Strontian

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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Strontian, a village in Ardnamurchan parish, Argyllshire, in the mouth of a glen on the N side and towards the head of salt-water Loch Sunart, 21 miles ENE of Tobermory, and 24 SW of Fort William. At one time a filthy clachan, it underwent in 1828 a total revolution under the direction of Sir James Riddell and his lady, and now consists of some renovated turf huts and neat slated cottages of granite. It has a post office, with money order, savings' bank, and telegraph departments, an inn, a quoad sacra parochial church, a Free church, a public school, and fairs on the Thursday before the last Wednesday of May, the Friday after the third Thursday of June, old style, and the Thursday before the last Wednesday of October. The quoad sacra parochial church was built in 1827 at the expense of Government, and contains nearly 500 sittings. Strontian House, in the vicinity of the village, is the seat of Sir Rodney Steuart Riddell, fourth Bart. since 1778 (b. 1838; suc. 1883), who holds 54, 418 acres in the shire, valued at £3673 per annum. Lead mines in the glen to the N of the village were worked from the beginning of the 18th century till 1855. They contain a great variety of very rare calcareous spars, with splendid specimens of the staurolite; and are famous for having yielded, in 1790, a metal of the alkaline earths, known ever since to naturalists as strontian, and then found in them in the form of strontites of carbonate of strontian. The quoad sacra parish is in the presbytery of Mull and the synod of Argyll. Pop. (1871) 803, (1881) 691, of whom - were in Ardnamurchan and 58 in Morvern.

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Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer