A Wedding on the Isle of Lewis by Simon Heptinstall
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From the comfort of my home 700 miles away, a stone chapel in the middle of a field in the Outer Hebrides seemed a memorably romantic place to get married. But when I found myself with a flower in my button-hole, shivering at the end of the long muddy track to what looked like a tiny stone hut I suddenly wondered what on earth I was doing.
The wind was howling down from snow-capped mountains on the horizon. There wasn’t a tree or even a bush in sight… and the sheep were staring at me as if I was mad.
My bride-to-be and I had spent three days driving up to Britain’s most north westerly church. Now we were there it was less about being romantic - more about being warm enough to be able to speak.
Thankfully when I walked into St Moluag’s church, right at the northern tip of the Isle of Lewis, my spirits began to lift. The undecorated stone interior was lit by candles and oil lamps, sun shone through one tiny window slot onto the altar… and half a dozen strangers were smiling at me.
I certainly wasn’t at the wrong wedding – St Moluag’s has only hosted three weddings in living memory. Locals had heard on the grapevine about the rare event in this most isolated but beautiful church and taken time off work to join the service. Some even brought wedding presents.
“We just wanted to wish you well and see the church being used like this” whispered one rosy-cheeked chap in a broad Hebridean accent as he shook my hand warmly. Of course, nipping off to Scotland to marry is not new. Madonna was only following a trend by marrying Guy Ritchie at Skibo Castle. Scotland has been deemed romantic since Robbie Burns wrote love poetry, Sir Walter Scott recounted glamorised tales of Highland cattle thieves and posh Victorians hung prints of hairy men in kilts on their sitting room walls.
More practically, a couple could be married in Scotland before 1940 simply by making a declaration before witnesses. This encouraged a stream of eager couples to cross the border for a quickie at the hands of the first person they saw.
Nowadays Scottish wedding tourism is a little more sophisticated, although the production-line at Gretna Green still rubber stamps 4,000 quick-and-easy espousals a year, including someone who once married their bicycle. Scotland is dotted with hotels offering various packages of kilt-wearing, bagpipe-blowing nuptials. The most extreme of these are fully-costumed Braveheart-style weddings in medieval castles complete with blue face paint.
We were after something less artificially colourful – a real adventure tinged with romance and escapism. I’d heard about St Moluag’s church when I interviewed Vicar Barbara Morrison for an article about the best locations to celebrate Christmas Midnight Mass.
St Moluag’s Scottish Episcopal vicar turned out to be a charming 71-year-old great grandmother who has a side-line making tweed hats. We stayed in touch after the article and eventually she agreed to marry my girlfriend Joanna and I at the remote church I had researched – but never visited.
I’d discovered that St Moluag's was founded in the sixth century when the Hebrides were Norse owned and it still stands alone among crofters’ fields. It has no heat or lighting and is too cold and exposed to be used in winter, apart from very special occasions, like carols by candlelight or the wedding of a mad couple from a long way south. It sounded ideal.
Barbara was very encouraging: "It’s a beautiful place for a wedding - a get-away-from-it-all place where the romance of the Hebrides combines with meaningful spirituality," she said.
When we finally arrived at the church I learned she wasn’t joking about the get-away-from-it-all part. This windswept spot in the shadow of the Butt of Lewis lighthouse is 30 miles from the nearest town, Stornoway, where Barbara and most of the congregation live. It’s even further from the rest of civilisation.
The Isle of Lewis is the most northerly of the Outer Hebrides, the string of islands lying off Scotland’s north-west coast now officially called the Western Isles. After a long day’s drive through the Highlands, then crossing to the Isle of Skye, there’s still a two-hour ferry journey to the Isle of Harris, followed by an hour’s drive through mountains, lochs and desolate moorland to the adjoining Isle of Lewis.
In miles, it’s as far from London as Monte Carlo. In travelling time Lewis and Harris are much further… and much more alien than anything Monaco can offer.
The combined islands are actually joined and bigger than you’d expect – more than 70 miles long. Their landscape is a frightening mix of barren rock, windswept peat bog and forbidding snow-capped mountains. Only at the coast does it relent into rocky lochs or long clean sandy beaches backed by sheep-filled dunes. It’s often spectacular but rarely pretty.
Ancient ‘blackhouses’ of stone and thatch are built low as if cowering from the wind that scours the surface of the largely treeless island. Road signs are indecipherable Gaelic and on Sunday the strict Presbyterian Free Church insists the island virtually shuts down. There are no ferries, flights, shops, garages, pubs or outside activities other than church going.
Yet Lewis and Harris are strangely compelling. The biggest tourist attractions are the wonderful Callanish standing stones. Stornoway’s ‘’Stonehenge’ is even older than Wiltshire’s and more spectacularly sited. The 53 stones form a compass cross shape on a headland near where the ancient Lewis chess pieces were found washed up in 1831.
As we were getting married, we stayed at the best two places we could find. There aren’t the same luxuries as back home so we enjoyed relaxed homely comfort rather than five-star facilities. At the elegant Scarista House a plumbing leak trickled down the dining room wall and we ate our wedding night dinner watching the sun set over the sea while the owner chased sheep who were nibbling his daffodils outside.
At the warm and friendly Galson Farm, which is also a post office, Joanna prepared for her big day in the bathroom next to the counter and emerged in her wedding outfit to bump right into an old chap buying stamps.
The wedding was a wonderful fairytale event for us but looking back we were really lucky. Although I could see my breath as I repeated “I will” in the church, the sun shone throughout our stay – a delightful contrast with miserably wet conditions back home. Thanks to the warming waters of the Gulf Stream, snow and frost are rare but wind isn’t. The Butt of Lewis records, on average, gale force conditions once every six days. We were very fortunate to get away with a mild but chilly skirt-ruffling breeze.
One local told me of a 154mph wind recorded last year. He said he was safely at home like everyone else long before the wind got that severe. “But as I was driving home I knew it was going to be a bad one,” he said, “because I saw sheep flying across the road in front of my car.”
Now, that would have been a wedding day to remember.