Glenuig

Glenuig (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Ùige) is a small village in Moidart, Lochaber, Highland, on the west coast of Scotland. It is around 30 miles west of Fort William and 20 miles from Ardnamurchan Point.

Geography

Glenuig is a tiny community of just over thirty folk located in the parish of Moidart in remote west Lochaber. Nowadays it is taken to include the neighbouring settlements of Samalaman and Alt Ruadh, and contains 21 houses in permanent occupation plus four holiday homes. In a wider sense it includes the nearby hamlets of Roshven and Lochailort, bringing the population over a distance of eight miles to just over fifty.

Access to Glenuig by public road was only made possible in 1966, and mains electricity arrived in 1983. A growing population of young people saw the revival of Glenuig Village Hall Committee in 1982, running the village hall situated in the old School Room. In 1993 the Hall Committee changed to become Glenuig Community Association.

History

The area has been inhabited for thousands of years and the traces of these earlier residents are everywhere around. The coastal regions here are wild and rocky, but because of the warmer climate within the last two thousand years the inland areas were productive and heavily populated. In the last two hundred years, the population declined through enforced clearances of the glens for sheep and voluntary emigration from the harsher coastal regions to the new colonies, particularly Cape Breton and America.