The Queen’s Uist trip remembered

The start of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend celebrations will be marked by the lighting of a beacon on St Kilda, the most westerly of more than 1,500 such beacons to be lit across the UK.

Her Majesty The Queen has enjoyed a long association with the Western Isles as this photograph, kindly loaned from the Kildonan Museum archive, shows.

The Royal family sailed into Lochboisdale in August 1956, and made a number of visits across the Uists, including to St Michael’s church, Ardkenneth and to the Alginate Industries factory at Orasay.

This photograph was taken at Sacred Heart Hospital, Daliburgh, where the Queen unveiled a special plaque to commemorate her visit, and enjoyed a celebratory meal of local fish, shellfish and lamb. A news clipping form the time quotes Her Majesty describing the feast as ‘One of the loveliest meals I have ever had.’

The same cutting tells that ‘4-year-old triplets Teresa, Mary and Christine Campbell Eochar greeted the Queen as she left and presented her with gifts for the Royal children’, something that Mary, now living in Balivanich, remembers well: “It was an exciting day for us three little sisters. We were all dressed up and transport was laid on to take us to Daliburgh, where we had the honour of walking on the red carpet to greet Her Majesty. We presented her with a length of Harris Tweed, which I believe she had tailored to make a coat for herself. It’s especially nice to think that after all those years, we are celebrating our seventieth birthday in the same year as Her Majesty celebrates seventy years on the throne.”