Tanera Mòr: A Scottish Island Reborn

When financier and philanthropist Ian Wace saw an advertisement for Tanera Mòr in Country Life, it seemed so beautiful that he decided to go and take a look. “And it was very beautiful. But then I thought, ‘Well that’s a stupid idea, why on earth would anyone do that?’” Four years later, in 2017, the island was still on the market, this time with Savills. Clearly something about Tanera had captured Wace, and he went to see it again: “I realised it was dying, going the way of every other island that gets into that sort of situation. And I thought, ‘If you have the ability to save one, maybe you should do something.’” What that saving would actually mean, he had no idea. 

Tanera Mòr, which means “island of the haven”, is the largest of the Summer Isles archipelago, a mile off the coast of the Coigach peninsula in northwest Scotland. It is a place of great loveliness – 800 acres of rocky terrain and sandy bays, with transporting views in every direction. But there is much more than natural beauty to Tanera’s magic: this is a very human story of regeneration, resilience and community, of what is possible with thoughtful investment and imagination. It is the story of creating a vibrant new world inspired by an ancient one.

“At the beginning I had zero view of what I would do,” says Wace, who has invested tens of millions into Tanera over the past nine years. “I came here with an open mind. I absorbed it and looked – and you had to look carefully, because it had basically gone.” The ruins of buildings were, in the main, about a foot high, the weeds about three feet high. Robbie Punt, now a guest host, was one of the earliest to join the Tanera project back in 2019, intrigued by what he’d heard about the plans for regeneration. He describes how they sent up drones to discover the footprints of the old houses buried in heather and undergrowth. 

The island has been home to many people in its long history. There is evidence of Viking settlements, and for centuries it has supported a small but resilient population, with fishing, crop production and cattle all playing their part. The island enjoyed a boom in the late 18th century as a bustling centre of the herring industry, but the waters were overfished, the boats left and the island’s population gradually dwindled. The family who owned Tanera before Wace had worked valiantly to keep the island alive, but time and money ran out. Now, with his intervention, a new generation is putting down roots here, drawn by the energy and ambition of what is being created.

In the beginning, Tanera was largely a construction project. On his regular visits to the island, Wace, a keen painter, would sketch his vision of what these ruined buildings could become. Working with a talented team of stonemasons and carpenters, and using reclaimed materials wherever possible, he set about turning the sketches into reality. They looked for clues in the island’s history and topography: “As many people tell me, ‘The answer to Tanera is on Tanera.’” Building went at a fast pace, making good use of those light Scottish summer evenings. But still there was no master plan.

As the 30-plus houses and cottages came back to life, a new chapter revealed itself. Like most things to do with Tanera, this was almost an accidental development, as one of the charities that Wace supports was looking for somewhere to host a retreat. He offered up Tanera, then a concept developed of offering restorative breaks to frontline public–sector workers in stressful roles.

To date, the island has opened its doors to more than 1,000 people, who become part of the community for a week, enjoying the embrace of this lovely place. The island now employs about 150 people, with an average age of 33. Some live on the island, many more on the mainland, commuting over on the speedboat that runs throughout the day. It is a hive of purposeful activity. The larger buildings are used for communal feasts, gatherings, workshops and wellness classes. All are finished with the same exacting levels of craftsmanship and thoughtful design, using reclaimed materials and architectural salvage pieces that lend the spaces a solid beauty and authenticity. A new road connects the north and south ends of the island, and a web of walking paths has been laid. There is a chapel, a pub, a sauna, an art studio, a gym, a cinema (housed on a refitted steamship), a loom shed, a fleet of boats, including two old fishing luggers – and the quarry, the beating heart of the island. 

It is here that you really see Tanera in action. At one of the highest points on the island, there is a sharp turn off the road. This is the quarry where much of the stone was excavated for the reconstruction work. Rather than leave an empty scar at the heart of the island, it has been turned into Tanera HQ, with offices, staff accommodation, a joinery workshop, a foundry, a mechanics hub and the Cookhouse, a gleaming kitchen and communal eating/living space. 

When I arrive at lunchtime, the door opens to the astonishing sight and sound, on this tiny island, of 50 people eating and talking together on long communal tables; it’s a hive of sociable nourishment and the daily epicentre of Tanera life. There is no division between front and back of house: utilitarian spaces coexist with living spaces, all solid and beautifully built. It brings to mind William Morris’s adage, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Here are construction workers, housekeeping staff, gardeners, ecologists, accountants, volunteers, mechanics and guests filling their plates – some in the next room playing pool, others sitting by the woodburner before they go back out to work. It’s impossible to tell who is who. It is alive. 

Susanne Schlie is head chef. With a culinary philosophy shaped by the influential food scene in Copenhagen, where she lived and worked for many years, she is steering the menus towards nutritionally rich, simple dishes, using as many island-grown ingredients as possible. 

She explains that meals used to be ferried around the island in a Land Rover. “Now everyone comes here to eat together – and it just works.”

Robin Irvine lived on Tanera as a teenager with his brother and mother, the Castaway writer Lucy Irvine. His grandfather, then his aunt and uncle, ran the Summer Isles Hotel on the mainland, now also part of the growing Tanera project. Irvine, who studied at Cambridge and has a PhD in social anthropology, is the project’s land and community manager and has a deep understanding of the island’s history and culture. He is erudite, passionate, but also pragmatic, and has no truck with trying simply to recreate the past. Instead he wants to build a viable future. “This place can’t be stuck in aspic,” he explains, stressing that this is not one fixed community but many, and that visitors have long been part of the picture. 

