March 2008 Heritage Feature: 'Am Fasgadh' book review

‘The Making of Am Fasgadh’ is a re-issue of Isabel Grant’s personal account of her experiences in creating Am Fasgadh, which is now the Highland Folk Museum at Kingussie and Newtonmore. A joint initiative by the European Ethnological Research Centre and the National Museums Scotland in its Flashback series, to showcase significant works which are out of print, this latest publication offers us insights in to the pioneering work of a museum curator, the vanishing way of life in the Highlands, and the personality of an incredible woman. This is the story of Isabel Grant’s vision, her pursuit of that vision, and the very tangible consequences, to which we in the 21^st century owe her an immense debt. Without the tenacity and drive of this woman on a mission, much of the history and the material culture of the Highlands would have vanished without trace. Her accounts of objects destroyed merely days before she attempted to retrieve them, are a poignant reminder of the debt we owe her.

Recounted as a history of the creation of Am Fasgadh, the book opens by explaining her motive for its establishment. Inspired by visits to the national museums in London and to the open air museums in Scandinavia, and spurred on by her abiding interest in the lives and ways of living of her fellow Highlanders, Isabel Grant sought to collect items which reflected what was to become a rapidly dying out way of life. Initially Isabel Grant had hoped that an exhibition which she had created in Inverness would have become a permanent museum. Despite this not occurring, undaunted she set out to continue her collecting activities. Her accounts of these are filled with perceptive insight and a gentle sense of humour which makes the book highly readable. For example, when discussing her discovery that some people were not only indifferent to relics of the past, but were ashamed of them, she recounted the tale of a man who having listened to her account of her collecting attempts, said that he had a few old things in his house. In her own words,

He mentioned a goffering iron, then he became more and more embarrassed. Then he said that he had something else that he would really not like to show to a lady like me. I pressed him, and he became increasingly unwilling to show it to me. As a well-brought-up spinster, I began to wonder what kind of object of depravity he would show me. (p. 61)

The object of depravity turned out to be a flat wooden platter with a wicker-work edge, which was used to drain the potatoes from the pot which hung above the fire. Equally, her anecdotes about progress and a vanishing way of life are gently amusing. One such anecdote relates to one of her trips to Skye,

I cannot resist recalling one more memory of Iona. In those ‘pre-War’ days it was rather dashing for women to don slacks. A few would-be dashers so attired were waiting to be taken on one of the cruises round the island by a local man. As they giggled with such male friends as they had made, a girl in a grey skirt came down to the jetty, stepped into a dinghy moored there, put out to sea, raised a mast, hoisted a sail and was off and away as quietly and as naturally as a sea-bird takes wing. Meanwhile the dashing young women were being handed onto the motor boat like a group of sheep. I felt proud that I knew that girl. (p. 37)

Eventually, the collection had grown to such an extent that it needed a home. Equally, Isabel Grant wanted to share her passion with the general public, and in 1935 she bought a disused church in the Isle of Iona, and established Am Fasgadh, Gaelic for ‘the shelter’. After five years, she moved the collection to Laggan, where much of the time it was kept in store, while Isabel Grant contributed to the war effort by acting as a researcher for Maynard Keynes. After the war she returned to her passion with a vengeance, and needing a bigger home for her collection, she moved to Pitmain House in Kingussie, where the collection remains to this day.

Eventually Isabel Grant’s collection passed in to the hands of the old Scottish universities, and now it is owned and managed by Highland Council. What Isabel Grant does not fully acknowledge in this account is the significance of her undertaking. Her ambition has been more than matched, with the Kingussie site being added to by a large open air site at Newtonmore. Her legacy is immense, in terms of her collection, of her writings about her collection which add significantly to our understanding of the material, and her creation of what has become an exemplar museum. Reading this book enables us to appreciate that Isabel Grant basically single-handedly created this innovative museum, which in its time was at the forefront of museological practices, in the representation of its objects, in its open air museum approach, and also in the inclusiveness of its opening by welcoming all visitors, from Aneurin Bevan to a group of inebriated Glasgow-Irish navvies.

A visit to the Highland Folk Museum will still give the visitor a flavour of the museum originally created by Isabel Grant, with an exhibit of her original collection in keeping with the style she would have used, and of course the display which is largely developed from her materials. Subsequent curators, notably Ross Noble and Bob Powell, have set their own imprint on the museum, one with which I am sure Isabel Grant would cast a critical eye, and a proud one. The legacy of Isabel Grant lives on in the Highland Folk Museum, and this book is a timely reminder of the significance of her achievement.

Review of ‘The Making of Am Fasgadh’

Author: Isabel Frances Grant

Published by NMS Enterprises Limited

192 pages, ISBN 978-1-905267-20-0

Paper back, price £8.99