People

Grant Isabel

Isabel Frances Grant (1887-1983), writer and founder of the Highland Folk Museum, was born in Edinburgh, the eldest of the six children of Colonel Hugh Gough Grant CB (1845-1922), of the 78th and Seaforth Highlanders, and his wife, Isabel Mackintosh (1864-1960) of Balnespick. She was brought up in London and in the north of Scotland.

On a trip to Scandinavia in the 1920s she visited museums which combined conventional displays with open-air collections of buildings and their contents, often moved from their original locations and re-erected on the site. This inspired her vision of a museum for the Highlands of Scotland which would preserve a fast disappearing culture and its traditions and values.

She used a legacy to buy a small, disused church on the island of Iona in 1935. She called the museum "Am Fasgadh" (Gaelic: "The Shelter") because "it was to shelter homely ancient things from destruction". It contained a unique collection of highland and Hebridean artefacts, including domestic material and furniture, and the tools and implements of crofting and farming, which demonstrated the distinctive and rich variety between the regions and localities of a relatively small country. The museum soon outgrew the space available so in 1939 it moved to Laggan before finally moving to Kingussie in June 1944.

To make the museum's collections as representative as possible she visited most parts of the Highland mainland and many of the Western Isles. In addition to collecting items such as farm implements and spinning wheels she took many photographs which recorded the changing patterns left on the land by human settlement, different methods of constructing croft houses, and the equipment and craftwork that made up the material setting for people's lives. The original photographs are in the care of Edinburgh City Libraries. She also collected images taken by other photographers.

In recognition of her pioneering efforts she was awarded the honorary degree of LLD by the University of Edinburgh in 1948 and the MBE in 1959. She was the author of more than a dozen books and several articles, having developed her academic skills when working as a research assistant to J. M. Keynes during the First World War. These works include her first (and favourite) "Everyday Life on an Old Highland Farm, 1769-1782" (1922), which analysed the accounts of a highland tacksman, and the seminal "Highland Folk Ways" (1961).

She died on 19 September 1983.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

If a book listed in the bibliography below is available from the Highland Libraries it will be indicated by a book icon -

Grant, I F
The Social and Economic Development of Scotland before 1603
(1930)

Grant, I F
In the tracks of Montrose
(1931)

Grant, I F
Everyday Life in Old Scotland
(1931)

Grant, I F
The clan Donald (Macdonalds, Macdonells,Macalisters and their septs)
(1952)

Grant, I F
The Clan MacLeod
(1953)

Grant, I F
The Economic History of Scotland
(1934)

Grant, I F
Let's see Badenoch and Rothiemurchus
(1951)

Grant, I F
The Early History of the Highlands
(1930)

Grant, I F
A Masque of Sir Walter Scott.: A series of episodes from his life and works
(1932)

Grant, I F
The Lordship of the Isles
(1935)

Grant, I F
Angus Og of the Isles
(1969)

Grant, I F
Along a Highland Road
(1980)

Grant, I F
'A Candle in the Hills'
(1926)

Grant, I F
Highland Folk Ways
(1961)

Am Baile was established with initial funding from the New Opportunities Fund and is now funded by The Highland Council and managed as part of Highland Libraries.

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