Qualla: Bullough Mausoleum

Bullough Mausoleum: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit nschouterden, CC BY 2.0. Sir George Bullough's first mausoleum on the Isle of Rum had elaborate ceramic tiling. It was finished around 1900 to hold his father's bones, and George was apparently quite pleased with it. Then a houseguest, surveying the interior, remarked that it was "redolent of a public lavatory in Waterloo Station." George had it blown up. What stands now on the western shore of Rum, above the depopulated village of Harris, is a Greek temple in polished sandstone, eighteen Doric columns on a plinth, pink granite tombs beneath the open peristyle, the Atlantic crashing a few hundred yards below.

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Image: nschouterden | CC BY 2.0

Bullough Mausoleum: The Lancashire Cotton Money

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Ward, CC BY-SA 2.0. John Bullough was a Lancashire textile-mill owner, the kind of late-Victorian industrialist who made an enormous fortune from cotton machinery and decided to spend it on a Scottish island. He leased Rum in 1879 and bought it outright in 1888. When he died in 1891 his son George i...

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Image: Peter Ward | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bullough Mausoleum: The First Mausoleum

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Russel Wills, CC BY-SA 2.0. George commissioned the architect William James Morley to construct a tomb on the western shore of the island, overlooking the sea at Harris. Morley produced an elaborate, tiled structure intended to honour John Bullough's memory. The guest's comparison to a railway-station toile...

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Image: Russel Wills | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bullough Mausoleum: The Doric Temple

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arjen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The replacement, built in the early 20th century, is a tetrastyle Doric temple in the Greek manner. The architect is uncertain. Some sources credit James Miller; the architectural firm Page & Page, surveying the estate in the early 21st century, concluded that Leeming & Leeming, ...

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Image: Arjen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bullough Mausoleum: The Setting

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lisa Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0. What makes the building extraordinary is not the architecture, which is competent imperial pastiche, but its position. Harris was a settlement before the clearances; it is now a depopulated stretch of grass and stones on the southwestern shore of Rum. The mausoleum stands alone a...

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Image: Lisa Jarvis | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bullough Mausoleum: What Remains

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lisa Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0. Kinloch Castle and the rest of the estate were sold in 1957, after George's trustees gave up on the cost of maintaining the island. Only the mausoleum was kept by the family. It is now protected as a category B listed building. To reach it you walk for several hours over rough tr...

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Image: Lisa Jarvis | CC BY-SA 2.0