Qualla: Waternish

Waternish: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Allan, CC BY-SA 2.0. To reach Waternish you cross the Fairy Bridge. The bridge itself is small and ordinary - just a hump where the A850 vaults a burn near the junction with the peninsula road - but local custom held that the fairies waited there, and travellers tied ribbons to the surrounding hawthorns for safe passage. Beyond it, the road narrows and climbs, and you enter a place where Clan MacNicol once buried twenty-eight chiefs in a single chapel and where, in 1578, MacDonalds locked their cousins inside a church and burned it down.

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Image: John Allan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Waternish: The Older Clan

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M J Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the MacLeods, Waternish belonged to the MacNicols - Clan MacNeacail in Gaelic, sometimes anglicised as Nicolson. Tradition has it that the MacNicols held the Isle of Lewis from the Kings of Mann, until around the time of Bannockburn in the early 14th century, when their la...

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Image: M J Richardson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Waternish: Trumpan

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Fergusson, CC BY-SA 2.0. In May 1578, a party of MacDonalds from Uist landed at Ardmore Bay and discovered the Waternish MacLeods at Sunday service inside Trumpan Church. They barred the doors and set the thatch alight. One woman is said to have escaped through a narrow window, raising the alarm. The Mac...

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Image: Dave Fergusson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Waternish: Stein and the Oldest Inn

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Fergusson, CC BY-SA 2.0. On a sheltered curve of Loch Bay, the village of Stein sits in a single line of low whitewashed cottages, planned in 1787 by the British Fisheries Society and never quite finished. At one end of the row stands the Stein Inn, opened around 1790 - the oldest pub on Skye. Its slate ...

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Image: Dave Fergusson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Waternish: Crofts and Comeback

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Bushell, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the late 19th century Waternish had been hollowed out by the Highland Clearances. The local school at Knockbreck nearly closed in 2015, with only four pupils left. But the peninsula has been quietly repopulating - artists, potters, woodworkers, weavers, and a new generation of...

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Image: Dave Bushell | CC BY-SA 2.0