Tanera Mòr (Scottish Gaelic: Tannara Mòr) is a sporadically inhabited island in Loch Broom in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, the largest of the Summer Isles. It was the last permanently inhabited island in that group. Tanera Mòr has issued its own postage stamps[3] and was the location of Frank Fraser Darling's book Island Years. In 2014, it was reported that it had been sold to the millionaire Ian Wace, whose plans were to develop it as a holiday destination.[3]
Geography
Looking northwards from Rubh' Ard-na-goine on Tanera Mòr. The village of Polbain can be seen on the mainland in the distance.
Tanera Mòr is around 310 hectares (766 acres) and reaches a height of 124 metres (407 feet). The highest hill is Meall Mòr (a common Scottish mountain name, meaning a "big rounded hill").
The island was a port for herring fishing, and suffered the decline of that industry. The two settlements were known as Ardnagoine and Garadheancal.
In 1881, there were no fewer than 118 people living on Tanera Mòr, all of whom had left by 1931 (one year after St Kilda was abandoned). Permanent habitation has been intermittent since then, with six people identified as resident in 1961, eight in 1981, none in 1991 and then five at the 2001 census[4][7] and four in 2011.[2] The last residents, owners Lizzie and Richard Williams, were reported to have left the island in 2014.[8]
The island was bought in the early 1960s by Ken Frampton.[9] In September 2012, it was revealed that the island's owners Lizzie and Richard Williams were considering a community buyout with residents on the mainland nearby.[10] The price to the Coigachdevelopment trust has been assessed at £2.6 million.[11] This proposal did not progress, however, and the island was placed on the open market in May 2013 for £2.5 million.[12] By 2014 the price had been dropped to £1.95 million by owners Richard and Lizzie Williams, who had moved to the mainland.[3]
In June 2017, Ian Wace purchased the island for £1.7 million, far less than the £2.5 million asking price when it was put on the market in 2013. It was reported that he would oversee a four-year development of Tanera Mòr, which could become an "idyllic retreat capable of hosting up to 60 paying guests".[13]
Facilities and infrastructure
Tanera Mòr is home to a salmonfish farm, several holiday cottages, a small sailing school, a café and a post office, which has operated its own local post and printed its own stamps since 1970.[14] The island previously had no roads and the only recognisable path went around An Acarsaid ("The Anchorage"), the sheltered bay on the east side of the island. Since 2017, the redevelopment of the island has involved the creation of several roads. Tanera Mòr, like the other Summer Isles, can be seen from the Stornoway to Ullapool ferry. The island can be reached by boat from either Achiltibuie in Wester Ross, or Ullapool.
Literary references
Tanera Mòr was the location for Frank Fraser Darling's book Island Years (published 1940), which describes experiences living on a remote island. Living in Tanera Mòr and Dundonnell before that, Fraser Darling began the work that was to mark him as a naturalist-philosopher of original turn of mind and great intellectual drive. He described the social and breeding behaviour of the red deer, gulls, and the grey seal respectively, in the three academic works A Herd of Red Deer, Bird Flocks and the Breeding Cycle and A Naturalist on Rona. The outbreak of World War II put an end to Fraser Darling's hopes of undertaking further research on the grey seal, and being too old for active military service, he chose to farm rather than leave the west coast of Scotland for wartime civilian work. Between 1939 and 1943 Fraser Darling reclaimed derelict land to agricultural production on Tanera Mòr in the Summer Isles, an undertaking described in his 1943 book Island Farm. In 1942 the wartime Secretary of State for Scotland, Tom Johnston, asked Fraser Darling if he would run an agricultural advisory programme in the crofting areas of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. He agreed, and for two years he travelled, taught and wrote articles that were later published in book form as Crofting Agriculture.
The pagan-cult island of Summerisle featured in the motion picture The Wicker Man (filmed 1973) is thought by some film critics to be set in this archipelago, although the movie itself was filmed in Galloway and Skye.
The Summer Isles feature in a novella of the same name by Ian R. MacLeod. Tanera Mòr also serves as the setting for the novella Ailie's Island by Antal Khripko (2023).
