The earliest mention of Lochmaddy in any record is, encouragingly, a complaint. A 1616 report cited "piracie and murder" and called Lochmaldie on the coast of Uist a rendezvous for pirates. The geography invited it. North Uist's east coast is so rocky and indented that few settlements ever managed to root themselves there, but the same coves and inlets that defeated honest agriculture were ideal for raiding ships hiding contraband bound for clan chiefs hungry for fine goods. The trade persisted, more or less openly, into the modern era - long after the village had reinvented itself as something more respectable.

Under King Charles I in the 17th century, Lochmaddy became a Royal Fishing Station, central to the herring industry that once defined the Scottish west coast. Herring sustained the village through generations and then, like every fishing economy, eventually collapsed. The harbour adapted. The Sheriff Court was completed in 1875. The hospital opened, then closed in March 2001 when its functions moved to Uist and Barra Hospital at Balivanich on Benbecula. What remains is the ferry port - the only one on North Uist - with Caledonian MacBrayne's MV Hebrides making the year-round crossing to Uig on Skye in about one hour and forty-five minutes.

Lochmaddy is small, but for North Uist it is the centre of everything. The village holds the island's only courthouse, only tourist information office, and only youth hostel. The Bank of Scotland branch by Morrison's closed permanently in February 2024, leaving the ATM as the last automated trace of high-street banking on an island where 4G arrived from EE in 2023 and 5G has not yet appeared. The current laird, Fergus Granville - the 6th Earl Granville, who also works as a driftwood sculptor - lives at nearby Callernish House. The contemporary economy runs on tourism, ferries, government services, and what crofting still survives.

The A865 begins or ends at Lochmaddy depending on which way you are travelling, and the A867 - the road that crosses the island past the Langass prehistoric sites - has its eastern end nearby. These are North Uist's only main roads. From the harbour, ferries connect outward; from the village, single-track roads connect inward. Buses connect everything else, with carefully timed service running the length of the Uists to Castlebay on Barra. In good weather the sky at Lochmaddy seems to extend impossibly, the loch reflecting the cloud back at itself. The hounds in the bay don't move much.