Location of St Kilda

The St Kildans had clung to their basic existence in almost unimaginable conditions in this remote part of the British Isles.   Isolated and battered by a hostile climate, they survived largely by scaling sheer cliff faces to catch the plentiful gannets, fulmars and puffins, and farmed meagre crops.

The population decline began in 1852, when 36 people emigrated to Australia, many of them dying on the way.   This is coincidental exactly the same number who were on this final boat departing St Kilda.

In 1912 there were acute food shortages and in 1913 an outbreak of influenza.

During the First World War a naval detachment arrived on St Kilda, resulting in regular deliveries of mail and food. But when these services were withdrawn at the end of the war feelings of isolation increased, leading to more emigration and a breakdown of the island economy.

But finally it was the death of one woman and child which was to prove the catalyst for the final 36 people on the island to leave, petitioning the government to come and remove them.  This woman was Mary Gillies mother of Norman John who was one of two last surviving people who were born on the island, sadly he died 2 years ago.  Norman leaves us with his memories from that time and his family stories which give us a unique insight into this final evacuation.  Norman who was only 5 was on this final boat  last 36 people evacuated from the island, bringing 2,000 years of habitation to an end.

Memories of leaving by Norman John (Tormod Ian in Gaelic)

Norman John (Tormod Ian in Gaelic) Gillies was born on May 22 1925 in House No 15  to John and Mary Gillies.

Norman Gillies as a baby on St Kilda with his mother Mary and father John (picture copyright Norman Gillies)

mary

Mary Gillies, was pregnant with Norman’s sister when she became gravely ill with appendicitis.  Medical care was not available on the island so she was taken in rough seas by ship to hospital in Glasgow after a previous attempt to get her off St Kilda two weeks earlier had failed owing to bad weather.

“I recall her being taken off in a rowing boat with a shawl around her head”, says Mr Gillies. “I remember her waving to me as I stood near the pier and I was waving back. That was the last time I saw her.”

Mary Gillies died on 26 May 1930. The girl she had given birth to died the same day, just 13 days old.

For many years it was assumed that she had died of appendicitis, but her son Norman John Gillies discovered in 1991 that she had in fact died of pneumonia, having given birth to a daughter who also died.

Goodbye St Kilda

It was to be 60 years later, when an uncle died in 1990, and her birth certificate was found among other papers, that Mr Gillies realised he had had a little sister.

“It was just something the family didn’t talk about”, he says.

He adds: “My mother’s death showed the St Kildans the hopelessness of being on the island if someone took really ill.”

This was the final straw for the inhabitants of St Kilda.

His mother’s death had far-reaching consequences for the islanders. “They realised that they were in a hopeless position if anybody took really ill. That was one of the things. All households had to sign that they would leave St Kilda. That happened on 29 August, 1930,” said Mr Gillies.

“For the younger people it was an opportunity to do things which would help their entire lives. To the older inhabitants it was almost as if they had cut off their right hands, to have left their island home.”

On 29 August 1930, the remaining 36 inhabitants were removed to Morvern on the Scottish mainland at their own request.

In all, 36 men, women and children made the 12-hour crossing from Village Bay, with 28 coming ashore at Lochaline, in the Morvern peninsula, while others headed for Oban and on to Inverness, Portree, Fife or Stromeferry.

St. Kildans evacuating the island in 1930

The morning of the evacuation promised a perfect day. The sun rose out of a calm and sparkling sea and warmed the impassive cliffs of Oiseval. The sky was hopelessly blue and the sight of Hirta, green and pleasant as the island of so many careless dreams, made parting all the more difficult. Observing tradition the islanders left an open Bible and a small pile of oats in each house, locked all the doors and at 7 am boarded the Harebell. Although exhausted by the strain and hard work of the last few days, they were reported to have stayed cheerful throughout the operation. But as the long antler of Dun fell back onto the horizon and the familiar outline of the island grew faint, the severing of an ancient tie became a reality and the St Kildans gave way to tears.

At the age of five, the full significance of his first boat trip would not have been obvious to Norman John Gillies.

As he played hide-and-seek with other children on the deck of HMS Harebell, his family and neighbours sat waving goodbye to an island disappearing into the horizon, and to their very way of life.

At the time one resident described looking back from the ship and seeing their abandoned home resemble “an open grave”.

Two days before, the Dunara Castle tourist boat had taken off the sheep and cattle, which were sold. But working dogs were drowned in the bay, as they could not be taken on board.

Waving farewell

Awaiting them on the mainland was a new start after the trauma of leaving behind the ultimately impossible existence on St Kilda.

Norman’s cousin, Rachel Johnson, who is in a nursing home in Glasgow (I am not sure if she is still alive) – clearly recalls seeing the crowd of 200-300 gathered at the shore to see them arrive, as well as her first sighting of a car.

For Norman and his family, as well as other St Kildans, it was also the first time he had seen a tree as, ironically, as they had come to live and work on the Forestry Commission’s 7,000-acre Fiunary Forest. He says: “Looking back, the evacuation was a blessing in disguise. It gave the younger ones greater opportunities to do something with their lives that would not have been possible on St Kilda”.

The newly evacuated St Kildans joined a community of about 500 in Morvern, swapping their two-room cottages for slated, two-storey houses and running water. Although they were more scattered than they wanted, they were still largely together.

Norman, his father and grandmother all at first lived in a small, isolated cottage at Ardness overlooking the Sound of Mull. The cottage got flooded several times and, after complaining to the Scottish Secretary they finally were moved to Larachbeg, where there were other exiled St Kildans.

