Rum

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Rùm (a Scottish Gaelic name which is often anglicised to Rum) is one of the Small Isles of the Inner Hebrides, administratively part of Lochaber, Highland, Scotland. For several decades the name was spelt Rhum, which was coined in the 1900s by the former owner, Sir George Bullough, because he did not relish the idea of having the title Laird of Rum. It now has no indigenous population, but is inhabited by about 30 people - employees of Scottish National Heritage and their families, together with a number of researchers, and a school teacher. All the residents live in the village of Kinloch, in the east of the island, which has no church or pub, but does have a village hall and a small primary school. It also has a small shop and post office, which is manned by volunteers and keeps irregular hours. With an area of about forty square miles, Rum is the largest of the Small Isles.

A linkspan has been recently built (2005) and this is used by the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry, MV Lochnevis, which links Rùm and the neighbouring Small Isles of Canna, Eigg and Muck, to the mainland port of Mallaig (2½ hours away). During the summer months the islands are also served by Arisaig Marine's ferry MV Sheerwater from Arisaig, 10 miles south of Mallaig.

Rùm was historically the possession of the MacLeans of Coll. The island was cleared of its human population for sheep farming in 1826. The population at this time was 450. 300 were cleared and had passage paid to Canada that year, with another 100-plus the following year. The sheep venture was a failure and the island then passed in the 1840s to the Marquess of Salisbury, who converted it to a sporting estate. Although retaining many of the sheep he reintroduced the red deer which had become extinct on the island in the 18th century.

The island had a number of short-term tenants until George Bullough's father, John Bullough (a self-made millionaire cotton machinery manufacturer from Accrington, Lancashire), acquired the island in the late 1870s and continued the island's use as a sporting estate. By the time of Sir George Bullough, who built the castle in 1900, there were about 100 people employed on the estate. This included 14 under gardeners in the extensive grounds which included a nine-hole golf course, tennis and squash courts, greenhouses, turtle ponds, aviary etc.

The island was bought by the Nature Conservancy Council (now Scottish Natural Heritage) in 1957 to be a National Nature Reserve. It contains the Edwardian Kinloch Castle dwelled in by the Bulloughs, made of red sandstone from Annan, Dumfries and Galloway.

Rùm is now an important study site for research in ecology. Its red deer population has been the subject of research for many years, recently under the leadership of Tim Clutton-Brock of the University of Cambridge. The research is based at the remote bay of Kilmory in the north of the island. It has been important in the development of sociobiology and behavioral ecology, particularly in relation to the understanding of aggression through game theory, i.e. the theory of the evolutionarily stable strategy as developed by John Maynard Smith.

Rum is also noted for its bird life - for its eagles, and especially for its manx shearwaters. These are migrating birds which spend their winters in the South Atlantic off Brazil, and return to Rum every summer to breed in underground burrows high in the Cuillin Hills.

The island came to widespread attention with the 1999 publication of the book A Rum Affair by Karl Sabbagh, a British writer and television producer. The book told of a long-running scientific controversy over the alleged discovery of certain plants on Rùm by botanist John William Heslop Harrison - discoveries that are now considered to be fraudulent. Heslop Harrison is widely believed to have placed many of these plants on the island himself to provide evidence for his theory about the geological development of the Hebrides islands.

The main range of hills on Rùm are known as the Cuillin. They are usually referred to as the Rùm Cuillin, in order to distinguish them from the Cuillin of Skye. They are rocky peaks of basalt and gabbro, similar in many ways to their better-known namesakes. Geologically, Rùm is the core of a deeply eroded ancient volcano. Two of the Cuillin are classified as Corbetts: Askival and Ainshval.

In the summer of 2002 a reality TV show titled "Escape from Experiment Island" was filmed on the Island. This short-lived show (6 episodes) was produced by the BBC in conjunction with the Discovery Channel. The show was to piggyback on the success of Junkyard Wars by having the teams build vehicles to escape from the island.

In October 2006 the popular Autumnwatch series on BBC television once again attracted wider attention to this remote island, through coverage of the deer rut at Kilmory Bay on Rum.