Canna House was built around 1863 by Donald Macneil, the owner of the island at that time. He was persuaded to build the house by his wife, after she had returned from visiting wealthy relatives in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove and thought that they deserved a house of similar stature and comfort. The house and the island were then sold to Robert Thom, a shipowner from Greenock, in 1881. He lived there with his extensive family until he died in 1911; the family sold the island to John Lorne Campbell in 1938.
John and his wife, American musician Margaret Fay Shaw, lived there until their respective deaths in 1996 and 2004. They gifted the house and the island to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981, but continued to live there, devoting their time from then on to cataloguing and publishing their extensive folklore research and developing the Canna House Library and Archives.
Although Canna House is not an architecturally unique building, the collection it holds is of international importance. Within the sturdy Victorian walls is a substantial cultural archive of Gaelic folk songs and tales, Celtic and Norse Studies, philology, music, literature and Scottish history, as well as the furnishings, artworks and personal belongings of John and Margaret. The Canna archives contain Margaret’s extensive photographic collection of over 6,000 images from the early 20th century in the Hebrides, John’s 1,700 sound recordings, his Hebridean Lepidoptera collection and all of their research writings amassed over the course of 60 years.
Guided tours
Canna House is now open for pre-booked guided tours.
- Each tour takes up to 6 people.
- The tour takes about 1.5 hours and must be booked in advance.
The house has been brought alive with the sound of Gaelic speech and song, celebrating the world-class Gaelic archive collected by John and Margaret.
The tour begins in the hall, introducing the island and the house, before moving into the sitting room, where you will see the piano and some photos of the beloved Canna House pets. Next stop is the dining room, which is set up quite formally and presided over by a replica portrait of John Lorne Campbell’s ancestor Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell.
The tour winds back to the library, where John spent hours transcribing and archiving his Gaelic recordings and writing various academic tomes. The room is set up with examples of his recording equipment. You will also see the billiards room and the kitchen.
Visitors can explore the bathrooms and the bedroom before entering the final room on the tour: Margaret Fay Shaw’s study. Here you can learn about her work recording and preserving Gaelic culture through her photography and film as well as see some of her own books and publications. Her much-treasured Graflex camera is prominently placed on a cabinet while a projector plays her film footage of everyday life on Canna and South Uist.
The garden
Canna House is set within a walled square garden of around a quarter of a hectare, sloping south from a high point at the rear of the house of around 15m above sea level to around 5m at the front. A deliberate shelterbelt protects the interior planting from the prevailing wind. Under the ownership of John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw, the garden operated functionally, with an area for food production (varied top fruit, soft fruit and vegetables), work (laundry), play (croquet), as well as beauty. Margaret sought to add hundreds of plants from far and wide, many reminiscent of her homeland experience. As such, it was a garden which reflected the lives of its owners, combining aesthetics and utility, and shows how life and work were connected in this space, as in the house itself.