Morvern resident and historian Iain Thornber says the alien environment, while still remote, had considerably more amenities than St Kilda.

“In those days there were three post offices, providing six daily mail deliveries and collections a week, a doctor, district nurse, two shops, six schools and a public telephone system as well as a direct daily steamer link with Oban.

“Moreover, eight of the men were offered steady employment in the forest at a wage of 38 shillings (just under £2) per 45-hour week, in place of an annual income of around £30 in a good year on St Kilda.”

Mr Thornber saiys the St Kildan men were strong, hard-working people with a keen sense of direction and an in-built ability to predict the weather. They used semaphore, a technique they picked up from the sailors, to communicate with each other when in different work parties several miles apart.

They also showed their climbing skills, acquired from gathering seabirds, in one of their first tasks in planting trees on Aoinneadh Mor, a basalt ridge rising sharply to 1,500ft.

“None of the local forestry workers cared to go anywhere near the place saying it was too dangerous”, says Mr Thornber. “But the islanders, renowned for their cragmanship on some of the highest sea cliffs in Europe, just laughed and said the Aoinneadh Mor rocks were only ‘little hills’ by comparison, and got on with the work.”

He adds: “Although they came as strangers all these years ago, the St Kildans are remembered not so much for the forest they left behind, which still dominates the Morvern landscape, but for their friendliness, hospitality and remarkable way in which they adjusted to life in an unfamiliar land.”

Norman John Gillies was one of the last survivors from the evacuation of St Kilda.

Annie Gillies, Norman Gillies’ grandmother and ‘Queen of St Kilda. (picture copyright Norman Gillies)

The landowner Sir Reginald MacLeod of MacLeod (27th chief of the Scottish clan Clan MacLeod) received requests from other people to live there, but he declined.

He said at the time: “I’m sorry to lose a population that has down its generations been tenants of my family for 1,000 years. But they themselves have a right to go and I cannot blame them.

“I’m strongly opposed to the idea of resettlers. The present population signed a petition for removal which at great trouble and expense has now been carried out. In these circumstances it would be a folly to remove one lot of people who know the island and replace them with a group of strangers.” MacLeod of MacLeod sold the islands in 1931 to the Marquis of Bute, a keen ornithologist. He bequeathed them to The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) in 1957.

Norman returned to his homeland, St Kilda 75 years after its evacuation.  He went with his family who were seeing  St Kilda for the first time.

In his family home, he was able to trace out the walls of the bedrooms and point to the kitchen where his mother had cooked oatcakes, scones and puffins.

“It’s nice to come home to my little homeland,” he said.

Norman John Gillies: St Kilda evacuee who dedicated himself to preserving its memory

The post 85th Anniversary of St Kilda being evacuated appeared first on ScotClans | Scottish Clans.

If you were not aware UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and they are in charge of running the World Heritage Programme. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humanity. There are currently 1008 sites listed across 161 countries including such wonders as the Great Wall of China, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, Statue of Liberty in the USA, Uluru in Australia and many, many more.

Now let’s take a look at what Scotland has to offer, starting with the most recent addition…

Forth Bridge

The Forth Bridge is one of 3 crossings over the Firth of Forth beginning just west of Edinburgh over to Queensferry. Alongside it are the Forth Road Bridge and the yet to be completed Queensferry Crossing. It is a fantastic example of single cantilever bridge and was the longest such bridge in the world until 1917 when the Quebec Bridge in Canada was completed but it continues to be world’s second-longest single cantilever span. It is 8,094 feet in length, and the double track is elevated 150 feet above the water level at high tide. The weight of the bridge superstructure was 50,513 long tons, including the 6.5 million rivets used. The bridge also used 640,000 cubic feet of granite.

Prior to the construction of the bridge the only way across the Forth was by ferry. In 1806 it was proposed that a tunnel was dug under the Forth to provide a crossing route and in 1818 James Anderson produced a design for a three-span suspension bridge close to the site of the present one but that proved to not move forward any further than a design. Thomas Bouch became involved in 1871 and designed a suspension bridge that would have crossed the Forth at almost the same point as the present bridge, and after careful verification, work started in 1878 on a pier at Inchgarvie. However following the Tay Bridge disaster in 1879, all confidence in Bouch quickly evaporated. The public inquiry into the disaster found the Tay Bridge to be “badly designed, badly constructed and badly maintained,” with Bouch being “mainly to blame” for the defects in construction and maintenance and “entirely responsible” for the defects in design. Bouch’s design was formally abandoned on 13 January 1881, and Sir John Fowler, W. H. Barlow and T. E. Harrison, consulting engineers to the project, were invited to give proposals for a bridge. It was two of these men, the English engineers, Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker, that designed the bridge we know and love today.

In April 1883, construction of a landing stage at Inchgarvie commenced. Extensive preparations took place to prepare the are for the bridge and included removal of an old coastguard station at the Fife end to make way for the north-east pier, a steep hillside had to be terraced on the Queensferry end and wooden huts and shops for the workmen were put up in the area, a cable was laid across the Forth to allow telephone communication between the centres at Queensferry, Inchgarvie, and Fife. Near the shore a sawmill and cement store were erected, and a substantial jetty around 2,100 feet long was started early in 1883 and sidings were built to bring railway vehicles among the shops, and cranes set up to allow the loading and movement of material delivered by rail. On Inchgarvie extant buildings, including fortifications built in the 15th century, were roofed over to increase the available space, and the rock at the west of the island was cut down to a level 7 feet above high water, and a seawall was built to protect against large waves.

