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Photo: via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
A drystone plinth marks the birthplace of Angus MacAskill (1825–1863), the world's largest "true" giant. You can still discern the outline of the lost village of Sheabie - his family moved to Stornoway, and Sheabie was abandoned during the Clearances of the 1850s. Macaskill was six, and still a normal size, when they emigrated to Englishtown on Cape Breton Island (in Nova Scotia, Canada). There in adolescence he grew and grew and grew to 7 ft 9 in (2.36 m). His family were of unremarkable size, and he was a "true" giant with no hormonal or other metabolic syndrome, and of normal proportions. He was prodigiously strong and joined Barnum's circus as a performing strongman, then returned to Englishtown to own a mill and general store. At age 38, he died of a "brain fever". There's a museum about him near Englishtown and another at Dunvegan on Skye. Several places in Scotland are called "Giant's Grave" and are prehistoric burial chambers, but this fellow was real.
Angus MacAskill was a Scottish giant. In its 1981 edition, the Guinness Book of World Records stated he was the strongest man, the tallest non-pathological giant and the largest true giant in recorded history at 7 feet 9 inches (2.36 m), now equal largest after Olivier Rioux matched his height in 2024. He also had the largest chest measurements of any non-obese man at 80 inches (203 cm). He is the second tallest verified man from the United Kingdom.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
The church is a plain 19th-century building above Backhill the main settlement. It's Presbyterian (Church of Scotland) but all are welcome at services, held at noon on the 1st, 3rd and 5th Sunday of each month, with the 2nd and 4th Sunday services in Lochmaddy. These are mostly in English, with one psalm in Gaelic. Psalms are sung in the Hebridean style with no music.