Ambitions and Aspirations

The Gallery

MacDougall of MacDougall, Margaret HOPE Garnons 1913 - 1998

Born on 21st January 1913 in Athlone, Ireland, where her father, Chief of the Clan MacDougall, was stationed with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Died on 22nd December 1998 in Oban, Argyll.

Miss Hope MacDougall amassed a social history museum collection of national significance relating to the working and domestic lives of the people of the Highlands and Islands, with comparative material from elsewhere in Britain and overseas. She was the third daughter of the Chief - Alexander James - and Colina MacDougall, and Hope's keen sense of her lineage led her to become the Clan historian. She wrote a definitive book on the Isle of Kerrera, one of the Clan lands gifted by her direct ancestor Somerled, Lord of the Isles.

Hope returned to the Clan seat at Dunollie, Oban in 1914 and was educated first by a governess, then at a French school in Edinburgh before going to Bulcote boarding school in Yorkshire, where she became head girl. During the war, Hope assisted nursing staff at Cortachy Castle, Kirriemuir, as well as working part-time on a farm. After the war she worked as a gardener at Westogil, Forfar, for six years. She returned home on her father's death in 1953, and cared for her mother until her death in 1963. The new chief, her sister Coline, moved into Dunollie in 1966, and Hope moved to nearby Ganavan House, signalling the start of her serious collecting, which continued unabated until her sudden death in 1998.

A notable local figure, she was renowned for clearing old shops as they closed, beachcombing, rifling through refuse middens , and befriending local people on her extensive collecting tours from Arran to Shetland. She was a devout church attender and worker with the elderly. She was a birdwatcher and naturalist, and a keen dawn bather in the sea from the small beach by her house, which she did all year round and well into her seventies. Her one trip abroad was to the Holy Land with her sister Jean. She never married, but became immersed in Oban life, and invited many local children to her house, by whom she was known as 'Miss Hope'.

As the daughter, sister and aunt to successive Chiefs of the Clan MacDougall, Miss Hope MacDougall was rooted as firmly in Oban as anyone can claim, tracing her roots in a clear line back to Somerled and the 12th century.

She grew up in a family which both looked closely to Argyll and out to the Empire through The Hope MacDougall family's long history of travel and work in far places.

Her home was filled with interesting things from interesting places, and she never lost that sense of the wider world, including items from Israel, Afganistan, Greece and other places as comparisons with Scottish artefacts. In fact, the first item she collected was a wooden spoon from Portugal.

She was a very eclectic collector, gaining as much pleasure being able to piece together fragments of a Dunragit cream jar found on a beach, as from taking delivery of a fragile 1ply Shetland dress. We discovered that the dress (as featured on Antiques Roadshow) is Shetland-style knitted 'lace', and was made on Isle of Lewis - it has a great story which we can give you later.

Miss MacDougall lived in and through her Collection, weaving her own tartan on an industrial loom she rescued, sewing it into skirts on historic sewing machines, milling her own flour on a quernstone, scything her garden. She was delightful, fascinating and highly individual, and her Collection is exactly the same.

She became an acknowledged and learned social historian and archivist, having the remarkable foresight to capture a time which has gone.

It is now in our hands to repay her trust in us all.