At its peak, approximately 4,600 workers were employed in its construction, it used 55,000 tonnes of steel and 140,000 cubic yards of masonry including Aberdeen granite, Arbroath rubble, sand and timber the marvel of engineering was completed after 6 hard years in December 1889. The first complete crossing took place on 24 February, when a train consisting of two carriages carrying the chairmen of the various railway companies involved made several crossings. The bridge was officially opened on 4 March 1890 by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, who drove home the last rivet, which was gold plated and suitably inscribed. The key for the official opening was made by Edinburgh silversmith John Finlayson Bain, commemorated in a plaque on the bridge.

Something interesting happened between competing railway operators following the opening of the bridge. Previously a trip from London to Aberdeen would have taken around 13 hours up the west coast lines(from Euston and using the London and North Western Railway and Caledonian Railway on a west coast route), with the opening of the east coast lines(starting from King’s Cross up to the Great Northern, North Eastern and North British railways east line) the two different routes began to unofficially race reducing the journey time to about 8½ hours on the overnight runs. When the public interest in these ‘races’ began to subside the journey pulled back to an average time of around 10 hours, still a big improvement.

In the First World War British sailors would time their departures or returns to the base at Rosyth by asking when they would pass under the bridge. This practice continued at least up to the 1990s.

The first German air attack on Britain in the Second World War took place over the Forth Bridge, six weeks into the war, on 16 October 1939. Although known as the “Forth Bridge Raid”, the bridge was not the target and not damaged. The target of the attack was shipping from the Rosyth naval base in the Forth, close to the bridge.

Network Rail plans to add a visitor centre to the bridge, which would include a viewing platform on top of the North Queensferry side, or a bridge climbing experience to the South Queensferry side.

St Kilda

St Kilda is an isolated archipelago 64 kilometres west-northwest of North Uist in the North Atlantic Ocean. It contains the westernmost islands of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The largest island is Hirta, whose sea cliffs are the highest in the United Kingdom; three other islands (Dùn, Soay and Boreray) were also used for grazing and seabird hunting.

St Kilda may have been permanently inhabited for at least two millennia, the population probably never exceeding 180 but the entire remaining population was evacuated from Hirta (the only inhabited island) in 1930. It became one of Scotland’s six World Heritage Sites in 1986 and is one of the few in the world to hold joint status for its natural and cultural qualities, an honour the islands share with internationally important sites such as Machu Picchu in Peru, Mount Athos in Greece and the Ukhahlamba/Drakensberg Park in South Africa.. Parties of volunteers work on the islands in the summer to restore the many ruined buildings that the native St Kildans left behind. They share the island with a small military base established in 1957.

One of the primary themes of life on St Kilda for the natives was that of isolation. Separated by distance and weather, the natives knew little of mainland and international politics. After the Battle of Culloden in 1746, it was rumoured that Bonnie Prince Charlie and some of his senior Jacobite aides had escaped to St Kilda. An expedition was launched, and in due course British soldiers were ferried ashore to Hirta. They found a deserted village, as the St Kildans, fearing pirates, had fled to caves to the west. When the St Kildans were persuaded to come down, the soldiers discovered that the isolated natives knew nothing of the prince and had never heard of King George II either.

Even in the late 19th century, the islanders could only communicate with the rest of the world by either lighting a bonfire on the summit of Conachair and hoping a passing ship might see it, or by using the “St Kilda mailboat”. This was the invention of John Sands, who visited in 1877. During his stay, a shipwreck left nine Austrian sailors marooned there, and by February supplies were running low. Sands attached a message to a lifebuoy salvaged from the Peti Dubrovacki and threw it into the sea. Nine days later it was picked up in Birsay, Orkney, and a rescue was arranged. The St Kildans, building on this idea, would fashion a piece of wood into the shape of a boat, attach it to a bladder made of sheepskin, and place in it a small bottle or tin containing a message. Launched when the wind came from the north-west, two-thirds of the messages were later found on the west coast of Scotland or, less conveniently, in Norway.

Above and beyond the isolation the life of a St Kildan was very different for several other reasons. Their diet was heavily restricted by what could be farmed or hunted on the island. The islanders kept sheep and a few cattle and were able to grow a limited amount of food crops such as barley and potatoes and they generally shied away from the fishing that you would expect from such an area due to the unpredictable nature of the seas around the island. Instead the mainstay of their diet was the profusion of island birds, especially gannet and fulmar. They harvested the eggs and young birds and ate both fresh and cured. Adult puffins were also caught by the use of fowling rods. These fowling activities involved considerable skills in climbing, especially on the precipitous sea stacks. An important island tradition involved the ‘Mistress Stone’, a door-shaped opening in the rocks north-west of Ruival over-hanging a gully. Young men of the island had to undertake a ritual there to prove themselves on the crags and worthy of taking a wife.

Another important aspect of St Kildan life was the daily ‘Parliament’. This was a meeting held in the street every morning and attended by all the adult males during the course of which they would decide upon the day’s activities. No one led the meeting, and all men had the right to speak.

On 29 August 1930, the residents of the island were removed to Morvern on the Scottish mainland at their own request. Numerous factors led to the evacuation of St Kilda. The islands’ inhabitants had existed for centuries in relative isolation until tourism and the presence of the military in World War I disconnected the islanders from the way of life that had allowed their forebears to survive in this unique environment. After World War I most of the young men left the island, and the population fell from 73 in 1920 to 37 in 1928. After the death of four men from influenza in 1926 there was a succession of crop failures in the 1920s. Investigations by Aberdeen University into the soil where crops had been grown have shown that there had been contamination by lead and other pollutants, caused by the use of sea bird carcasses and peat ash in the manure used on the village fields. The dwindling population and the isolation from medical care led to the islanders eventually abandoning St Kilda.

