I am this years captain of our local cricket team- Innellan Cricket Club. Here we are in front of Toward Castle, which is the rather splendid location of our home ground;

There has been a lot of uncertainty about whether we will be able to continue to play at Castle Toward, as it has been up for sale for some time. In one of those typical stories, the Castle was gifted to the local council for use for the recreation of local people. It operated as an outdoor centre for a while, until maintenance costs meant that it was placed on the open market. It was almost bought by a holiday company who planned to turn it into a spa hotel, but this fell apart along with all sorts of allegations of dodgy dealings.

Step forward some brave locals who have worked incredibly hard to put together a bid for a community buy out of the estate, under Scottish ‘right to buy’ legislation- the same law that has enabled island communities like those on Coll and Gigha to bring their islands in to collective ownership.

There is a website telling the story of the bid here.

It is fair to say that local opinion is divided as to the viability of this bid- at least in part because of the huge sums of money needed to run the estate at stand still. Figures of £100K per annum have been mentioned just to maintain the security of the site.

There are always skeptics when plans like this are drawn up. For my part, I am a believer. Stately homes like this one are symbols of power, elitism and inequality. If they can be brought back to use and ownership be locals then this seems to me to be something rather wonderful.

And if we get to continue playing cricket there, all the better!

There was some coverage on BBC Alba recently. Non Gaelic speakers will just have to look at the pretty pictures;