He crossed the threshold at 10.43am. And crossed it again on his way out at 10.45am. Donald Trump isn't a man to hang about, even when visiting the home where his mother was born for the first time in his adult life.

Mr Trump spent less than five minutes of his two-hour whistlestop tour of Lewis at 5 Tong, the four-bedroom Edwardian crofthouse of his MacLeod ancestors. Inside for just 120 seconds, he chatted to first cousins Willie and Alasdair Murray, who now live in the home, and declared it in "fine shape".

"It's hard to believe it's well over 100 years old," the construction magnate said later. "It was built by my grandfather. I was very impressed by the condition of the house and the solidity of the house." His sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, a regular visitor to Lewis, interrupted to explain why the home looked so good. "It's the beautiful weather here," she said. The last time Mr Trump was at Tong - aged "three-four", he got his fingers stuck while exploring drawers.

His mother, Mary Anne, was born in the house on May 10, 1912, the seventh child to crofter Malcolm MacLeod and his wife Mary Smith. At 24 Mary Anne went to New York to visit a sister. There she met a certain Fred Trump, who, according to Mrs Trump Barry, instantly decided this was the woman he would marry. The wedding was dutifully recorded in the Stornoway Gazette, in a yellowed cutting Mrs Trump Barry keeps to this day. "Tong Girl Weds Abroad," said the headline, from 1936. Mary Anne had not gone to New York to find a husband. But found one she had, and not a bad catch. He was worth around £126m when he died, in 1999.

"She would have been back," Mr Trump said yesterday. "But she met my father. I always told my father I made more money than him but he had a very successful marriage, he really did. He was married 63 years."

Mr Trump, perhaps less lucky in love, now has a two-and-a-half-year-old son, Barron, from his latest marriage. The boy, he said, will certainly be visiting the family home. Mr Trump's mother did go back to Lewis in 1947, taking daughter Maryanne, then 10, with her.

Mrs Trump Barry remembers the journey well, the last stretch suffered on a "puddle jumper" to Stornoway from Prestwick. "I remember my grandparents were waiting for the daughter that they had not seen since she left to get married. They took mom in their arms and said - o a' ghraidh', (my dear). It was just the most moving thing."