Catacol ( gd, Catagal) is a small village on the

Isle of Arran The Isle of Arran (; sco, Isle o Arran; gd, Eilean Arainn) or simply Arran is an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is the largest island in the Firth of Clyde and the seventh-largest Scottish island, at . Historically part of Butesh ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

Geography

Catacol is located on the north west side of the island, just a few miles along the coastal road from

Lochranza Lochranza ( gd, Loch Raonasa) is a village located on the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland. The population, somewhat in decline, is around 200 people. Geography Lochranza is the northernmost of Arran's villages and is located in t ...

that continues on to

Blackwaterfoot Blackwaterfoot ( gd, Bun na Uisge Dubh ) is a village on the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland. The village is within the parish of Kilmory. It is located in the Shiskine valley in the south-west of the island. It is one of the small ...

. It derives its name from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

, referring to the 'gully of the cat', referring to the

wildcats The wildcat is a species complex comprising two small wild cat species: the European wildcat (''Felis silvestris'') and the African wildcat (''F. lybica''). The European wildcat inhabits forests in Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus, while the ...

that may have roamed here. It is situated at the foot of Glen Catacol, a steep-sided valley down which the Abhainn Mor flows, where the river is crossed by a bridge just inland from the banks of shingle on the beach beside Catacol Bay.

Landmarks

Catacol's main feature is the row of

cottage A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a Cotter (farmer), cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager ...

s called the 'Twelve Apostles', which were completed around the middle of the 1860s. They were built to house those people cleared from the surrounding countryside, when much of the interior of the island was set aside for

deer Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...

, the hunting of which had become fashionable among the landed gentry. The theory was these former farmers evicted from the land would turn to fishing, and with this in mind, each of the twelve cottages had a differently shaped first floor window. This would allow the woman of the house to signal by placing a candle in the window to her husband while he was out fishing on the

Firth of Clyde The Firth of Clyde is the mouth of the River Clyde. It is located on the west coast of Scotland and constitutes the deepest coastal waters in the British Isles (it is 164 metres deep at its deepest). The firth is sheltered from the Atlantic ...

. The husband would know who was being signalled by the shape of the window in which the candle was lit. In reality, most of the dispossessed crofters moved away to other parts of the island in protest against their

eviction Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee (often, the prior owners who defaulted on a mortgage ...

, and the houses remained empty for two years, during which time they were known as "hungry row". The village formerly housed a hotel, the Catacol Bay Hotel, which permanently closed in September 2018. The surrounding area has grassy hills, moorland and patches of woodland in the steep-sided gullies. The Isle of Arran is the only place in which the Catacol whitebeam (''Sorbus pseudomeinichii'') is to be found. This is an extremely rare tree endemic to the area, thought to be a hybrid of the native rowan (''Sorbus aucuparia'') and the cut-leaved whitebeam (''Sorbus pseudofennica''), of which there may be only one or two surviving specimens.

References

External links

Image of the "Twelve Apostles" from the shore at Catacol
{{Arran Villages in the Isle of Arran