Isleornsay (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Iarmain) is a village lying off the main Armadale to

Sleat Sleat is a peninsula and civil parish on the island of Skye in the Highland council area of Scotland, known as "the garden of Skye". It is the home of the clan ''MacDonald of Sleat''. The name comes from the Scottish Gaelic , which in turn comes ...

road (the A851) on the

Isle of Skye The Isle of Skye, or simply Skye (; gd, An t-Eilean Sgitheanach or ; sco, Isle o Skye), is the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate from a mountainous hub dominated ...

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 ...

. It overlooks, but is not upon, the island of

Ornsay Ornsay is a small tidal island to the east of the Sleat peninsula on the Isle of Skye in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. Description The island provides good shelter to a natural harbour which is overlooked by the village of Isleornsay. The " ...

. The island itself shelters one of the best natural harbours in southern Skye. The location was exploited from the 18th century or earlier by the MacDonalds who owned this part of Skye. There is a hotel in the village called the Isle Ornsay Hotel and a local company ''Pràban na Linne'' founded by

Iain Noble Sir Iain Andrew Noble, 3rd Baronet, (8 September 1935 – 25 December 2010) was a businessman, landowner on the Isle of Skye and a noted Scottish Gaelic language activist. Early life Noble was born in Berlin in 1935 the son of a British dip ...

which produces a

vatted malt A blended malt, formerly called a vatted malt, or pure malt, is a blend of different single malt whiskies from different distilleries. These terms are most commonly used in reference to Scotch whisky, or whisky in that style, such as Japanese ...

whisky called ''Poit Dhubh'' (literally the "Black Pot" or "Illicit Still" and two blends, '' Té Bheag nan Eilean'' ("small

dram Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxid ...

of the islands") and ''Mac na Mara'' (the "Son of the Sea"). Ornsay was the principal location for the international bestseller, ''

The Ice Twins ''The Ice Twins'' is a 2015 psychological thriller, written by S. K. Tremayne (a pen name of British author and journalist Sean Thomas). Screenwriter Isaac Adamson has adapted the novel for a film. Plot The novel describes the troubled live ...

'', by S. K. Tremayne, published in 2015.

Emigration

Emigration from the

Highlands and Islands The Highlands and Islands is an area of Scotland broadly covering the Scottish Highlands, plus Orkney, Shetland and Outer Hebrides (Western Isles). The Highlands and Islands are sometimes defined as the area to which the Crofters' Act of 1886 ...

was endemic in the 19th century and the company that ran the Isleornsay store, MacDonald and Elder, acted as emigration agents from the early 1800s. In 1822 they advertised that they were able "to fit out transports for the conveyance of passengers from Inverness & the West Coast" of Scotland to the east coast of Canada. In the 1830s a programme of assisted passages to Australia from the Sleat peninsula was organised. The ''William Nicol'' sailed to Sydney from Isleornsay in July 1837 with 322 passengers including 70 families from Sleat. At the time it was reported that so many local people wished to emigrate that the ship could not accommodate all those who wanted to embark."Emigration"
''Comunn Eachdraidh Shlèite''/Sleat Local History Society. Retrieved 7 August 2011.

Railway

In 1898, the proposed

Hebridean Light Railway Company The Hebridean Light Railway Company proposed to operate on the Scottish islands of Skye and Lewis. The Skye line was to have connected the port of Isleornsay (for ferries from Mallaig on the Scottish mainland) and the port of Uig on the north- ...

was to have terminated at a new ferry port at Isleornsay, but the line was never constructed.

References

Populated places in the Isle of Skye {{Highland-geo-stub

Emigration

Railway

See also

References