With a team of ecologists and horticulturalists, Irvine has ambitious plans to increase cultivation using the traditional Hebridean method of creating “lazy beds” – long mounds of earth topped with seaweed to lift crops above the sodden soil, protected from the winds with woven willow walls. The land team, with the help of volunteers, is creating a huge growing area in the middle of the island. Elsewhere there are greenhouses and polytunnels. 

Tanera stands at a critical moment: 95% of the construction work is completed and 100,000 trees have been planted. There are skilled and committed people involved in every aspect of the project, from land management to hospitality, impact assessment to ecology. An impact report records, from inception in 2017 up to 2025, the project’s immense scope and achievements on employment, regeneration of buildings and land, biodiversity and wellness. Tanera is now a valued partner for a wide range of academic research projects. 

The next phase is how this positive impact can be spread and scaled up. Wace describes Tanera as a catalyst, and many of the stories I hear involve unplanned, organic developments. If Tanera is an experiment, it is a deeply human one, where everyone involved is bringing their ideas and passion to bear. There are countless tales of felicitous meetings, organic connections, the random solution to a problem that becomes the next big idea. It is a mix of the deeply local and a much wider world of knowledge and wisdom. 

Many of Tanera’s earliest participants talk about the “wild west years”, when it was all hands on deck, everyone mucking in, getting through the harsh winters, making it up as they went along. The CEO, Adam Blaker, who arrived three years ago, calls it “multifunctionality”, and wants to keep flexibility embedded in the island’s DNA. Eilidh Macneilage, now head of hospitality, prefers to call it “the Hebridean way”, by which she means that if you live in this part of the world, you need to be able to turn your hand to many things – you might run the post office, but you will probably also have a boat, and need to be able to fix the engine. 

Macneilage is from Achiltibuie, the nearest village on the mainland, and her mother worked in the tea shop on the island run by the previous owners. “I’d play on the beach while she worked,” she says. “Tanera has always been part of my life – I feel very protective of it.” Like so many in rural Scottish communities where employment prospects are scarce, Macneilage left in search of opportunities. She went travelling for four weeks to southeast Asia and stayed for 10 years, working in an international school in Thailand. 

In 2018, having decided to come home, she heard about Tanera’s new owner from her brother, one of the original boat team. “I was initially employed in the office,” she says. “Then, when we started hosting people in 2019, I jumped over to that side of things.” Now she is responsible for building and training the team who deliver Tanera’s unique brand of hospitality. Macneilage was entrusted with fetching an old weaving loom from Lewis that Wace decided to buy for the island. It’s a story that illustrates perfectly Tanera’s powers of reinvention. Macneilage persuaded Aeneas and Kenny, the two weavers in their seventies who were selling the loom, to come to the island for a week every month to train members of the team. Back at home on the mainland in Achiltibuie, she spread the word, inviting volunteers from the village to come and have a go. Retirees Jane, Ali and Julie rose to the challenge and quickly fell under the loom’s spell. They are now volunteers teaching guests how to weave. 

What comes next is the real magic: so enamoured are the women of their new skill, they are in the process of setting up their own weaving social enterprise on the mainland. They have bought a loom, will offer classes and will sell their work. As things grow, they may also employ people. “We might just be in profit by the time we’re 80,” they joke. 

I hear countless similar stories throughout my time on Tanera: the apprentice stonemason who is now successfully self-employed; the young carpenter who has set up his own joinery business in Ullapool. Some more tangential ripples are felt: impact officer Orfhlaith McDevitt, who arrived two years ago after deciding to forgo a master’s degree at the LSE, is putting down roots in Achiltibuie and, with a Tanera colleague, reinvigorating the local rowing club. Other longstanding employees are girding themselves to leave, to forge a life beyond the island and put the lessons they’ve learnt there into practice.The village school roll is gradually growing.The seedlings are taking root in unexpected places. 

The next stage of the project rests on the mainland. In 2024, Wace bought three significant properties there, as well as 8,000 acres of land that he has gifted to the Coigach Community Development Company. The restoration of the eight-bedroom Manse, on the edge of Achiltibuie, and the six-bedroom Farmhouse, up the coast at Achnahaird, has been completed, while the ambitious redevelopment of the Summer Isles Hotel, an anchor of the local economy and community, is under way, with a reopening date of late 2027. The idea is to operate all three as commercial entities, delivering hospitality imbued with a unique Tanera spirit, but with income fed into the broader enterprise. The mainland project will also include significant greenhouse and polytunnel cultivation. 

This next, more public-facing stage of Tanera life is a work in progress, and Blaker admits that they have not yet landed on the final model. “It’s fair to say that the island will probably remain more philanthropic,” he says, “but it may well be that if the hotel is full, someone who wants to stay there might find themselves in another mainland or island property.” Meanwhile, before the first paying guests arrive, the team are experimenting with using the Manse for community lunches, dinners and pop-up events – multifunctionality in action. 

Volunteering, already well established, will be a big part of Tanera’s future: Blaker envisages up to 40 people a day volunteering on the project, experiencing the Tanera way of life and helping to shape its future. The island, once a world unto itself, is opening up. He describes Tanera as “enveloping”, and it is. It is nurturing, warm and inclusive, but also dynamic, changing, industrious. There is no Local Hero sleepiness here. 

On a walk on my last day on the island, I meet Cookie, a builder and stonemason, working on the road. He stops to talk. One of the earliest workers here, he loves Tanera and has played a major part in rebuilding almost every structure. He tells me that the house I am staying in, Macleans, was built with a slight curve to its walls, to gently settle into the shape of the hillside. He also explains that during construction they found an old box from the 1800s, containing a poignant letter from an estranged daughter to her mother, and a charcoal drawing. Having been studied and photographed, the box was buried back in the walls – a message from the past to the future. The legacy of Tanera lives on. 

This story also appears in the new Portfolio magazine. Request your complimentary copy here.