In 1931 St Kilda was sold to the Marquess of Bute, a keen ornithologist. He bequeathed them to The National Trust for Scotland in 1957.

New Lanark

New Lanark is a village on the River Clyde, just over a mile from Lanark, in Lanarkshire, and some 24 miles from Glasgow. It was founded in 1786 by David Dale, who built cotton mills and housing for the mill workers. Dale built the mills there in a brief partnership with the English inventor and entrepreneur Richard Arkwright to take advantage of the water power provided by the only waterfalls on the River Clyde. Under the ownership of a partnership that included Dale’s son-in-law, Robert Owen, a Welsh philanthropist and social reformer, New Lanark became a successful business and an epitome of utopian socialism as well as an early example of a planned settlement and so an important milestone in the historical development of urban planning.

The New Lanark cotton mills were founded in 1786 by David Dale although he sold the mills, lands and village in the early 19th century for £60,000, payable over 20 years, to a partnership that included his son-in-law Robert Owen. Owen, who became mill manager in 1800, was an industrialist who carried on his father-in-law’s philanthropic approach to industrial working and who subsequently became an influential social reformer. In Owen’s time some 2,500 people lived at New Lanark, many from the poorhouses of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Although not the grimmest of mills by far, Owen found the conditions unsatisfactory and resolved to improve the workers’ lot. He paid particular attention to the needs of the 500 or so children living in the village and working at the mills, and opened the first infants’ school in Britain in 1817.

The mills thrived commercially, but Owen’s partners were unhappy at the extra expense incurred by his welfare programmes. Unwilling to allow the mills to revert to the old ways of operating, Owen bought out his partners. In 1813 the Board forced an auction, hoping to obtain the town and mills at a low price but Owen and a new board, that was sympathetic to his reforming ideas, won out.

New Lanark became celebrated throughout Europe, with many leading royals, statesmen and reformers visiting the mills. They were astonished to find a clean, healthy industrial environment with a content, vibrant workforce and a prosperous, viable business venture all rolled into one. Owen’s philosophy was contrary to contemporary thinking, but he was able to demonstrate that it was not necessary for an industrial enterprise to treat its workers badly to be profitable. Owen was able to show visitors the village’s excellent housing and amenities, and the accounts showing the profitability of the mills.

In 1825, control of New Lanark passed to the Walker family when Owen left Britain to start settlement of New Harmony in the US. The Walkers managed the village until 1881, when it was sold to Birkmyre and Sommerville and the Gourock Ropeworks. They and their successor companies remained in control until the mills closed in 1968. The town and the industrial activity had been in decline before then, but after the mills closed migration away from the village accelerated, and the buildings began to deteriorate. In 1970 the mills, other industrial buildings and the houses used by Dale and Owen were sold to Metal Extractions Limited, a scrap metal company. In 1974 the NLCT (now the NLT) was founded to prevent demolition of the village. A compulsory purchase order was used in 1983 to recover the mills and other buildings from Metal Extractions after a repairs notice had been served in 1979. This was because of the state of repair of the buildings despite their listing as historic buildings that required their legal preservation in 1971. By 2005 most of the buildings had been restored and the village has become a major tourist attraction.

It has been estimated that over 400,000 people visit the village each year and about 200 people currently live in New Lanark. Considerable attention has been given to maintaining the historical authenticity of the village. No television aerials or satellite dishes are allowed in the village, and services such as telephone, television and electricity are delivered though buried cables. To provide a consistent appearance all external woodwork is painted white, and doors and windows follow a consistent design. Householders used to be banned from owning dogs, but this rule is no longer enforced.

Edinburgh’s Old & New Town

The Old Town is he name given to the oldest part of Scotland’s capital, and is an area that has retained much of the medieval street plan and many of the reformation era buildings. The New Town is the name given to the are just north of the Old Town, built between 1767 and around 1850, which retains much of the original neo-classical and Georgian period architecture and is considered a masterpiece of city planning. Together these two areas of the city form one World Heritage Site.

The Old Town makes up the heart of Edinburgh and has done since the beginnings of the city of Edinburgh. The Royal Mile is at the heart of the area and makes up it’s main artery, running from Edinburgh Castle all the way down to Holyrood Palace. Narrow closes (alleyways), often no more than a few feet wide, lead steeply downhill to both north and south of the main spine which runs west to east.n addition to the Royal Mile, the Old Town may be divided into various areas, namely from west to east: West Port, the old route out of Edinburgh to the west, Grassmarket, the area to the south-west, Edinburgh Castle, The Cowgate, the lower southern section of the town, Canongate, a name correctly applied to the whole eastern district, Holyrood, the area containing Holyrood Palace and Holyrood Abbey, Croft-An-Righ, a group of buildings north-east of Holyrood. Notable buildings in the Old Town include St. Giles’ Cathedral, the General Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland, the National Museum of Scotland, the Old College of the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Parliament Building.

