General view of Cleadale houses, Eigg

Description General view of Cleadale houses, Eigg

Date 25/9/1883

Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

Catalogue Number IN 892

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 743147

Scope and Content Howlin, Eigg, Highland Howlin, a tiny crofting community of traditionally-built houses, lies north of the island's main township, Cleadale, in the north-west of Eigg. The Victorian photographer, Erskine Beveridge, visited Eigg in 1883, providing one of the oldest known photographic records of the island. These small, early 19th-century stone houses, set against a barren landscape of outcrops of basaltic rock, are the traditional 'blackhouses' of the Hebrides - small, round-cornered houses with thatched roofs and thick walls which were home to the crofter, his family and their animals. Each croft is surrounded by drystone boundary dykes (walls) which enclose the land allocated to the croft for cultivation, and which separate it from land used for common grazing. Cattle were the traditional livestock of the crofter, and each croft, depending on its size, could support between three and five cows, and one working horse kept on the common grazing land. The main crops produced were oats, which provided a winter feed for the cattle and horses, and potatoes, which were the staple diet of the crofters. After the disastrous failure of the potato crops in the mid-19th century, many of the crofters were forced to leave the island and emigrate to Nova Scotia. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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