Vikings.