Isabel Frances Grant | |
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Isabel Frances Grant MBE (1887–1983) was a Scottish ethnographer, historian, collector and pioneering founder of the Highland Folk Museum.
Isabel Frances Grant | |
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Isabel Frances Grant MBE (1887–1983) was a Scottish ethnographer, historian, collector and pioneering founder of the Highland Folk Museum.
Known familiarly from childhood as 'Elsie', Grant was born in Edinburgh on 21 July 1887, but grew up with a strong sense of belonging to the Scottish Highlands and especially the area around Badenoch and Strathspey, with its ancient links to the Clan Grant. A family member of the Grants of Tullochgorm, and daughter of a colonel in the Seaforth Highlanders, [1] she was sent to London and the care of her grandfather Field Marshal Sir Patrick Grant, Goldstick-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria, and his daughter Miss Frances Gough Grant – known as 'Aunt Fan' – when her parents were posted to India. [2] It was Aunt Fan who accompanied Elsie on early visits to museums and art galleries in London, inspiring a life-long interest in material culture and collecting. [3] Later visits to folk museums in Scandinavia encouraged Elsie to dream of a museum for the Highlands and Islands that would preserve and promote a better appreciation of the rapidly disappearing material cultures and Gaelic traditions of northern and western Scotland. [4]
Grant's writing career was encouraged by the economist John Maynard Keynes, for whom she worked as a researcher. [5] Keynes published a number of articles by Grant in The Economic Review from 1912 onwards – with two appearing under her own name in 1926 and 1928. [6] A Keynesian approach to social and economic history is evident in her first book, Every-Day Life on an Old Highland Farm, 1769–82, published in 1924. [7] Books such as The Social and Economic Development of Scotland before 1603 (1930) and The Lordship of the Isles (1935) established Grant as a respected voice in the fields of ethnography and social and family history in Scotland and an important contributor to the cultural renewal and optimistic sense of national identity that was reawakened in her country as the modern Scottish Renaissance grew and developed during the 1930s and the decades after the Second World War. [8] Her work was key in helping to establish the Scottish Highlands as a serious subject for modern scholarship. [9] Other publications included: Everyday Life in Old Scotland (1931); In the Tracks of Montrose (1931); The Economic History of Scotland (1930); The Clan Grant: the Development of a Clan (1955); The MacLeods: the History of a Clan, 1200–1956 (1959); the magisterial and hugely influential Highland Folk Ways (1961); The Clan MacLeod: with their Rock-built Fortress they have Endured (1966); Angus Og of the Isles (1969).
In 1930 Grant organised and curated the 'Highland Exhibition' staged in Inverness, with some 2,100 artefacts gathered and exhibited as a 'national folk museum'. [10] She founded the Highland Folk Museum in 1935, using a personal legacy to acquire a disused former United Free Church on the island of Iona. [11] Nicknamed Am Fasgadh (Gaelic for 'The Shelter'), the Highland Folk Museum's remit was "...to shelter homely ancient Highland things from destruction", [12] and Grant collected assiduously to that end; by 1938 the collection had outgrown its home. [13] In 1939 the museum moved to larger premises on the mainland at Laggan, Badenoch: a village in the central Highlands, where Am Fasgadh was sited for the next five years. [14] The outbreak of the Second World War, and resultant restrictions on movement along the west coast and islands of Scotland, meant that Grant was unable to collect during this period, while petrol shortages contributed to a general reduction in the numbers of visitors to the museum. [15] In 1943 she purchased Pitmain Lodge, a large Georgian house, together with three acres of land near to the train station at Kingussie, about twelve miles east of Laggan, and on 1 June 1944 the Highland Folk Museum opened once again to the public. [16]
In 1939, Grant wrote in Scottish Home and Country, the magazine of the Scottish Women's Rural Institute.
