Rhu Peninsula

From the 13th century, the peninsula was part of the lands of the Clanranalds. In 1827, Ranald George Macdonald, the 20th Chief of Clanranald, sold the peninsula to his second wife Ann Selby, Lady Ashburton for £48,950. In 1835, Selby bequeathed it to her nephew, Lord James Cranstoun, who removed most of the tenants, who were mostly Roman Catholic and turned it into a sheep farm. Most of the tenants emigrated to Australia. Cranstoun subsequently sold it to Hugh Mackay of Bighouse, who sold it in 1848 to a Lancashire industrialist, who by 1853 had reforested 3000 acres of it, for deer hunting. This accelerated the clearances. In 1841 there were 134 people living on the peninsula, but by the…