Fiona Campbell Trevor co-owns and runs Eddrachilles Hotel with her husband Richard. From their home by the shore of Badcall Bay she writes the Eddrachilles Journal, reflecting on Highland life, hospitality, and heritage — and on the people whose courage and care continue to shape this place.
Remembrance Week: In the quiet of November, as the days shorten and life slows, personal reflection and remembrance come easily here, alongside respectful community tributes of poppies.
Lochinver’s war memorial, — one of many tributes across the Highlands to courage and loss
The war memorials at Scourie, Kinlochbervie, Durness, and Lochinver are today as much part of the landscape as the lochs and moors themselves. Across the North and West Highlands, the names recorded on stone war memorials tell of crofters and fishermen, shepherds, engineers, and schoolteachers. The surnames of the fallen are so often the same familiar names we hear today in our communities. Each name a member of a household once filled with laughter, then marked by worry, waiting, and grief. A story tragically repeated across the Commonwealth.
Eddrachilles War Hero and Memorial Champion
Alongside our remembrance this week for those who died in the World Wars or conflicts since, there is also deep respect for those who fought and returned, their battles to “win the peace” and build that better tomorrow. Among them was Lt Colonel Thomas Wilkinson Cuthbert CMG DSO, a former owner of the old manse that is now Eddrachilles Hotel. A Territorial (Volunteer) officer in the 4th Seaforth Highlanders, his local Ross-shire battalion of the Territorial Force. went out to France with the battalion in October 1914, one of the first Territorial battalions to serve overseas.
A Major on departure from Britain, he led his men through the early battles of the First World War, assuming command at Neuve Chapelle after his Colonel was wounded, and continuing despite his own head wound. By coincidence, his award of the DSO is listed in the London Gazette a few entries from the report a posthumous award to a member of my extended family (Gordon Highlanders).
The grave of Lt Col Thomas Wilkinson Cuthbert CMG DSO, Seaforth Highlanders, in the woodland grounds of Eddrachilles Hotel
Colonel Cuthbert returned home after the war but, like so many of his generation, carrying the weight of those he could not bring home. His purchase of Eddrachilles in the 1920’s for his retirement may have been part of his healing process.
In his later years Colonel Cuthbert worked tirelessly to preserve the battalion’s memorials and records — ensuring that the courage and losses of the Seaforths were not erased by time. While the Seaforth name has long since been subsumed, their traditions continue today within 4 SCOTS, The Highlanders, Royal Regiment of Scotland. His grave, overlooking the sea here in our woodland grounds, is a quiet reminder of his legacy. Among the first plantings we undertook at Eddrachilles were those in “The Colonel’s dell” and the hotel’s main lounge is called “The Colonel’s Lounge” in his honour. Rest at ease, sir, Rest at ease.
“It all happened again…”
The X-Craft cairn at Kylesku, where Royal Navy midget-sub crews once trained in secret before their daring missions.
The Second World War took another generation away from local homes but also in secret brought others to this area for highly specialist – sometimes deadly - training. Near Kylesku young men trained in absolute secrecy for one of the war’s most daring ventures. The human torpedo or X-Craft crews — the Royal Navy’s midget submarine units — practised in Loch Cairnbawn before setting out on perilous missions beneath enemy ships. Their courage and endurance were tested in silence, in darkness, and in cold northern seas. Their most famous mission was a thousand hard miles from Kylesku in the daring X-Craft raid on the German battleship, the Tirpitz, in a Norwegian fjord.
The cairn memorial to these submariners is located at the edge of the northern carpark by the iconic Kylesku bridge. It’s one of our highly recommended mini-visits for guests. (improved information panels were recently installed).
Recent conflicts
Today, the faces of those who serve in the Armed Forces are women and men from every background, some still with Highland roots, who carry forward that same sense of duty. Their service — whether in uniform, in peacekeeping, or in humanitarian work — belongs to the same long line of courage and care.
In remembering here on the coast, our own thoughts also turn to one of our earliest Head Chefs at Eddrachilles who had previously served as a UN peacekeeper — a Swedish soldier injured on active duty and honourably discharged, who found a sense of belonging again in the kitchen brigade. Though illness cut short his career here, and ultimately his life, he remains an inspiration to us in our stewardship of Eddrachilles.
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Remembrance in the Highlands is not about pageantry but simple gatherings. It comes to us in the silence of the bay at dusk, the placing of a single poppy by a lichen-covered stone, the dawn light warming the winter light on the water and the annual gatherings by the local was memorial. It asks for gratitude, not glorification. These were - and are - ordinary people asked to bear extraordinary things. Their endurance, humility, and sense of belonging to something greater than themselves remain lessons for us all.
As the sun sets on the North West coast and when the first rays dance upon the water, the words of the old verse still ring true:
“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.”
Editor Note: the parish place name Eddrachilles — derived from the Gaelic *Eadar Dà Chaolas” means “between the kyles” or “between the narrows”, a reference to the sea channels at Kylesku and Laxford,or originally by Durness, which defined a Parish served by the old manse, now hotel.
