Ambitions and Aspirations

The Gallery

The Hope MacDougall Collection

The Hope MacDougall Collection is a remarkable collection of artefacts telling the social and rural history of Argyll and many other parts of Scotland.
It was gathered over decades by the late Miss Hope MacDougall of Ganavan in Oban, who gradually turned her house into a private museum, inviting many local people and visitors to see the artefacts, and developing a correspondence with people from all over the world.
Her Collection, which amounts to thousands of artefacts, has been recognised as being of national significance.
It is now in the care of The MacDougall Trust in store in Oban awaiting the opportunity to develop a museum.

The breadth of the Collection is one of the features that marks it out. Miss MacDougall took note of all aspects of rural and domestic life, collecting any item which might piece together the jigsaw of day-to-day work and the home.

Peat spades, cruse lamps, butter moulds, drainage tools, lace, vacuum cleaners, a school slate, woolly combinations, farm tools, beaded handbags, a huge array of irons and laundry items, beehives - all these and much more lie alongside the contents of local shops which she cleared when they closed. - Huttons Bootmakers, Blacks the Tobacconist, a blacksmith's forge, a post office and many other items from local trade are highlights of the Collection.

One of the most important features of the Collection is its academic attention to detail and comparison. Miss MacDougall did not simply aim to have a peat spade in her Collection, but brought together a large number of them, each displaying local characteristics. She sometimes even brought home a piece of peat to show the shape the particular spade cut.

The spade would be entered into the Collection accompanied by notes on its provenance, occasionally photographs, and research on its use and history.
This body of accompanying material grew into a significant archive, amounting to 100 files.

what inspired Hope MacDougall to start collecting; what was her dream