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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of Britain

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

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Open Country: A Tot of Rum

A Tot of Rum

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country, A Tot of Rum

Fiona Mackenzie uncovers the story of Kinloch Castle on the Hebridean Isle of Rum.

Fiona Mackenzie visits the Isle of Rum to hear about a new drinks venture, a campaign to save an old castle and a long running deer research project.

Kinloch Castle, an Edwardian hunting lodge on the Hebridean Isle of Rum, was built in the 1900s by a Lancashire textile magnate, Sir George Bullough.  The estate had its own hydro electric scheme, Japanese gardens and palm house, reputedly stocked with humming birds and an alligator! In Kinloch's grand hall Sir George installed a magnificent orchestrion, an early form of home entertainment centre.  One of the largest ever built, it has 264 tuned pipes which can recreate the sounds of flutes, trumpets, clarinets, baritones, trombones and piccolos.  Sir George used it to summon his guests to the dining room.

Today the orchestrion, like the rest of the castle, is in a sad state of disrepair, boarded up and at the mercy of winter storms.  Fiona Mackenzie ,who lives on the neighbouring Island of Canna, finds out more about the castle's history and talks to a group of campaigners who are passionate about restoring it.  She meets conservationist,  Ali Morris, who spends much of her time on Rum's spectacular hillsides, working on the Red Deer Research project which has been running since 1953.  It's the rutting season, - a noisy, busy time of the year!

Four families moved to Rum, last year, in response to an appeal for newcomers to boost the island's population which had fallen to just thirty.  Fiona finds out how some of them have been settling in.  She also talks to Fergus McGowan and his fellow entrepreneurs who have recently launched a drinks venture on the island.  Using local botanicals, including sea kelp, spruce and meadowsweet, they've hit on the bright idea of making rum on Rum! 


Produced by Kathleen Carragher

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