Fact · South Uist
The statue on Rueval was the islands' answer to the rocket range
Our Lady of the Isles, the granite Madonna on the hill above Iochdar, was commissioned by the priest Canon John Morrison when the Ministry of Defence proposed a missile testing range on South Uist in the 1950s. Rockets are still fired past her.
On the hillside of Rueval in the north of South Uist stands a nine-metre granite statue of the Madonna and Child by the sculptor Hew Lorimer, Our Lady of the Isles, Bana Thighearna nan Eilean. It was commissioned after the Ministry of Defence proposed a large missile testing range for the island in the 1950s. The range was built anyway, and still fires from the machair to the north-west, but so was the statue. Marcus Tanner wrote that she is one of the only visible signs to a visitor that South Uist, unlike the Presbyterian north, stayed Catholic.
Sources / notes: Wikipedia: Our Lady of the Isles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_the_Isles Wikipedia: South Uist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Uist