Business Biography

How it all started

In the early 1900s, Murdo MacLeod left the village of Keose on the Isle of Lewis bound for South America to work on a Patagonian sheep farm. An expert judge and buyer of livestock, Murdo's employer, Jose Menendez, held him in high esteem. So much so, that on his return to the Isle of Lewis, Murdo was asked to include Menendez in the name of his first-born child. On setting up home in Ropework Cottage, Stornoway, Murdo and wife, Christina thus became parents to Charles Menendez MacLeod.

Growing up in close proximity to the present day shop, Charles was educated in Achmore and Stornoway before gaining an agricultural degree from Aberdeen University.

After wartime service in North Africa and Europe, Charles set up the butchery business bearing his name at Ropework Park, Stornoway in 1947. Together with wife, Mabel, a nursing sister from Macduff on the east coast of Scotland, they raised two of a family, Iain and Charles, the present proprietors of Charles MacLeod.

After his untimely death in 1967, Charles sen. was interred on Eilean Chalium Chille (St Columba's Isle), part of Crobeag Farm, South Lochs, which he had acquired in 1958.

Charley Barley

MacLeod is the most common name in Lewis and therefore, as is the case throughout Gaeldom, patronymics or nicknames are popularly used in place of surnames for ease of identification. Almost inevitably Charles M MacLeod was renamed and rhymed with Barley - an appellation has naturally passed to his sons, Iain and Charles.