Loch Ness Monster Explained

Chapter 16c - MY MONSTER - Macbeth and the Benedictines

[TH note September 2017: I look back at this image and see three different people from those I had known at the time. The Abbot turned out to be a vicious disciplinarian when schoolboys finally were able to talk about their time at his school; Charles Kennedy, a wonderful man, allowed drink to get the better of him and he died prematurely; as for the Cardinal, he is the only one who is still alive, now hidden away by the Catholic Church because of his sexual indiscretions. Several of the remaining monks were paedophiles and of those not in jail, many are still being pursued, some were just violent individuals and most were not nice characters. Two were vindictive and ignorant. My days working with the monks were interesting, but stressful. It was the deceit of senior monks in the English Benedictine Congregation which finally turned my stomach. I should write a serious update about them, sometime. However, as you will soon discover, the project itself was incredibly exciting at the time.]

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Over the winter of 1992/3 the Local Enterprise Company held a series of meetings to produce a plan for developing the Loch Ness area. I attended the meeting at the Inchnacardoch Hotel near Fort Augustus and ran into an old friend and Genesis customer, Wilson Girvan. He had purchased large numbers of Genesis products for his service station souvenir shop near the main Fort Augustus car park. Over the years, he has developed it into a considerable retail venture.

He told me about his recent purchase of a failing motor museum at Bankfoot in Perthshire. He explained that he wanted to develop it into a quality tourist attraction and was going to call it the Perthshire Visitor Centre.

In order to attract funding from the Perth and Kinross Enterprise Board, he needed to link the project to some sort of heritage centre and he asked me what thoughts I had on it.

At last. Here was an opportunity to get back into visitor attractions.

However, my main reason for chatting to him was owing to his close association with the Abbey at Fort Augustus. I had always thought that this was the ideal place for some sort of historical exhibition and wanted him to keep his ear to the ground, which he duly promised to do.

In the meantime I promised to work on a theme for his Perthshire Visitor Centre. I had come up with a number of ideas and was travelling south to meet with him when the train stopped at Dunkeld. There I saw a sign for Birnam Wood. Suddenly all of my ideas for his exhibition were as husks cast into the wind. Birnam Wood, nearby Dunsinane and one of William Shakespeare's shortest and most brilliant plays was all I could think of. This visitor centre was screaming at me "The Macbeth Experience".

Over the next few weeks I formulated the plan and came up with proposals which I had to present to the Perth and Kinross Enterprise Company, alongside a number of competing exhibition designers. Macbeth won hands down.

However, before all of this, in June 1993 I had telephoned Wilson with yet another enquiry about the Abbey. On this occasion the phone went quiet. An extremely pregnant silence followed by "What have you heard? I'll call you back.".

I told him I had heard nothing and he promised to call me back the next day. Even now I consider that my call to him could not have been at a more fortuitous moment for, the following day, the local papers were full of the news that the Abbot of Fort Augustus had taken the momentous decision to close their school which had been running, almost continuously, since 1878.

True to his word, the following day Wilson returned my call and he set up for me to have a meeting with Abbot Mark Dilworth, the Abbey's accountants, Roddie MacNeill from Inverness and Nairn Enterprise and himself. I had not realised Wilson was a director of the Enterprise company and this was why he knew in advance about the school's closure. Here was an opportunity that I was determined not to allow to escape.

The day of the meeting I walked through the same heavy wooden door which I had knocked at in 1976 to speak to Father Gregory. I crossed the stone drawbridge to the second heavy door to the hospice* building.

Inside the main Abbey I was taken into an office with very thick walls and introduced to the Abbot, a diminutive bearded man with what could only be described as a naturally happy face. Roddie was tall, clean cut and spoke with a strong west coast accent. We'd had dealings previously. The Abbot exchanged a few words with him in Gaelic**. The accountant, Joe Dunn, was a dour looking man from Glasgow, an old boy of the school who had long been a friend and patron of the Abbey.

Over the previous couple of days I had hastily put together a plan to set up a small heritage exhibition which could be staged almost instantly. I had realised that, with the school closing in June, the Abbey would be keen to create an instant source of revenue.

Very swiftly indeed it was agreed that I would begin work on the small heritage centre immediately and we moved on to look at the locations which would be available. There wouldn't be much. There was the room we had met in, the main corridor through the hospice and a room on the right which could be used as a shop. I felt there needed to be some access to the cloisters and the Abbot agreed to permit the public into one of the four sides. This would be the first time that women would have been allowed into the monastic cloister.

The following day was spent with the Abbot learning all I could about the history of the monastery and the fort upon which it had been built. I made copious notes and within forty-eight hours we were open to the public with laminated computer generated information panels.

I was also commissioned by the Abbot, with the financial assistance of the LEC, to come up with a long term plan.

I had hoped to hand the minibus tour over to my sister, but she found it of little appeal. This was somewhat aggravating as it was a far better source of revenue for us than the small bookkeeping job she had obtained in Drumnadrochit. My frustrations with her grew and I had to employ a driver/guide. This cost almost the entire bus revenue, but I was not going to allow the tour business to be lost until the plans for the Abbey solidified.

There were no longer enough hours in the day to get everything done and I was not going to get any co-operation from Maureen. Wendy was very poorly with irritable bowel syndrome so was unable to give more than moral support. I was very much on my own as I began to talk to the monks about their aspirations for the Abbey's future.

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* Hospice used in the term meaning hospitality, not the care of the terminally ill.

** The native language of the Highlands and Islands. The pronunciation of the word is Ga~lik in the Highlands, while the sister language in Ireland is pronounced Gay~lik. The difference in pronunciation is very important when ordering a Gaelic coffee ... you wouldn't want it made with Irish whiskey in the Highlands.

(C) 2018 Tony Harmsworth