On the A838 road to Durness, between Tongue and spectacular Loch Eriboll, is a long stretch of elevated moorland, a northern part of the 'Flow Country' - Sutherland's vast bogland. It doesn't sound very interesting, but in fact it's an amazing landscape of heather and squishy peat, with wide views southward to mountain peaks. The A838 is the only road. Before the nineteenth-century Clearances, a lot more people lived in this area than do now, and some of them had to travel to and fro. Wayside hostelries like Moine House were built to provide them with food and shelter on their slow way through this bleak country.
Moine House is such a roadside cottage, built in 1830 when the the first road was made across the morass. Here it is, in this 1874 Ordnance Survey map (click on it to enlarge):
And this is it now, on a modern map:
They realigned the road in the 1990s, and it now passes the rear of Moine House.
The cottage has become a shell, its roof gone. Mind you, it still offers shelter from the ceaseless wind, and even on a sunny day the wind is troublesome. Here you feel terribly at the mercy of the elements. In the winter, with the land all around utterly desolate, it must seem on the very edge of the world.
Whether driving from Tongue in the east, as I was, or from the west, the chimneys of Moine House come intriguingly into sight, and you can't resist stopping to take a look. Nowadays it's a proper tourist stop-off point, complete with explanatory information panels - and something else, which I'll come to in a moment.
This what those panels say:
At a distance, you can take in the isolation of the cottage, and the amazing views from what would once have been its front door.
But get closer, and you see something unexpected through a window frame.
You enter, and a series of murals is revealed.
This is of course art, though however skilfully done, and whatever the 'message', I'm sure it's entirely unauthorised. It also - in my opinion - distracts (and detracts) from the atmosphere of the building itself, introducing an alien, disturbing, and somewhat urban keynote. It shouldn't be there. Bare interior walls would have emphasised the weather-scoured character of Moine House much more appropriately. I don't even care that, tucked away on the left-hand side of the chimney-breast is a mural that might well have been sprayed by Banksy himself. That too has no place here.
Is it really an original Banksy, or just something in his style? I'm not sure. The woman's face could be his, but not the red lettering below. And besides, where is his usual wry joke or social comment? I've come across similar stuff before, as here in 2016, on the side wall of an old pub in Banbury:
The maid doesn't quite have the trademark Banksy look, although the humour is spot on.
I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide.
I can see the force of urban art, but I wouldn't want it in my own home. To like it is to belong to an oppressed underclass. It's about Them against Us, Haves against Have-nots. Extreme urban art dwells on squalour, defeat and hopelessness, and assumes personal hatred of a mindless, uncaring authority. It's about fighting back, but without hope of success, and never winning.
That's not my point of view, nor how I live. So I had to reject the murals at Moine House. In fact I think the place deserved to be restored to its original umarked state. This is a matter of cultural background, taste, and one's personal sense of what is right for a particular space and setting. I accept that you may not agree with my reaction.
Seeking an escape, I found myself looking out through the empty window frames at a distant view that seemed eternally beautiful, compared to the contrived ugliness inside the cottage.
Imagine living in this cottage, day after day, year after year. What would it do to you, for good or bad?