Due to the space restrictions imposed by the narrowness of the “tail” the Old Town became home to some of the earliest “high rise” residential buildings. Multi-story dwellings were the norm from the 16th century onwards. A census 0f 1792 put the Old Town and Canongate population at around 30,000 residents. As the population was for a long time reluctant to build outside the defensive wall, the need for housing grew and hence the buildings became higher and higher. Many of these buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire of Edinburgh (1824); the rebuilding of these on the original foundations led to changes in the ground level and the creation of many passages and vaults under the Old Town. The construction of new streets including North Bridge and South Bridge in the 18th century also created underground spaces, such as the Edinburgh Vaults below the latter. Traditionally buildings were less dense in the eastern, Canongate, section. This area underwent major slum clearance and reconstruction in the 1950s, thereafter becoming an area largely of Council housing. Further Council housing was built on the southern fringe of the Canongate in the 1960s and 1970s in an area generally called Dumbiedykes. From 1990 to 2010 major new housing schemes appeared throughout the Canongate. These were built to a much higher scale than the traditional buildings and have greatly increased the population of the area.

The idea of a New Town was first suggested in the late 17th century when the Duke of Albany and York (later King James VII and II), when resident Royal Commissioner at Holyrood, encouraged the idea of having an extended regality to the north of the city and a North Bridge. The decision to construct a New Town was taken by the city fathers, after overcrowding inside the Old Town city walls reached breaking point and to prevent an exodus of wealthy citizens from the city to London.[2] The Age of Enlightenment had arrived in Edinburgh, and the outdated city fabric did not suit the professional and merchant classes who lived there. Lord Provost George Drummond succeeded in extending the boundary of the Royal Burgh to encompass the fields to the north of the Nor Loch, the heavily polluted body of water which occupied the valley immediately north of the city. A scheme to drain the Loch was put into action, although the process was not fully completed until 1817. Crossing points were built to access the new land; the North Bridge in 1772, and the Earthen Mound, which began as a tip for material excavated during construction of the New Town. The Mound, as it is known today, reached its present proportions in the 1830s.

As the successive stages of the New Town were developed, the rich moved northwards from cramped tenements in narrow closes into grand Georgian homes on wide roads. However, the poor remained in the Old Town.

The street names applied to the New Town are something of interest when investigated. The principal street was named George Street, after the king at the time, George III. Queen Street was to be located to the north, named after his wife, and St. Giles Street to the south, after the city’s patron saint. St. Andrew’s Square and St. George’s Square, located at either end of George Street, were the names chosen to represent the union of Scotland and England. The idea was continued with the smaller Thistle Street (for Scotland’s national emblem) between George Street and Queen Street, and Rose Street (for England’s emblem) between George Street and Princes Street.

King George rejected the name St. Giles Street as St Giles was known as the patron saint of lepers and the name was also connected with a slum area on the edge of the City of London. It was therefore renamed Princes Street after his sons. The name of St. George’s Square was changed to Charlotte Square, after the Queen, to avoid confusion with the existing George Square on the South Side of the Old Town. The westernmost blocks of Thistle Street were renamed Hill Street and Young Street, making Thistle Street half the length of Rose Street. The three streets completing the grid, Castle, Frederick and Hanover Streets, were named for the view of the castle, King George’s father Frederick, and the name of the royal family respectively.

The New Town was envisaged as a purely residential suburb but it did not take long for the commercial potential of the site to be realised. Shops were soon opened on Princes Street, and during the 19th century the majority of the townhouses on that street were replaced with larger commercial buildings.

Occasional piecemeal redevelopment continues to this day, though most of Queen Street and Thistle Street, and large sections of George Street, Hanover, Frederick and Castle Streets, are still lined with their original late 18th century buildings. Very large sections of the Second New Town, built from the early 19th century are also still exactly as built.

The Antonine Wall

The lesser known brother to England’s Hadrians Wall, the Antonine Wall is a stone and turf fortification built by the Romans across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland, between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. It spanned approximately 39 miles and was about 3 metres high and 5 metres wide.

The Antonine wall was built from turf on a stone foundation, and the stone foundations and wing walls of the original forts demonstrate that the original plan was to build a stone wall similar to Hadrian’s Wall, but this plan was at sometime abandoned. The Romans initially planned to build forts every 6 miles, but this was soon revised to every 2 miles, resulting in a total of nineteen forts along the wall. The best preserved but also one of the smallest forts is Rough Castle Fort. In addition to the forts, there are at least 9 smaller fortlets, very likely on Roman mile spacings, which formed part of the original scheme, some of which were later replaced by forts.

Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius ordered the construction of the Antonine Wall around 142 and took around 12 years to complete. The wall was intended as a replacement for Hadrians Wall, 99 miles south, and to extend the borders and dominance of the Roman Empire becoming the new frontier of Britannia.

The wall was abandoned only eight years after completion, when the Roman legions withdrew to Hadrian’s Wall in 162, and over time reached an accommodation with the Brythonic tribes of the area whom they fostered as the buffer states which would later become “The Old North”. After a series of attacks in 197, Emperor Septimius Severus arrived in 208 to secure the frontier, and oversee repairs to the wall. Although this re-occupation only lasted a few years, the wall is sometimes referred to by later Roman historians as the Severan Wall.

Today the remains of the wall and several of the forts can still be seen along it’s original route, and due to it travelling across such a vast area it’s fairly easy to visit and view sections, although it may take a awhile to take in the whole monument.

The Heart of Neolithic Orkney

The Heart of Neolithic Orkney refers to a group of Neolithic monuments found on the Mainland, one of the islands of Orkney, and the name was adopted by UNESCO when it proclaimed these sites as a World Heritage Site in 1999.

The grouping currently consists of four important sites found in and around this are; Maeshowe, Standing Stones of Stenness, Ring of Brodgar and Skara Brae.

Maeshowe is a Neolithic chambered cairn and passage grave that was likely built around 2800 BCE.