I began to long for a Folk Museum for the Highlands more than fifteen years ago. I happened to go on a cruise to Scandinavia, and, like most visitors to Norway, Denmark and Sweden, was delighted with the Folk Museums - the museums devoted to the homely, everyday life of the people of these countries. One saw fine examples of the old country crafts - weaving, embroidery, woodwork and the like - the implements, furniture the people had made and used. One saw rooms, house, even villages re-erected and completely replenished, exactly as they had been when they were the homes of bygone country folk." [17]
The collections at Kingussie were developed "...to show different aspects of the material setting of life in the Highlands in byegone days" [18] and included vast arrays of objects: furniture, tools, farming implements, horse tackle, cooking and dining utensils and vessels, pottery, glass, musical instruments, sporting equipment, weapons, clothing and textiles, jewellery, books, photographs and archive papers with accounts of superstitions, stories and songs, and home-crafted items of every shape and description, including basketry, Barvas ware and treen. The site at Kingussie also enabled Grant to develop a suite of replica buildings: including an Inverness-shire cottage, a Lewis blackhouse and a Highland but-and-ben. [19] These buildings and the use of 'live demonstrations' to interpret exhibits for visitors sealed the Highland Folk Museum's popular reputation as the first open-air museum on mainland Britain. [20]
When Grant retired in 1954 ownership of the Highland Folk Museum and its collections was taken over by a Trust formed by the four ancient Scottish universities (Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St. Andrews). [21] George 'Taffy' Davidson, senior fellow in arts and crafts at the University of Aberdeen, was appointed curator in 1956 and developed the collections in parallel with his own antiquarian interests, including folk music, taking in large numbers of gifts over the coming years. [22] The next phase of the Highland Folk Museum's history began in 1975, when Highland Regional Council took over its running. Ross Noble of the Scottish Country Life Museums Trust was appointed curator and a process of modernisation began. [23] Noble introduced open, thematic displays and re-introduced live demonstrations as part of popular 'Heritage in Action' days for visitors. The museum thrived. In the early 1980s an eighty-acre site was acquired at Newtonmore – about three miles to the south of Kingussie – and work began to lay out four distinct areas: Aultlarie Croft – a 1930s working farm; Balameanach (Gaelic for 'Middle Village') – a developing community of relocated buildings; the Pinewoods – an area of forest with interlinking paths; and Baile Gean – the Highland Folk Museum's reconstruction of an early 1700s Highland township. The Newtonmore site opened to the public in 1987 and operated in tandem with Am Fasgadh until the closure of that site in Kingussie in 2007. [24] In 2011 responsibility for the day-to-day running of the Highland Folk Museum and its collections was handed over to High Life Highland – an arm's-length charity formed by the Highland Council to develop culture, health and wellbeing, learning, leisure and sports across the region. The new Am Fasgadh – a modern, purpose-built collections storage facility and conference venue – opened in 2014, and in 2015 the collections at the Highland Folk Museum received official 'Recognition' from Museums Galleries Scotland and the Scottish Government as a 'Nationally Significant Collection'.
The University of Edinburgh awarded Grant with an honorary doctorate (LL.D) in 1948 for the creation of the Highland Folk Museum. [25] In 1959, in recognition of her contributions to scholarship, she was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). [26]
Grant continued to publish late into life, and her home on Heriot Row in the New Town of Edinburgh was a popular meeting place for the capital's academics and young scholars. [27] She died in Edinburgh on 19 September 1983, and is buried at Dalarossie in Strathdearn. [28]
In November 2022 Grants' work featured in the GLEAN exhibition at Edinburgh's City Art Centre of 14 early women photographers working in Scotland. The photographs and films, that were curated by Jenny Brownrigg, included Grant, Helen Biggar, Violet Banks, Christina Broom, M.E.M. Donaldson, Ruby Grierson, Marion Grierson, Isobel Wylie Hutchison, Johanna Kissling, Margaret Fay Shaw and Margaret Watkins [29]
Badenoch is a traditional district which today forms part of Badenoch and Strathspey, an area of Highland Council, in Scotland, bounded on the north by the Monadhliath Mountains, on the east by the Cairngorms and Braemar, on the south by Atholl and the Grampians, and on the west by Lochaber. The capital of Badenoch is Kingussie.
Inverness is one of the eight cities of Scotland and is located in the Scottish Highlands, having been granted city status in 2000. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands.
James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector, and politician. He is known for the Ossian cycle of epic poems, which he claimed to have discovered and translated from Gaelic.
Kingussie is a small town in the Badenoch and Strathspey ward of the Highland council area of Scotland. Historically in Inverness-shire, it lies beside the A9 road, although the old route of the A9 serves as the town's main street which has been bypassed since 1979. Kingussie is 42 miles south of Inverness, 12 mi (19 km) south of Aviemore, and 3 mi (5 km) north of Newtonmore.
