Shiant Isles
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The Shiant Isles (Scottish Gaelic: Na h-Eileanan Mora), also known in Gaelic as "The Enchanted Isles" (Na h-Eileanan Seunta) are a privately owned island group in the Minch, east of Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The main islands are Eilean Garbh and Eilean an Tighe, which were inhabited until 1901 and are actually joined by a narrow isthmus, and Eilean Mhuire.
The islands are known for their dolerite columns, similar to those on Staffa, and for their population of seabirds, threatened only by black rats.
Author Compton MacKenzie owned the islands in the 1920's. In the 1930s they were acquired by Nigel Nicolson, then an undergraduate at Oxford, later a writer, publisher and politician. Nicolson's son, the writer Adam, published the definitive book on the islands, Sea Room. The Shiants now belong to Adam's son Tom. The simple bothy restored by Nigel Nicolson on Eilean an Tighe is currently the only habitable structure on the islands.
[edit] Bibliography
- Nicolson, Adam (2001). Sea Room: an island life. Harper Collins. ISBN 0002571641.
[edit] External links
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