Story of scary old head in my dad’s attic is finally revealed

A POACHER from Henley has “confessed” to his crime — 20 years after his death.

In August 1938, Robert Atkinson and two former university friends went hunting on the then private island of Rum in the Inner Hebrides and shot a stag as a dare. The men then cut off the head as a trophy before sailing back to the mainland.

Mr Atkinson, who grew fruit at Rocky Lane Farm in Rotherfield Greys for most of his life, kept detailed notes of his adventure and wrote it up as a short story.

However, he kept it a secret, except to his close family, for fear of being prosecuted.

Now, on the 20th anniversary of his death, the story has been published with the blessing of his son Ed, who lives in Queen Street, Henley, and has the stag’s mounted head in his hallway.



Mr Atkinson Snr was also a travel writer with a small but loyal following in Scotland. Among his admirers was Stuart Murray, who had met him and knew the 85-page manuscript existed and asked for it to be published. He also wrote a brief foreword.

Mr Atkinson was born in 1915 and grew up on a farm at Lovegrove’s Lane in Checkendon, which is now an equestrian centre, before his mother Edith bought Rocky Lane Farm.

His father Edmund, a university lecturer, was killed at Gallipoli during the First World War.

Mr Atkinson attended Leighton Park School in Reading then studied botany at Cambridge, where he met his friends John Naish and Hugh LeLacheur.

After graduating, he was hired as a photographer at an art college in Scotland and would regularly take wildlife shots in remote locations.

This is how he found out about Rum, whose inhabitants had been forced to leave in the 1820s but the owner Sir George Bullough continued to use it as a hunting ground.

Inspired by John Buchan’s 1925 novel John Macnab, which follows three respectable people who turn to poaching for fun, Mr Atkinson and his friends decided they would poach a stag.

They hired a hunting rifle and a small motorboat and on August 15 met at the coastal village of Malaig before setting sail for the island.

They landed on a beach on the opposite side of Rum from Kinloch Castle, the ornate red-brick hunting lodge where Sir George lived. After almost 24 hours of crawling through ditches and hiding in bushes, they finally spotted a stag.

Mr Atkinson took the first shot, which disabled it, before Mr LeLacheur finished it off.

After removing the stag’s head, the trio buried the carcass in a ravine and made their way back in a terrible storm to the mainland, where they arranged for the head to be stuffed and mounted.

The shield bears a silver plate with the words “Kilmory, 1938”, a reference to the abandoned island village where they caught their quarry.

Mr Atkinson Jnr, who is a civil engineer, said: “The island had a reputation for being secretive and hard to reach, like some James Bond villain’s fortress.

“I imagine they were talking about it in the pub and it got to the point where no one had the courage to admit it was a foolish idea, so it took on a momentum of its own.

“It was all very amateur. None of them had a clue what they were doing, other than knowing to stay upwind of the animal so their scent wouldn’t be picked up.

“His book doesn’t fully capture the drama but they had a mighty sea behind them when they were coming back. It was pretty dangerous and I’m probably quite lucky that I’m here!

“They took the head to a taxidermist in Glasgow. He found it very funny — he knew they’d been up to no good but he didn’t want to know.”

During the Second World War Mr Atkinson served with the Royal Navy. Afterwards he married his wife Patsy and they had three children, Ed, Tom and Sally.

Mr Le Lechaur was killed while serving on a destroyer in the Mediterranean while Mr Naish became a GP in Bristol and died in the Nineties.

Rum is now owned by Scottish Heritage and an £8million campaign has been launched to restore the castle as a historic attraction.

Mr Atkinson said: “My father could never have published the story at the time because poaching was a very serious crime. The book would have been a confession. We loved hearing the story as teenagers and it also explained the scary old head that he kept in the attic!”

• A Stag From Rum by Robert Atkinson (7.99) is published by The Islands Book Trust and is available from www.theislandsbooktrust.com