THE 'SEVENTIES: A CHANGE OF DIRECTION

Several events affecting Morvern occurred about the year 1870 which were part cause, part effect, of a change of direction in the development of the parish, a change which was to alter its social and economic balance yet further by the end of the century. First, in 1869, Mrs Stewart and her fellow-trustees of Glencripesdale put their sheep farm of some 13,500 acres up for sale; the detached farm of Beach went in that year to Robert MacFie of Airds, but the remainder was sold in 1871 to members of the Newton family, Warwickshire people with wealth deriving from property in Birmingham, who later the same year bought the adjacent sheep farms of Laudale and Liddesdale and called the whole 23,500-acre result Glencripesdale Estate. Glencripesdale was not as large as Ardtornish, but it was of the same order of size, and it was conceived—even more than Ardtornish had been in 1860—as a recreational estate, with sport uppermost in the proprietors' minds. Secondly, at Ardtornish itself (which dominated the life of the parish for the rest of the century and which must remain our chief subject) a stag was stalked and killed for the first time on 20 August 1870; and six months later, on 27 February 1871, Octavius Smith died in London, the estate passing to his eldest surviving son, Valentine.