The mound encasing the tomb is 35m in diameter and rises to a height of 7.3m. Surrounding the mound, at a distance of 15m to 21m is a ditch up to 14m wide. The grass mound hides a complex of passages and chambers built of carefully crafted slabs of flagstone weighing up to 30 tons. It is aligned so that the rear wall of its central chamber held up by a bracketed wall,is illuminated on the winter solstice.

Maeshowe is the largest burial cairn of it’s class and gives it’s name to other such chambered cairns, which are limited to Orkney. It is believed a monument such as this, built at the time it was, would have taken a considerable amount of effort to build. Estimates put it somewhere in the area of 100,000 man-hours. It represents a significant example of Neolithic craftsmanship.

The Standing Stones of Stenness, another Neolithic monument, are found 5 miles northeast of Stromness on the mainland of Orkney and may be the oldest henge site in the British Isles.

The monument is made up of thin slabs, approximately 300 mm (12 in) thick with sharply angled tops. Four, up to about 5m high, were originally elements of a stone circle of up to 12 stones, laid out in an ellipse about 32m diameter on a levelled platform of 44m diameter, surrounded by a ditch. Based on radiocarbon dating, it is thought that work on the site had begun by 3100 BC.

Traditions involving the stones survived for centuries, right up to the 18th century. One tradition involved a particular stone, known as the “Odin Stone” which stood in the field to the north of the henge,was pierced with a circular hole, and was used by local couples for plighting engagements by holding hands through the gap.

Unfortunately this stone was destroyed in late 1814. Captain W. Mackay, a recent immigrant to Orkney who owned farmland in the vicinity of the stones, decided to remove them on the grounds that local people were trespassing and disturbing his land by using the stones in rituals. He started by smashing the Odin Stone. This caused outrage in the locals and they managed to stop him causing any more damage, but only after he had destroyed one other stone and toppled another. The toppled stone was re-erected in 1906 along with some inaccurate reconstruction inside the circle.

The Ring of Brodgar (or Brogar, or Ring o’ Brodgar) is another Neolithic henge and stone circle found about 6 miles north-east of Stromness and is the northern most example of a henge found in Britain.

Brodgar is a striking exception of a henge containing a stone circle, ranking with Avebury (and to a lesser extent Stonehenge) among the greatest of such sites. The site has resisted attempts at scientific dating and the monument’s age remains uncertain. It is generally thought to have been erected between 2500 BC and 2000 BC, and was, therefore, the last of the great Neolithic monuments built on the Ness.

Skara Brae is a stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland which was occupied from roughly 3180 BCE–2500 BCE. It makes up Europe’s most complete Neolithic village older than both Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids, and is often called the “Scottish Pompeii” because of its excellent preservation.

In the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll known as “Skerrabra”. When the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs.

William Watt of Skaill, the local laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after four houses were uncovered, but the work was abandoned in 1868. The site remained undisturbed until 1913, when during a single weekend the site was plundered by a party with shovels who took away an unknown quantity of artifacts. In 1924, another storm swept away part of one of the houses and it was determined the site should be made secure and more seriously investigated. The job was given to University of Edinburgh’s Professor Vere Gordon Childe.

The houses used earth sheltering, being sunk into the ground. It is believed they were sunk into mounds of pre-existing prehistoric domestic waste known as middens. The midden provided the houses with a small degree of stability and also acted as insulation against Orkney’s harsh winter climate. On average, the houses measure 40 square metres in size with a large square room containing a stone hearth used for heating and cooking. Given the number of homes, it seems likely that no more than fifty people lived in Skara Brae at any given time.

The dwellings contain a number of stone-built pieces of furniture, including cupboards, dressers, seats, and storage boxes and each dwelling even included a primitive form of a toilet.

The Grooved Ware People, a distinctive form of pottery found around all the sites in the Neolithic Heart of Orkney, who built Skara Brae were primarily pastoralists who raised cattle and sheep. It was originally believed that the inhabitants did not practice agriculture, but excavations in 1972 unearthed seed grains from a midden suggesting that barley was cultivated.

This pastoral lifestyle is in sharp contrast to some of the more exotic interpretations of the culture of the Skara Brae people. Euan MacKie, a British archaeologist and anthropologist, suggested that Skara Brae might be the home of a privileged theocratic class of wise men who engaged in astronomical and magical ceremonies at nearby Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness. Doubt has been cast on this interpretation as there is no archaeological evidence to back it up.

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Letters of Lady Grange

The letters of Rachel Erskine, Lady Grange, who was exiled to St Kilda by her husband have now been made public by The Edinburgh University Image Collections.

The letters were smuggled to Lady Grange’s solicitor in Edinburgh and offer an incredible insight into the suffering and hardships she endured on the island.

Lady Grange spent nine years on St Kilda and was then moved on to various locations in the Western Isles including Harris, Uist and Skye.

St Kilda, photo taken from the boat when I was on my way there to camp for 5 days

St Kilda is the remotest part of the British Isles, it lies 41 miles (66 kilometres) west of Benbecula in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.

The Story of Lady Grange

Lady Grange (Rachel Chiesley, 1682-1745) was married to James Erskine, the Scottish Lord Advocate.  James was the second son of Charles, tenth Earl of Mar.  After he was raised to the bench in March 1707, he took the name Lord Grange, and in 1710 became Lord Justice-Clerk.  His wife was Rachel Cheisley, sister of Major Cheisley of Dalry, an area of Edinburgh. After James and Rachel had eight children together. After they had been married 20 years James is said to have taken a ‘insuperable aversion’ to her and they agreed to live separately.  But  James considered his estranged wife to be of danger to him and his standing in society saying she would spy on him and may have the means of implicating him with the Government (whether this means as a Jacobite sympathizer there is very little evidence).  James concluded that he needed to get rid of her.  Others around them said that Rachel was very jealous of his ‘irregularities’ and had a ‘fierce and revengeful’ temper and was the ‘victim of intemperance’.

