The debauched days of Kinloch came to a shuddering halt as the Edwardian Era was scythed down by the industrial warfare of the First World War. Peering in the windows today it’s not hard to conjure up those wild days. Not when you can still make out the grandiose rooms and Bullough’s bizarre international bric-a-brac. As I wander around a building nature is doing her best to reclaim, I’m stuck in a time warp trying to sear the image of taxidermy sea eagles out of my head. I hear a motor engine, half expecting it to be Sir George coming to investigate. He is the only person ever to have had a road accident on Rum, on the roads he ordered.

You won’t crash your car on Rum – you’re not allowed to bring it. Dave Beaton is as he lives in a community that stoically survives in the shadow of Kinloch Castle. He has multiple roles of course: odd-jobs man, goods transporter (from ferry to the only shop), and wood sculptor – hence the chainsaw moniker. He talks fondly of his wedding in Kinloch when it was a hotel: “We brought a proper party back to the old dame”. 

Then part of Kinloch Castle became surely the UK’s grandest youth hostel. Now nominally on sale for £1, you’d need at least an estimated £20 million to restore it. And persuade Nature Scotland that it should be yours. The community is being consulted. “Today it’s just sitting there growing old disgracefully, the big debate here is what to do with it,” Beaton says, supping a shot of Askival rum from the distillery that has just started production on Rum. Bullough would have been horrified: he changed the island’s name to Rhum to divert boozy associations.

When Lady Bullough finally sold Rum in 1957 it became a National Nature Reserve, attention turning to preservation of flora and fauna, rather than man. The red deer population exploded, sea eagles were successfully reintroduced, and Highland cows, goats and ponies ran wild. One of the world’s largest colonies of Manx shearwaters shrouds Rum in summer.