About Us: A Family Home on Skye for Over 60 Years

My paternal grandparents were among over 400 people from the Outer Hebridean islands of Harris and Lewis who made the journey to Portnalong in 1924, as part of the North Talisker Resettlement Scheme. They came from The Bays area of Harris and built a life here from the ground up.

My maternal grandparents were Skye folk through and through — both were born and raised in Carbost. They ended up living in Eynort, where my grandfather worked as a shepherd until his retirement, when they relocated to Edinbane in the north-west of the island.

In 1962, my parents bought the croft at 8 Portnalong before their marriage and moved into the original croft house — the very building that still stands across the road from Shorefield today, where my mother lives to this day. My father worked the land whilst serving as a mash-man at the world-famous Talisker Distillery. I grew up alongside my brother and two sisters in a Gaelic-speaking home, where crofting wasn’t a job — it was simply life.

Although I’ve since moved away from Skye, my connection to this land has never left me. Shorefield itself stands on the original family croft — the same land my grandparents first settled a century ago — and I’m proud to run it as a holiday cottage so others can experience what I was lucky enough to grow up with.

Crofting remains very much alive in our family.  My brother, along with his two sons and young grandsons, carries on the crofting and Gaelic-speaking tradition today.  My mother and sister still live on the land, and our croft remains one of the last traditional working crofts in the township.