The Highland Main Line is a railway line in Scotland. It is 118 mi (190 km) long and runs through the central Scottish Highlands, mainly following the route of the A9, and linking a series of small towns and villages with Perth at one end and Inverness at the other. Today, services between Inverness and Edinburgh, Glasgow and London use the line. At Inverness the line connects with the Far North Line, the Aberdeen-Inverness Line and the Kyle of Lochalsh Line. All trains are diesel-powered.
Aviemore railway station serves the town and tourist resort of Aviemore in the Highlands of Scotland. The station, which is owned by Network Rail (NR) and managed by ScotRail, is on the Highland Main Line, 83 miles 31 chains from Perth, between Kingussie and Carrbridge, and is also the southern terminus of the Strathspey preserved railway.
Clan MacDonell of Glengarry, also known as Clan Ranald of Knoydart & Glengarry is a Scottish clan and is a branch of the larger Clan Donald. The clan takes its name from River Garry where the river Garry runs eastwards through Loch Garry to join the Great Glen about 16 miles (25 km) north of Fort William, Highland. The progenitor of the MacDonells of Glengarry is Reginald, 4th great-grandson of the warrior Somerled. The clan chief is traditionally designated as the "Son of Alexander's son".
Kingussie railway station serves the town of Kingussie, Inverness-shire in the Highland Council Area of Scotland. The station is managed by ScotRail and is on the Highland Main Line, 71 miles 43 chains (115.1 km) from Perth, between Newtonmore and Aviemore.
Newtonmore railway station serves the village of Newtonmore, Highland, Scotland. The station is managed by ScotRail and is on the Highland Main Line. The station is 68 miles 62 chains (110.7 km) from Perth, between Dalwhinnie and Kingussie, and has a single platform which is long enough for a ten-coach train. It is currently the only station on the Highland Main Line to have one platform, although the former second platform can still be seen adjacent to the first platform.
The Highland Folk Museum is a museum and an open-air visitor attraction in Newtonmore in Badenoch and Strathspey in the Scottish Highlands, United Kingdom.
The Rough Bounds, in the Scottish Highlands, is the area of West Inverness-shire bounded by Loch Hourn, Loch Shiel, and Loch Moidart, consisting of the districts of Knoydart, North Morar, Arisaig and Moidart. The area is famous for its wildness and inaccessibility and remains very sparsely populated.
Insh is a village in Highland, Scotland that lies on the east coast of the Insh Marshes. It is in the Badenoch and Strathspey area, around 3+1⁄2 miles east of Kingussie, in the Spey valley. It is located in historic Inverness-shire. The B970 road from Kingussie to Kincraig and Aviemore passes through the village. At the other side of the valley is the major A9 road from Inverness to the Central Belt. Along the road towards Ruthven Barracks is the small Speyside Distillery.
Inverness-shire is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. Covering much of the Highlands and Outer Hebrides, it is Scotland's largest county, though one of the smallest in population, with 67,733 people or 1.34% of the Scottish population.
Dr Alexander MacBain M.A., LL.D. was a Scottish philologist, best known today for An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language (1896).
Angus MacDonald (1844–1900) was a Scottish Roman Catholic priest, who later served as the first Bishop of Argyll and the Isles from 1878 to 1892 and as the third Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh from 1892 to 1900.
Coylumbridge is a small rural newly built hamlet), that lies 6 miles northeast of Dalnavert, Highland, and 3 miles southeast of Aviemore, in the valley of the River Spey, in the west Cairngorms National Park, in Badenoch and Strathspey, Inverness-shire, Scottish Highlands and is in the Scottish council area of Highland.
Inverdruie is a small rural hamlet, that lies 2 miles southeast of Aviemore, in the strath of the River Spey, in the west Cairngorms National Park, in Badenoch and Strathspey, Inverness-shire, Scottish Highlands and is in the Scottish council area of Highland.
Events from the year 1934 in Scotland.
John Gregorson Campbell was a Scottish folklorist and Free Church minister at the Tiree and Coll parishes in Argyll, Scotland. An avid collector of traditional stories, he became Secretary to the Ossianic Society of Glasgow University in the mid-1850s. Ill health had prevented him taking up employment as a Minister when he was initially approved to preach by the Presbytery of Glasgow in 1858 and later after he was appointed to Tiree by the Duke of Argyll in 1861, parishioners objected to his manner of preaching.
Mary Ethel Muir Donaldson known as M.E.M. Donaldson, was an early 20th century British author and photography pioneer, and described as an 'unconventional ethnographer'.
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