Tour Scotland wee video of old photographs of Jura, Scottish Gaelic: Diùra, an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, adjacent to and to the north east of Islay. The main settlement is the village of Craighouse on the east coast, which is its capital. Craighouse is home to the Jura Whisky Distillery, producing Isle of Jura single malt whisky. Craighouse was once served by a direct ferry from the mainland which berthed at Craighouse pier. This service was terminated some years ago, and access is now via an 8 miles single track road from Feolin on Jura's south west coast, where there is a small vehicle ferry to the neighbouring island of Islay. However, since 2007 a passengers only ferry service to Craighouse has operated during the summer from the village of Tayvallich on the mainland. The island is dominated by three steep sided conical quartzite mountains on its western side called the Paps of Jura. The demise of the Lords of the Isles at the end of the fifteenth century was shortly followed in 1506 by the Treaty of Camas an Staca, which removed MacDonald rights on Jura and gave them to the Campbells. Despite this, the sixteenth century was a period of skirmishing between the warring clans: McDonald, Campbell, MacLean and others. Then in 1607 the Campbells finally bought the island from the MacDonalds. This was the beginning of some three hundred years during which the island was ruled and largely owned by eleven successive Campbell lairds. The north of the island, however, remained in MacLean hands until 1737, when it was sold to Donald MacNeil of Colonsay. Beginning in the later 18th century, long before the notorious Highland Clearances of the following century, there were several waves of emigration from Jura. In 1767, fifty people left for Canada. In his later life, George Orwell moved to Barnhill, on Jura, living there intermittently from 1946, while critically ill with tuberculosis, until his death in January 1950. He was known to the residents of Jura by his real name, Eric Blair. It was at Barnhill that Orwell finished Nineteen Eighty Four, during 1947 and 1948, he sent the final typescript to his publishers, Secker and Warburg, on 4 December 1948, and they published the book on 8 June 1949. Despite its isolation, Barnhill has in recent years become something of a shrine for his readers.
