North Rona
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| North Rona | |
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| Location | |
  North Rona
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| North Rona shown within Scotland. | |
| OS grid reference: | HW811323 |
| Names | |
| Gaelic name: | Rònaidh
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| Area and Summit | |
| Area: | 109 hectares.. |
| Area rank (Scottish islands): | 143 |
| Highest elevation: | Toa Rona 108 m |
| Population | |
| Population (2001): | 0
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| Groupings | |
| Island Group: | North Atlantic |
| Local Authority: | Outer Hebrides |
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| References: | [1][2][3] |
Rona (or Rònaidh in Gaelic) is a remote Scottish island in the North Atlantic. Rona is often referred to as North Rona in order to distinguish it from South Rona.
The island lies 71 km (44 miles) north north east of Butt of Lewis and 16 km (10 miles) east of Sula Sgeir. More isolated than St Kilda, it is the remotest island in the British Isles to have ever been permanently inhabited. It is also the closest neighbour to the Faroe Islands. Due to the island's remote location and small area, it is omitted from many maps of the United Kingdom.
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[edit] History
Rona is said to have been the residence of Saint Ronan in the eighth century. The island continued to be inhabited for many hundreds of years. However the entire population of thirty died shortly after 1685 after an infestation by rats, probably the Black Rat Rattus rattus, which reached the island after a shipwreck. The rats raided the food stocks of barley meal and it is possible the inhabitants starved to death, although plague may have been a contributory factor. The rats themselves eventually starved to death, the huge swells the island experiences preventing their hunting along the rocky shores.[4]
It was resettled, but again depopulated by around 1695 in some sort of boating tragedy, after which it remained home to a succession of shepherds and their families, until 1844 when it was deserted. Sir James Matheson, who bought Lewis in 1844, offered the island to the Government for use as a penal settlement. The offer was refused.
Although farmers from Lewis have continued to graze sheep on Rona ever since, the island has remained uninhabited, apart from one brief and gruesome episode in 1884-5. In June 1884, two men from Lewis, having reportedly had a dispute with the minister of their local church, went to stay on Rona to look after the sheep. In August, boatmen who had called at the island reported that the men were well and in good spirits, and had refused offers to take them back to Lewis. In April 1885, the next people to visit Rona made a grim discovery: the bodies of the two men from Lewis, who, a post-mortem subsequently showed, had each fallen ill and died during the winter.
The island was occupied temporarily in 1938-1939 by Frank Fraser Darling with his wife Bobbie and their son Alasdair, while they studied the Grey Seals and the breeding seabirds.
The island still boasts the Celtic ruins of St Ronan's Chapel. It is owned by Scottish Natural Heritage, and managed as a nature reserve, for its important grey seal and seabird colonies. These include the European Storm-petrel and the larger Leach's Storm-petrel, for which North Rona is an important breeding station. Rona and Sula Sgeir form the most remote and least-visited National Nature Reserve in Britain.[5]
In Island at the edge of the world, the poet Kathleen Jamie describes a recent visit to the island.[6]
The island hosts an automatic light beacon, remotely monitored by the Northern Lighthouse Board.[7]
[edit] Bibliography
- Island Going by Robert Atkinson (Collins, 1949)
- A Naturalist on Rona: essays of a biologist in isolation by Frank Fraser Darling (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1939)
- Island Years by Frank Fraser Darling (G. Bell & Sons, 1940)
- Rona, the Distant Island by Michael Robson (Acair, 1991)
[edit] Citations and footnotes
- ^ 2001 UK Census per List of islands of Scotland
- ^ Haswell-Smith, Hamish. (2004) The Scottish Islands. Edinburgh. Canongate.
- ^ Ordnance Survey
- ^ Fraser Darling, F. & Boyd, J.M. (1969) Natural History in the Highlands and Islands. London. Bloomsbury. Pages 73-4
- ^ Scottish Natural Heritage - In the Lap of Wild Ocean. Retrieved 28 June 2007
- ^ Island at the edge of the world
- ^ Overview of North Rona. Gazetteer for Scotland. Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
[edit] External links
- North Rona - Special Area of Conservation
- Rona and Sula Sgeir - Scotland's National Nature Reserves
- Charles Tait Photographs of North Rona
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