Two parallel terraces of brick and stone cottages face each other across what was once a drying green, at the centre of Inverarish. James G. Falconer laid them out between 1912 and 1915, with larger foremen's cottages set on the slope above, to house men working the island's iron mine.
At numbers 29 and 30 on Inverarish Terrace, the Raasay Community Stores is the village grocery and Post Office, owned by the community and a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk up from the ferry. Alongside the ordinary shelves it carries Raasay venison, Dexter beef, honey, whisky and gin, bread from the island baker Kate of haven bread & wood, and sweet and savoury baking by Katherine of Thyme & Tide Bakes. There are cards by island artists and signed books by Roger Hutchinson, who lives here.
For dinner you leave the village. Raasay House, about a mile away near the ferry, has a restaurant, café and bar, and cooks wild Raasay venison, langoustines from the Sound of Raasay, Skye scallops, and vegetables and herbs from the walled garden behind the house. Another option is the restaurant at the Isle of Raasay Distillery, in Borodale House, which looks across the water to Glamaig and the Cuillin; lunch is seasonal small plates and the evening a changing three-course menu.
Raasay House stands on the site of the MacLeod chiefs' house, burned by government troops after Culloden in 1746. The present building was begun the following year, and Johnson and Boswell stayed in 1773. Johnson wrote that it was "such a seat of hospitality amidst the winds and the waves, fills the imagination with a delightful contrariety of images." A fire in January 2009 gutted all but the west wing during a refurbishment, and the hotel reopened in 2013.
The woods above the village are threaded with waymarked trails. The Burma Road and Miners' Trail, a strenuous circuit of two and a half miles over rough, muddy, narrow ground with a steep slope and rocky steps, follows the dismantled mine railway. A gentler stretch of the Coastal Path runs out to North Bay, where you may see seals and otters, and comes back through Orchard Wood. The Temptation Hill route passes Dun Borodale broch and returns along the shore, though the final shore stretch is not waymarked or on Forestry and Land Scotland ground.
The mine largely explains why the village took the shape it did. From 1916 around 280 German prisoners of war lived in the terraces and worked the mine, railway, kilns and pier, the two halves of the settlement divided by barbed wire and watched from towers. Using prisoners in iron production tied to munitions broke the Hague Convention, and their use as strike-breakers drew press coverage and questions in the Commons. The mine's records were deliberately destroyed in 1920. Fourteen prisoners' graves were later moved to Cannock Chase in 1967. Production had stopped by Easter 1919, and the adits, kilns and railway remains still lie in the woods, unsafe to enter.
Raasay Free Church, a plain harled building of about 1845, keeps a bellcote and its original brass oil lamps on wrought-iron stalks. Nearer the bay, the ruined chapel of St Maol-luag stands on a site said to have held a church since the sixth century; it was already roofless by 1773.
Getting here is part of it. There is no railway, no bus and no petrol station on Raasay, so fill up on Skye first. The CalMac ferry from Sconser takes about twenty-five minutes, runs all year and cannot be booked ahead; you join the queue and wait your turn. The roads on the island are single-track.
The community hall in Inverarish keeps a gym, a book exchange and Wi-Fi, and hosts ceilidhs, concerts and film nights. Behind Raasay House the Walled Garden, worked since the sixteenth century, keeps picnic tables among the orchard and community allotments, and welcomes dogs on leads.