Cruachan: The Hollow Mountain

by Marian Pallister

Cruachan!' was the battle cry of the Campbells. In the early 1960s, the invasion of the 3,000 men who hollowed out Argyll's noblest and highest mountain as part of a massive hydroelectric project could have annihilated the local community. Instead, the people of Loch Awe, Dalmally and Taynuilt welcomed the invaders, embraced the project and emerged the winners.

Fifty years on, an integrated community still lives under the Hollow Mountain, and the cry 'Cruachan!' signifies a Scottish success story. In this book, based on interviews, media reports, court reports and film archive material, Marian Pallister tells the story of the project - featuring the extraordinary experience of those who worked on the mountain as well as the effects on the local community of one of the biggest civil engineering projects ever to have been undertaken in Scotland. She also considers the long-term effects of the project, looking at how the community was changed by the experience.

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 20, 2015

Reviews

[J.F. Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinated by the power station hidden in the mountain, I was reading this as research and there were some interesting snippets which I didn't know. However, I was almost constantly irritated by the unnecessary repetition of the same few facts - like one of those documentaries on TV which just keeps saying the same thing over and over again. If I read once that the 'Tunnel Tigers' were not issued with safety equipment and had to provide there own, I must have read it ten times, and there were numerous similar points which appeared, like this, over and over again. Some excellent material but, for me, sadly marred by the structural issues.