View of thatched cottage, from the east shore, with Sgurr of Eigg behind

Description View of thatched cottage, from the east shore, with Sgurr of Eigg behind

Date 27/9/1883

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

Catalogue Number SC 743154

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of IN 895

Scope and Content Cottage, Eigg, Highland Eigg is a small island in the Inner Hebrides which, along with Muck, Canna and Rum, forms a group of islands called the Small Isles. Its rather bleak landscape is dominated by the dramatic mass of An Sgurr, a huge sugarloaf crag which rises 400m above sea level. The Victorian photographer, Erskine Beveridge, visited Eigg in 1883, providing one of the oldest known photographic records of the island. This gable-ended, stone-built cottage, set back from the rocky shoreline, dates from the early 19th century. The thatch of the roof is carried over the front edge of the wall-top to form overhanging eaves, and is fixed by a network of ropes of straw or grass criss-crossed over the roof. The three-bayed exterior reflects a simple tripartite internal division of kitchen and room on either side of a small central bedroom. Both end rooms have fireplaces. One of the industries on the island in the 19th century was kelping, the collection of seaweed (kelp) which was dried to produce soda ash and used in the manufacture of soap, glass and, in particular, gunpowder. In the earlier years of the century, landlords of the coastal estates resettled many of the island's inhabitants onto smallholdings or crofts along the shore in order to harvest and dry the kelp which was then exported as kelp ash. However, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the market for kelp more or less collapsed, and the crofters were forced to emigrate or rely on their smallholdings for their livelihoods, using kelp as a fertiliser on the land. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap