Around 1610 the area at the head of Loch Ewe, today known as Poolewe, was urbanised around an iron furnace using charcoal produced in the surrounding woodlands for fuel.

[3] The crofting villages which were established in the 1840s,[4] as a result of the local parish's estate being reformed from run-rig to fixed holdings properties,[5] were always quite small.

Bualnaliub, nine miles (fifteen kilometres) to the north of Poolewe, had eleven houses and fifty people at the 1841 census – twenty-three of whom were from the same (McIver) family.

Ships from the British, American and other ports gathered here before sailing to Murmansk from September 1942 following the disaster of Convoy PQ 17 in order to confuse German intelligence.

The navy had very kindly put in this mooring for my parents – a buoy about three feet [90 cm] long, with a chain down to a large concrete block on the seabed.

When the river got to the coast, it tumbled down a steep rocky bank, into which was built a "salmon ladder" – a series of small pools stepped down like a staircase.

This wilful lack of co-operation was a big factor in the sinking of Tirpitz in Norway during the war - she was left largely unprotected, and the RAF and Fleet Air Arm did what the Germans failed to do.

It had a big impact on the local economy as fish could then be exported to the south.As of 2006,[13] the Mellon Charles base is still in use, with two berths authorised for nuclear-powered submarine use.

[14] The naval boom defence depot at Mellon Charles marks the start of the original protective netting which guarded the entrance to the loch.

Additionally, it has several outposts above the Aultbea foreshore (around Aird Point) giving photo opportunities for tourists travelling inland.

In his compendium of folk and faerie (encounters with the Daoine Sìth race) tales of the mainland, Sir George Douglas records that the ancestral dialogues and mythological apologues of the Scottish peasantry, and the folkish customs employed in recounting them, "still linger in the remote western islands of Barra; where, in the long winter nights, the people would gather in crowds to listen to those whom they considered good exponents of the art.

At an earlier date, – but still, at that time [in the mid twentieth century], within living memory, – the custom survived at Poolewe in Ross-shire where the young people were used to assemble [sic] at night to hear the old ones recite the tales which they had learned from their fore-fathers.

Here, and at earlier dates in other parts of the country also, the demand for stories would further be supplied by travelling pedlars, or by gaberlunzie men, or pauper wandering musicians and entertainers, or by the itinerant shoemaker or tailor – 'Whip-the-Cat' as he was nicknamed, – both of which last were accustomed to travel through thinly-populated country districts, in the pursuit of their calling, and to put up for the night at farm-houses, – where, whilst plying their needles, they would entertain the company with stories.