INCHREE BARN / SABHAL INNIS RUIGHE

Building a community owned events space, shop and café for Nether Lochaber

Welcome to our website - it's in its early stages, just like our project, and will be developed and added to over time. For now, we want to give you a flavour of what the project is about, what we hope to achieve and what progress we make as time goes on.

We're very excited by it and hope you are too! Keep visiting for updates and new site content.

With special thanks to Lucy Cooke, our Project Officer at NLCA and to our funders, who have helped us get this far...

Nether Lochaber

The Nether Lochaber Community Association are planning to develop the barn at Inchree into an exciting new community hub for the residents and visitors of Nether Lochaber, our beautiful part of the highlands.

Nether Lochaber is home to nearly 500 people and stretches from the Corran Ferry through the villages and townships of Keppanach, Inchree, Cuilcheanna, Onich, Oldtown, North Ballachulish, Carness and Callart. Our coastal fringes are the north shores of Loch Linnhe and Loch Leven.

The Project

Inchree Barn is a derelict building situated behind the Inchree community on the edge of the woodland trails leading to Inchree Falls.

Following successful planning permission in July 2025 the project is now seeking the funding required to renovate the space into a working community café business. This will be a place for local events, communal heritage and championing the environment.

Learn how you can get involved below or take a look at the Events and Living Archive pages for more of our work and activities.

Events

Upcoming events and workshops will be listed here.

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Plans Approved

On Friday 18th July, the Inchree Barn received full planning approval for the development to proceed over the next three years. To view the plans and other documents visit the Highland Council Planning Portal here and search for reference 25/00902/FUL.

It is fully ten years since this project was first visualised and discussed by the community council, prior to NLCA being established, and this decision is the result of hundreds of voluntary hours work by successive Inchree Steering Group members and Trustees, and more recently, by our funded Project Officer, Lucy Cooke and Inch Architecture and Design.

Thanks to all of that time and effort, there is a wonderful opportunity for Nether Lochaber to grow as a community, with a social enterprise facility that offers a cafe, an events and workshop space, an opportunity for local produce and crafts to be sold, and a place to celebrate social and ecological heritage.

There’s still a lot of work and fund-raising to do to take it forward, but this approval is a major milestone.

The Living Archive

The development of the Barn Project has highlighted that there is little written/preserved history of the community here despite a rich and interesting past.

Brìgh: stories in stone seeks to unearth the nearly forgotten memories of the barn itself, Inchree, and surrounding area, through research, outreach and engagement with the community.

We aim to explore our ancient landscapes, Gaelic roots, agricultural past, and forgotten industry in particular but will be open to new discoveries and histories along the way. It will be important to record our findings and develop ideas around how the barn can symbolise and celebrate them

Brìgh: Stories in Stone is an art project organised through the Inchree Barn and the Nether Lochaber Community Association with Ali Berardelli who is building a ‘living archive’ for the Nether Lochaber area.

Ali has been thinking about stone and has spent time exploring Onich shoreline finding geological features using video and photographs along with her sister-in-law, Chiara, who has recorded sounds around the location. Ali remembers the shoreline in Onich from her teenage years spent living in the old school and frequent visits by geology groups. Reflecting on this Ali has said;

“I knew that the Onich shoreline was an important place geologically but as a young person it was more important to me socially - time spent by the water, exploring the different shaped stones, the view down Loch Linnhe to mountains beyond, walks and talks with friends, bonfires and parties. Revisiting this place and looking at the rocks through the camera lens has been really interesting, the wide variety of features and the contrast of their place right by the road, the A82, with thundering traffic, nonstop movement. In one place we found a slate that has been captured and held within the branch of the tree as it has grown up through a spoil heap of the old slate quarry."

Ali would love to gather more information on the geology of the area and would welcome any contributions to the online Padlet for the project: Click on this link and add any photographs, anecdotes or links that you think may be useful.

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With thanks to our funders...