It is believed that the plan of kidnapping her off to some remote place in the North was hatched, on her disappearance they were to circulate reports of her death. This went ahead and as her funeral was staged in Edinburgh she was abducted and imprisoned on North Uist before being taken, in 1734, to Hirta, the largest island in the St Kilda archipelago. While there she was not completely isolated – she had a constant supply of provisions and a woman to wait on her. She managed to alert friends to her circumstances by sending a letter to Edinburgh but they were unable to rescue her. After eight years she was eventually moved to Skye.

Dr Johnson is said to have told McLeod, the landlord of St Kilda that if he “would let it be known that he had such a place for naughty ladies, he might make it a very profitable island” (in Boswell’s “Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”)

This plan involved Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat.  He denied having any connection with this.  Letters exist to his cousin Thomas where he wrote:

“As to this story about my Lady Grange, it is a much less surprise to me, because they said ten times worse of me when that damn’d woman went from Edinburgh than they can say now; for they said, it was all my contrivance, and that it was my servants that took her away; but I def’d them then, as I do now, and do declare to you, upon honour that I do not know what is become of that woman, where she is, or who takes care of her; but if I had contrived, and assisted and saved my Lord Grange from that devil, who threatened every day to murder him and his children, I would not think shame of it before God, or man; and where she is, I wish and hope she may never be seen again, to torment my worthy friend.”

Lady Grange in her statement dated 1741, is documented as saying:

“One of Lord Lovat’s lyes, which he said to John MacLeod, the young man of Dynwick, that I was going to kill my husband – you know that a lye.”

“I hear Alexander M’Donald in the Hasker is dead:  His wife has since married .. she knows ’twas Lord Lovat and Roderick M’Leod that stole me. The minister’s daughters saw me taken out of Me M’Lean‘s house by Rod. M’leod.”

A letter to her Solicitor

A letter to her solicitor on January 20th 1738 gives an account of her treatment.

I have copied this out to the best of my ability, keeping the spelling mistakes and incorrect punctuation in. It is quite difficult to piece together, but does give a wonderful insight into her situation.

SIR, – It is a great blessing and happiness to a nation when the King imployeth such a nab as you are to Act and do for him who I’m perswadid his the aw and fear of God on him.  Job was a just man and a perfect and the cause that he know not he searched out to deliver the poor and oppressed and him that had none to help him, a Patterne for on in your office.  I have the Honour to be your Relation and I know you have much interest with Lord Greange if you can make Peace for me you know the promices that is to the Peace maker, you know I’m not guilty of envy crime except of loveing my husband to to much, he knowes very well that he was idol and now God his made him a rode to Scoureth me… you know he took a dislike and a hatred to poor unfortunate me …. we lived 25 years together few or non I thought soo happy there is no person but his a fault  … ought he not to forgive me as he desires or expects to be forgiven of God  …”

“… I would give a particular account but I must be short and I have a bad pin upon the 22nd of Jan 1732 I lodged in Margaret M’Lean house and a little before twelve at night some servants of Lovats and his Cousin Roderich Macleod he is a writer to the Signet they there had me down upon the floor in a Barbarous manner I cried murther murther then they stopp my mouth I puled out the cloth and told Rod Macleod I knew him,  there hard rude hands belled and abased my face all below my eyes they dung out some of my teeth and tore my cloth of my head and tore out some of my hair.  I wrestled and defend my self with my hands then Rod: ordered to tye down my hands  and covered my face with a cloath and stop my mouth again they had westl’d so long with me that it was all I could breath, then they carr’d me down stairs….  I could not cry they carried me off very quickly with out the Ports, when they open’d the Chair and took the cloath off my head I saw I was near  to the mutters of hill it being moonlight I then show’d them that all the linnins about me were covered with blood.  they had there about 6 or 7 horses they set me on a horse behind was Mr Foster and tyed me fast with a cloath …  we rode all night it being Saturday we met no body or day breake. They took me in to a house which belongs to …MacLeod advocate  a little beyond Lithgow..”

“..they had a sloop waiting there for me… he ordered him to take me home to his own house and keep me till farther orders… on Sep 30 we can to the Isle it belongs to Sir Alexander MacDonald and this man is the tannent, after I was some time there he thought it a sin to keep me he said he would let me go for tho Sir Alex: should take the Isle from him he could not take his life.  I sent a man for a boat and he ran away with my money.  In June 1734 Rod: sent for the tenant of this Isle his name Alex. MacDonald to come to the Captain of Clan Ronalds house he told him I was to be taken with him, on the14 of June.  John Macleod and his Brother Norman came with their Galley to the Husker for me they were very rude and hurt me sore.  Oh alas much have I suffer’d often my skin mead black a blew, they took me to St Kilda.  John Macleod is called Stewart of the Island he left me in a few days, no body lives in it but the poor natives it is a poor Isle.  I was in great misery in the Husker but it ten times worse and worse here, the Society sent a minister here.”

End extract from this letter:

“I have given him a much fuller account then this and he writ it down.  you may be sure I have much more to tell than this.  When this coms to you if you hear I’m alive do me juster and relieve me, I beg you make all hast but if you hear I’m dead do what you think right before God.”

The solicitor forwarded this letter on and made people aware of Lady Grange’s situation on St Kilda.

