Strachur

Strachur Church

Strachur lies on the east shore of Loch Fyne and continues a little way inland along the A815, the road that crosses the Cowal Peninsula via Loch Eck and the end of Holy Loch to Dunoon. The village was originally called Clachan, accounting for the name appearing on Ordnance Survey maps as Clachan Strachur.

Rowan Tree Ring The Clachan Inn Strachur Bay Loch Fyne

The original heart of the village lies just off the A815, half a mile inland from Loch Fyne. Here you will find the Smiddy and the Clachan Inn, plus newer housing built by the Forestry Commission for staff working in the Glenbranter Forest, stretching away to the south east. This also accounts for the sawmill in the village.

Church Interior

Stained Glass in the Church

Here, too, you find the attractive Strachur Parish Church strikingly placed within its oval churchyard on the far side of a small valley. Much of the structure of the church dates back to 1789, though many of the details and most of the interior come from major renovation in 1903.

The interior of the church is largely of dark wood, with some nicely geometrical stained glass designs in some of the windows. Outside the church it is worth looking out for the 11 tapering grave slabs dating back as far as the 1300s that were set into the outer wall during the 1903 renovation.

The graveyard contains a number of fascinating stones, including one near the path that has an early stone set into a later iron surround, presumably to stop the stone disintegrating.

Downhill from the original village, the main road brings you to the shore of Loch Fyne. Nearby is Strachur House, built by General John Campbell in the 1780s, though added to over the years since. There are also more houses and a shop here overlooking Strachur Bay.

The bay was where local farmers and fishermen worked to build their own pier to allow steamers to service the village. It is said that the name of Strachur comes from the Gaelic for Glen of the Heron and started to be applied to the whole village after its development had reached Loch Fyne.

By the early 1900s, tourism already played an important role in the local economy. The "Loch Eck Tour" involved passengers disembarking from steamers at Dunoon before travelling by carriage along Loch Eck, then meeting another steamer for the return journey to Glasgow at Strachur, or going on to Inveraray to meet a boat there. These tours still took place as late as the 1960s, though by then the horse drawn carriages had been replaced by coaches.

Close to the shore of Strachur Bay are a pair of rowan trees, with their branches intertwined to form a circle. Rowan arches are not uncommon: circles are rather rarer. Scottish folklore suggests that bad luck befalls anyone cutting down a rowan tree. This may be why this pair was carefully moved to their current location to make way for a nearby road improvement scheme in 1994.

Just north of Strachur on the coast of Loch Fyne is Creggans. This was for many years the site of a ferry across the loch, but no longer. Today it is better known as the home of the Creggans Inn. From 1962 this was developed by Sir Fitzroy Maclean (whose exploits formed the model for Ian Fleming's character of James Bond) and later by his son, into an excellent small hotel. The recent sale of the hotel looks likely to ensure its continued success.