Family ties land Highland town £600,000 donation

David Ross

Highland Correspondent

Monday 16 April 2012

A RETIRED diplomat has given £600,000 to help young people in a small Highland community.

GIFT: Henry McKenzie Johnston's wife was born in Cromarty

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David Ross Highland Correspondent

Henry McKenzie Johnston has gifted the money to Cromarty, north of Inverness, which has a population of just 730. His late wife Marian came from the area and was the great-great-granddaughter of its most famous son, the polymath Hugh Miller.

Mr McKenzie Johnston has created a charitable trust of £600,000 "to advance the social, cultural, educational and recreational development of the young people of Cromarty and the surrounding area."He has previously given £600,000 to help preserve Hugh Miller's cottage and museum.Money for the new trust will come from the money his wife Marian "Merrie" Middleton, who died in 2009, inherited as a descendant of the Salvesen shipping and whaling company.The Middleton Trust will be in memory of Mrs Middleton and her family, who were farmers active in the Cromarty parish for generations. It will be the responsibility of six local trustees.One of them is Wanda Mackay, the Black Isle's youth development officer, who hailed the Trust as "fantastic news". She said: "This is going to be life-changing for all our young people. It will create so many new opportunities for young people of all ages."Mr McKenzie Johnston said the trust is intended to support the work already being done by Cromarty people for young people and is to be run by them. He added: "I will have no say in how they use this money, which in my view should be decided locally by those who understand the local needs. "The health and future of any community depends to a great extent on the opportunities given to the young to develop a sense of pride in and responsibility for it."There have been Middletons in the Cromarty area since the first, William, came north in 1794 from County Durham in England and took the tenancy of a local farm. Over the succeeding years the family added three other farms. Thomas – later Sir Thomas, a distinguished agronomist – married Lydia, granddaughter of Hugh and Lydia Miller. Their son, Brigadier A A Middleton, married Winifred Salvesen.In 1949 Mr McKenzie Johnston married their eldest daughter, Marian.He said it seemed appropriate that the Salvesen money he had inherited from his wife be used to help Cromarty in memory of her and her family. Hugh Miller was born in Cromarty at the north-east tip of the Black Isle in 1802, in a cottage which was even then 100 years old. He started his working life as a stonemason in the town but was to go on to win a national profile as a geologist, historian, writer, journalist, social commentator and folklorist. Crucially he was also the leading lay figure in the splitting of the Church of Scotland in "the Disruption", which convulsed Scotland in 1843.In 2009 the Cromarty community was shocked to learn the National Trust for Scotland had mooted closing Hugh Miller's Cottage and museum next door, one of many properties it planned to close because of financial difficulties. Apart from daily mentions in the shipping forecast, the cottage is what Cromarty is best known for across Scotland.The property won a reprieve on a scaled-down basis, but the following year an anonymous gift of £600,000 was made in memory of Miller's three great-great-granddaughters to meet the costs of staffing and securing the future of the cottage and museum.It later emerged that the benefactor was Mr McKenzie Johnston, who was born in Edinburgh but lives in London.

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