Nanny's ~ A history

Two years ago a little shop in the Ross-shire village of Shieldaig put up the shutters, apparently for the last time. It had been run by Nanny Grant since 1950, and before that by her father, Sandy Grant, who built it in 1918. Since he in turn had been carrying on a family tradition going back deep into the 19th century, it seemed like the end of an era when Nanny died at the age of 73.

Now, however, building on a strong nostalgia for the past, two enterprising women in Shieldaig have reopened the shop. Lynn Frost and Lisa O'Brien have named the new business “Nanny's”. As well as stocking local produce, including the famous Loch Torridon smoked salmon, they have included a takeaway service for coffee and home baking. The produce may be new, but the tradition has strong links with the past. Shopkeeping in those days was a world away from the click-and-deliver of today's internet. Isolated villages such as Applecross had for generations been supplied weekly by boat from Shieldaig, weather permitting.

The Grants' shop was the cornerstone of that precarious existence, stocking everything from food to the Calor gas and coal that kept isolated crofts going. It was not until 1970 that Princess Margaret opened the new coast road and ended a centuries-long dependence on breaks in the weather. The Grants had been a prominent Shieldaig family for more than two hundred years. But Nanny never married and was the last of the line. The day she turned the key in the lock for the last time, just a few months before her death, was a nostalgic occasion for villagers, who assumed that the corrugated iron building would become yet another holiday home.

It was then that Lynn and Lisa stepped in. “Everybody knew it as Nanny's shop when I was young, so keeping the name was an easy decision,” said Mrs Frost, a graduate and mother of two preschool-age children.“Nanny's shop meant a lot to everybody with a Shieldaig connection. I remember my granny would give me a list that I would leave with Nanny and somebody would collect the shopping later in the day. It was just a way of life.” See the full Peter Macaulay article here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article5421249.ece