A Passion for the Arts

BILL PEPPE and JUDITH KERSHAW pay tribute to the huge contribution made to artistic life on the Isle of Skye by the late Elizabeth Wakefield, MBE.

ELIZABETH WAKEFIELD died last week. A month after her 100^th birthday, joking with her doctor, she just stopped breathing. Thus ended a life which, for the last 50 years at least, was devoted to Skye. She gave unstintingly of her time and talents in good causes across the island and beyond, and she did this with endless enthusiasm, good humour and a boundless sense of enjoyment in everything with which she was involved.

She was born in London, but both her parents came from Dundee where she was largely  brought up. She first came to Skye sometime in the early 1920s. Just out of school in St. Andrews (where she was head girl) she and a friend came in what was possibly  the first caravan to visit the island. She had vivid memories of crossing the Dornie Ferry, two boats with planks lashed across them.

She came back and back, building a small bungalow in Glen Varagil, staying at the Sligachan Hotel and meeting Jumbo, her husband to be, climbing in the Cuillins. He was a surveyor in the Sudan and there they lived through the war and after. But for every home leave they came to Skye, (North, South and then in the middle.)

When the Sudan became independent Jumbo, then the Head of the Sudan Survey Department, was offered a job which might have led to the Directorship of the Ordnance Survey, the pinnacle for any surveyor. However it would have meant them living in England and this, Elizabeth declared, they could not do.

The lure of Skye was too strong. Jumbo took early retirement and they came to live permanently at Glendrynoch Lodge which they had acquired a few years before. Here climbing gave way to fishing and into her 90s she was still walking to the hill lochs and enthusing newcomers.

“It was with young people that she was most at home.”

Any list of the organisations with which Elizabeth was involved would be bound to be lacking, since few now remember them all. One of her abiding loves was Amateur Dramatics which she believed to be a force for social cohesion as well as giving enjoyment to many; cast, assistants and audience.

She started Carbost Drama Club and directed a continuous series of plays for the annual festival, taking some to dizzy heights of that international competition. Despite not speaking Gaelic (although she understood a good deal) she directed Port-nan-Long Gaelic Drama for many years and brought them to success at higher levels of the competition.

Music was a passion throughout her life. She first played the piano in church (at a club for slum children in London) before she was ten; she played the organ in Fernilea Church just 6 weeks before she died.

She was made President of the Skye Arts Guild in its very early days  and more recently became its President for life. Carbost Youth Club, Skye Old People’s Welfare (even when she was considerably older than most of its beneficiaries), Carbost and Port-nan-Long Village Halls, the Dunvegan Show – all these and many more benefited from her vision and inspiration.

It was with young people that she was most at home.  Whether collecting silver paper for the Red Cross from primary schools throughout Skye, organising the annual Dr. Colin Natural History Competition, kneeling on the floor fighting over Racing Demon with a group of her grand-children’s friends or playing the piano to accompany a reel; in any gathering, where the young were, there would Elizabeth be.

She had a splendid 100th birthday party that went on over a fortnight with parties given by her family, her Church and her Drama Clubs. Then she left the stage as she had lived, with no fuss.  Principled without being dogmatic, always alert and receptive to new ideas, forever unconventional and fun, she will be missed by many and remembered with affection and gratitude by all who knew her.

© Bill Peppe, 2004