West Highland Museum
Look at the base of the cylindrical mirror and you see nothing -- apparently random smears of paint on a flat surface. Place the mirror upright and suddenly a face resolves in its curved reflection: Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, gazing out from an eighteenth-century parlor trick designed to save lives. The technique is called anamorphosis. When government agents came searching for evidence of Jacobite loyalty, the mirror was removed, and the 'painting' became meaningless marks. The West Highland Museum in Fort William bought this object from a London junk shop. It may be the most important thing in the building, but in a collection this eccentric, that is a serious competition.
From Reading Room to Listed Building
Victor Hodgson founded the museum in 1922, gathering exhibits and books and displaying them in the Public Reading Room in Monzie Square. By 1926, enough funds had been raised to purchase part of the current premises in Cameron Square -- the former British Linen Bank branch, now B-listed as one of the oldest buildings in Fort William. Hodgson died in 1929, but the collection he started has grown across eight rooms on three floors. In 2011, facing declining visitor numbers, the museum abolished entry charges. The effect was immediate: attendance leapt from 9,152 in 2010 to 31,315 in 2011, climbing annually to 60,806 by 2019. A million visitors passed through between 1979 and 2014. The entire operation runs on three part-time staff and approximately forty volunteers, and in 2021 it received the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service.
Jacobites, Commandos, and a Birching Table
The Jacobite collection is the museum's spine -- the secret portrait its centerpiece -- but the exhibits sprawl across centuries. The Governor's Room, paneled with pine salvaged from Fort William's demolished fort in 1936, contains a round mahogany wine table reputed to have belonged to Colonel John Hill, governor of the fort at the time of the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692. Hill met MacIain, chief of the Glen Coe MacDonalds, at the fort before the massacre; whether this table witnessed that meeting is unprovable but not impossible. The same room holds the burgh's birching table, used to restrain people subjected to judicial corporal punishment. Birching was last administered in Fort William in 1948. The military history wing focuses on the Commando Basic Training Centre at Achnacarry Castle near Spean Bridge, where during the Second World War commandos were forged in one of the most demanding training regimes the British Army has ever devised. Alexander Carmichael's collection of Gaelic folk artifacts and a set of bagpipes claimed -- sceptically -- to have been played at Bannockburn in 1314 round out a museum the Rough Guide aptly called 'splendidly idiosyncratic.'
From the Air
West Highland Museum at 56.8177N, 5.1111W is located in the center of Fort William town, on Cameron Square. Not individually visible from altitude, but Fort William is easily identified at the head of Loch Linnhe beneath Ben Nevis. Best orientation at 2,000-4,000 ft. Fort William heliport nearby. Ben Nevis (1,345 m) dominates the skyline to the southeast.