Rankeilor’s Letter telling of Lady Grange’s situation to The Right Honorable Charles Erskine, Lord advocate

In 1741 measures were taken for her release.  This resulted in her being moved to Assint in Sutherland, and from there to the Skye where she ended her says in May 1745.  Lord Grange lived out  the later part of his life on London and died there on January 24 1754 at 75

Several of the letters have been digitised and can be accessed on our images website: http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/qesrl7

lady-grange-portrait

Lady Grange’s House on St Kilda, photo taken when I camped on St Kilda

This cleit (a beehive-type dwelling) is said to be the house in which Lady Grange was confined while banished to the island of Hirta. However, there is no evidence to support this. The date of her death is given variously as 1742 and 1746.

Gravestone of Lady Grange – Inscription says “R.I.P.
RACHEL
WIFE OF
THE HON JAMES ERSKINE
LORD GRANGE
DIED AD 1745″ In Trumpan churchyard

If you’re interested – my photos from my trip to St Kilda:

The post Lady Grange’s Letters from St Kilda appeared first on ScotClans | Scottish Clans.

For a good while now I have become more and more interested in St Kilda, the remotest part of the British Isles, which lies 41 miles (66 kilometres) west of Benbecula in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the people evacuating the island.

To me St Kilda became the epitome of what I wanted to visit: the history lies untouched. An island very few people are lucky enough to visit. It also became a solo adventure, a place I would be going by myself, without my husband and two children. Just me, my tent, and my trangia. I had never camped by myself before so it was going to be quite an adventure.

When I started my research it looked like you could only visit St Kilda as part of a cruise. All of these were extremely expensive and only landed on St Kilda for a few hours, but I wanted to stay for a few days and have a truer experience of the island. I then came across Sea Harris who offered day trips from Harris. I emailed them and asked if it was possible for them to leave me on the island, and to pick me up after a few days. To my delight they emailed back and said it was.

To camp on St Kilda you have to get permission from The National Trust as they manage the island. St Kilda is a world heritage site and has extremely strict guidelines in place to safeguard it. It did take a few phone calls to be put through to the correct person, but I eventually spoke to an extremely helpful woman who explained what happens and warned me about the mischievous St Kilda mice. They also informed me that I was the only person camping as the volunteers on the island had just left, the only other people there were going to be two people monitoring the Soay sheep. There will also be a handful of people working at the satellite station.

My ‘welcome pack’ arrived by email, a list of stuff to take, a map and a list of rules. To my surprise I found that I was to be met by a ranger who would show me to the camping area and the amenities. I was gob smacked to find there were not only toilets but showers as well as a washer/dryer.

Sea Harris explained that travelling to St Kilda is completely weather dependent and they don’t know till the day before when they are travelling. I was given the date August 2nd/3rd that I would depart (weather depending of course). I would be departing from Levebrough Pier at 8am. The plan was we’d all travel to Harris in the campervan and I’d get dropped off, catch the boat, my family would await my return at a nearby campsite. Problems happened when we discovered we had absolutely no mobile signal. We stayed at Hogerbost campsite, which is around a 15min drive from Levebrough. On Sunday the first, I managed to get a signal after going for a long walk and found out we would depart the next day. The weather looked ideal, but it was then to take a turn for the worst and it might be Friday or Saturday before I get picked up. This did catch me out because Sunday on Harris means everything is shut, so no last minute food shopping. Oh well, I had a ton of stew. My ruck sac was packed, could barely lift it, but no matter – I was going!

The boat to St Kilda

Bright and early Monday morning we got to Levebrough pier to find the Sea Harris Boat as well as The St Kilda Cruises boat in the dock ready for passengers. They tend to travel to St Kilda together.

I was passenger number 13 so had to stay outside, which was absolutely no problem as I didn’t want to miss a thing.

The journey was around 3.5 hours. I dread to think what it would have been like going on an ‘unfavourable’ day. It was like riding a bucking bronco, great fun. And I saw my first whale – a minky whale, how great is that?! I also caught glimpses of dolphins, seals and porpoise. It surprised me how short the journey was; as soon as the mainland of Scotland disappeared you saw St Kilda away in the distance. Slowly getting nearer we were then entering the bay . Boats cannot land on St Kilda, I think this may be due to the fear that rats and mice get onto the island. So you have to climb aboard small dinghies which then take you onto land.

Approaching St Kilda

Looking up into the village I was shocked by how compact it appeared. The army base was the first thing you see and it is a bit of an eye sore. After speaking with the ranger I found out how important it was for the upkeep of the island having the base there as it was supplied the power and the ability to connect with the main land all year round.

Stepping onto the island, you cannot help but be mesmerized by the amount of historical stuff everywhere; cleits and dry stone walls every few feet. This was unlike anything I’d seen before. In Scotland you are used to seeing shells of houses, remnants of the clearances, bits of crumbled walls, a hint that people once lived there, but you can’t imagine what it would have been like, the land has gone back, erasing the history. But then you also get these pristine, sanitized reconstructions. Here on St Kilda, however, it was all there – you could see people really worked the land, lived as a massive community, built practical structures to live in. People really lived here.

Another thing to hit you is the wildlife that run this island – sea birds, soay sheep… . The St Kilda wren never seemed to be more than a few feet away and I was welcomed to the island by a huge Snowy Owl.

View from the boat

I went to St Kilda ready for hardship, to feel sorry for the people that lived there. I was expecting viscous weather and inhospitable land where I would be truly alone – I was very wrong…

The post Diary from St Kilda: Part 1 – Getting there appeared first on ScotClans | Scottish Clans.