[MR] More on Blackhouses
Garth Groff via Atlantia
atlantia at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
Wed Oct 26 02:12:25 PDT 2016
Noble Friends, Especially Fellow Scots,
Yesterday I posted a short BBC piece on re-thatching a 19th century
blackhouse in Scotland. Not finding anything else to share this morning,
I thought to return to this topic for your edification and amusement.
To recap, a blackhouse is/was a type of Scottish peasant dwelling made
of stone with a thatched roof. The structures rarely had windows or
chimneys. Without any source of natural light save the door, and smoke
from the peat fires having no escape, the interior was both dark and
coated with soot from whence the name "blackhouse" likely came. The
interior was divided with a partition (sometimes just a fence) with
human habitation in one end and livestock in the other. Nearly all the
surviving blackhouses in Scotland date to the 18th or 19th century. Such
crude dwellings are likely to have been in use much earlier, including
during our SCA period of interest, but are not documented and none still
exist. Similar houses are also found in Ireland.
While the blackhouse was a very rude dwelling, they were well adapted to
the conditions in the Hebrides and other parts of Scotland. Being low
and usually with rounded roofs, they stood well against the fierce
Atlantic winds. The animals' body heat helped keep the human inhabitants
warm. Being entirely made from local materials, they were easy to build
and maintain. In the 19th century, landlords forced their tenants on the
very isolated island of St. Kilda to move from their blackhouses into
more modern dwellings, but the new houses were totally inadequate, and
some of the inhabitants snuck back to the warmer and drier blackhouses.
You can read an interesting illustrated piece on St. Kilda and its
houses at
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20161019-the-eeriest-island-in-the-world .
Wikipedia offers a brief article on blackhouses with photos of several
preserved examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackhouse .
At Gearrannan on the Isle of Lewis there is a "village" of blackhouses
which are run as tourist accommodations. While they are modernized and
tarted up (hopefully with modern plumbing!), the "village" is quite
interesting and the photos are charming: http://www.gearrannan.com .
If I don't forget (getting old is no fun), I will comment on Scottish
tower houses and bastle houses soon. Scottish tower houses, were
generally more comfortable abodes, being essentially small castles. Just
thing to dream of for Scadians.
Yours Aye,
Lord Mungo Napier, That Crazy Scot
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