Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

Stornoway Harbour (shown left and above) has always been the life and soul of the Isle of Lewis. The fact that the natural harbour is extremely well sheltered has been a major reason for it's usefulness and this was a crucial factor during the peak of the herring fishing industry when the harbour was one of the largest in Europe serving the herring fleet. The herring industry was at it's peak when World War One caused it to collapse, rather than the cause being the massive numbers of Lewis men enlisting in the services (6,712 out of a total population of 29,600), it was the fact that the war stopped the trade with areas around the Baltic which accounted for most of the total market.

While the fishing industry still exists in Stornoway there is a vast difference between now and the beginning of the twentieth century when it was common for South Beach Street and Cromwell Street to be piled high with thousands of barrels of pickled herring being prepared for export. Today the barrels have been replaced by a multitude of parked cars and yet finding a free parking space in Stornoway is often a difficult task.

The photograph to the right shows the Stornoway War Memorial which is much larger than it looks here. Opened officially on Friday 24 September 1924 by Lord Leverhulme, in his last public duty on Lewis, the memorial has an arched entrance chamber (20ft high) and four other upper chambers where 23 bronze plaques, bearing the names of those lost in the war, were mounted. These plaques are, today. mounted on large granite stones displayed around the exterior of the memorial.

Many of the finest buildings to appear in Stornoway are long since gone with many replaced by more modern buildings as recently as the 1960's. One of the most interesting buildings would have been the Seaforth Lodge which used to be on the site where you can now see Lews Castle. Seaforth Lodge was the seat of the Earls of Seaforth, MacKenzies, who took over the Isle of Lewis, in 1610, from the MacLeods of Lewis. When Sir James Matheson purchased Lewis in 1844 he thought the lodge unsuitable and had it replaced with the mock-Tudor castle we see today.