![]() ![]() They greatly expanded the business, won awards for the improved accommodation and service, and were awarded a Michelin Star for the restaurant food in 1998. The hotel was bought by Mark and Gerry Irvine in 1986 from Mark’s father. The Hydroponicum became famous and still features on the Ordnance Survey maps it closed in 2006 and was demolished in 2013. Robert also built the Hydroponicum to grow vegetables, herbs and soft fruit using hydroponics – no soil, just water. In 1969 it was bought by Robert Irvine who expanded the accommodation and branched out into smoking his own fish this was spun off as a separate business known as The Smokehouse. The hotel was built as a fishing inn for the Cromarty Estates around 1860. In the 1930s and 1940s, Tanera Mor was the site of some famous agricultural experiments undertaken by Frank Fraser Darling who went on to spread the knowledge gained from them through the crofting communities of the Highlands and Islands. The Summer Isles acquired that name because that was where the local crofters used to transport their sheep for the summer grazing. Tanera Mor, the largest of the Summer Isles, now has a tiny permanent population but in the 19th century supported over 100 inhabitants. Ruins of settlements, both within and outwith the boundaries of the present five main villages and the 7 or so other places with inhabited houses, can still be seen. Emigration has continued firstly to the West Indies and the American Colonies, then to USA and Canada and more recently to Australia. ![]() The various waves of the Highland Clearances badly affected the area and several generations of its people. There are a number of prehistoric traces. The area has been inhabited from very early times. subsistence-farming, and fishing, with anything from the outside world that was required being brought in by boat. It was peopled mainly by Mackenzies, MacLeods and Campbells, who lived from crofting, i.e. The Coigach Peninsula is a part of Gaelic-speaking, Western Scotland that until recent times was comparatively inaccessible. ![]()
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