Lewis

Monday 24th June

Today we concentrated on seeing things on Lewis. This is typical of the landscape we saw today.

It is boggy, with many small lochs. There are sheep everywhere, sometimes on the road as not everywhere is fenced. Everybody goes slowly so as not to run them over, and they usually get out of the way.

The other feature of the landscape is evidence of peat cutting. About 5000 years ago, the climate was warmer and less windy than it is now and peat formed in the damp and low lying places. It seems peat is still widely used as a fuel on Lewis, so you can see the peat banks, about a foot or so high and there are often little stacks of 5 peats drying out if that peat bank is still being cut. But this is very low and doesn’t make for good photos as you drive past, so there aren’t any photos. Sometimes you can see higher stacks of peat - once they have dried a bit, they are formed into higher stacks - but we only saw a few of these as we drove past. 

We made a stop to see Calanais standing stones. This isn’t a very good photo, as there was a large school party there when we arrived and it was impossible to take photos with hoards of teenagers jumping wildly around and sitting inside the burial area. 

The stones date from from the period between 2900 BC and 2500 BC. Nobody really knows why they were erected, but they were probably moved with rollers, wooden frames and brute strength. Although they are not as massive as those at Stonehenge, they are still very big, all more than 6 feet tall and the biggest probably 15 feet tall. They obviously took a lot of effort. The stones in the circle were erected first, and later the side rows were added and a burial chamber was placed in the centre of the circle for cremated bones in pots.

This is the burial chamber. On the right of the photo is one side of one of the side rows.

One of our party had made some dowsing rods from barbecue skewers bought in Tesco last night, and we all had a go. Paul was the only one who was unsuccessful in using them. They are bent into an L shape and you hold the short end, with the long end parallel to the ground. As you walk between the stones, the long ends move, turning to point towards a stone near you. It really is quite uncanny. At first I thought it was the wind, so I turned round and walked back, and then they turned against the wind. Paul remained sceptical, walking about at full speed - you have to walk slowly - and maintaining nothing happened when he was holding them and I must be turning them myself.

Then we came forward in history and visited a Broch at Carloway. It is still imposing, in spite of being partly ruined.

There are brochs all over the north and west of Scotland, built roughly between 300 BC and 100 AD - the Iron Age. A Broch is a grim and imposing tower with a single low entrance in the stony outer shell. It is a drystone structure, and could have been 13 metres tall, and between 5 and 15 metres in internal diameter - quite a feat of building for a drystone structure. Brochs are hollow walled, that is, they were formed of two concentric walls, with a spiral staircase winding upwards between the two walls. This could have helped to keep the wet and windy weather from penetrating the interior, and would also have helped to keep the heat of the fire in. Ledges projecting from the inner wall are though to have supported the timber floors of upper rooms and also a conical, roof, possibly thatched. Often the ground floor interiors were poorly finished with protruding rocky outcrops, which suggested that human habitation could have been on the upper floors. The lower floor could have been used for animals, which would have also served to heat the upper floors.

Brochs might have been defensive farmhouses, or they might have been the ‘stately homes’ of their time. You can see the internal structure of this one, though there were lots of other people there, including a lady giving a talk to her group.

You had to bend nearly double to get through the tiny door on the far right, and bend again to access the stairs in the wall.

You can probably see the drystone construction of the building - no mortar is used, it’s all down to the skill of the builder in selecting stones that fit very closely.

We came forward in time again, visiting a blackhouse village. 

A blackhouse is a traditional type of house which used to be quite common in the highlands and islands. It was generally built with double drystone walls packed with earth, and was roofed with wooden rafters covered with a thatch of turf with cereal straw or reed. The thatch needs to be weighted down with a net and stones or it would blow off in the winter storms. The floor was generally flagstones or packed earth and there was a central hearth for the fire. Originally there was no chimney for the smoke to escape through and the smoke just made its way through the roof. This led to the soot blackening of the interior which may also have contributed to the adoption of the name blackhouse. It also had a profound affect on the health of the inhabitants, who suffered from many respiratory problems. Infant mortality was very high too, though this improved once the houses had chimneys.

The blackhouse was used to accommodate livestock as well as people. People lived at one end and the animals lived at the other with a partition between them. The house was usually built on a slope since Lewis is very wet. The humans lived at the upper end, and hoped that any dampness from water running down the slope would run down to the lower end, where the animals were. 

Originally, a blackhouse was lit with Tilley lamps or oil lamps and had no running water. Water was fetched from the well, and this situation continued well into the 20th century. Electricity arrived in 1952, and piped water in the 1960s. This is the main room of a house which could accommodate 3 generations, grandparents, parents and children.

This blackhouse has a fire of peat, which is used for cooking as well as heating. There is a hook hanging from the chimney, to hang a cauldron for stewing potatoes, vegetables, fish or meat, there was a griddle to cook oatcakes, scones or pancakes. Bread was not made or eaten because there were no closed ovens. Later, people could get long handled saucepans which meant you could cook in a pan with a lid, rather than an open cauldron. 

I took this photo standing in front of the bed - with so many people, there needed to be a bed in this room, as well as several beds in the bedroom attached to this room. One interesting fact we learned was that the beds were short because the people tended to sleep sitting up because of their respiratory problems.

In the 1930s there was an expansion of the Harris tweed industry, and, at the same time, milk deliveries started. People no longer needed to keep a cow or two for milk, so they got rid of the livestock and installed a loom in the place where they had previously kept the livestock.

Almost every house in the village would have had a loom, as crofting was no longer enough to support a family. The floor of this particular room was extremely stony and uneven, though the house itself has a proper floor. 

Next we visited Ness, a fishing village with a small harbour.

Ness used to be really busy, particularly between 1880 and 1900. It was home to 40 fishing boats, each with a crew of 6 men. There was a decline in fishing after 1900 - and you can see there is only one boat now.

We drove right up to the Butt of Lewis, the most northerly point in Lewis and hence also the most northerly point in the west of Scotland. There is a lighthouse which stands 121ft high and was built between 1859 and 1862 by David and Thomas Stevenson. 

It was originally manned, but has operated automatically since 1998. We walked a short way along the cliffs which are home to many seabirds, so it was very noisy. But it was also very cold and windy and I began to wish I had gloves, so I was glad to get back to the bus and start the drive back to Stornoway.

Back in Stornaway, we visited Lews castle, a Victorian era castle built high on a hill behind Stornoway in about 1850. It’s quite hard to photograph as the whole area is forested and you can only see a bit of it at a time. It houses an interesting small museum which reflected island life, and has some archeological finds from as far back as the Neolithic as well as some of the famous chessmen.

We also saw a few of the rooms in the castle itself.

This is the ballroom, which we rather think they hire out for weddings.

There were some good views of the inner harbour, both from the castle and on the way back down again.

This is the view from the foot of the hill on which the castle stands.

After that, being tired we returned to our B&B.

It isn’t dark here until nearly midnight, and it’s light again shortly afterwards - but we are so tired after much sightseeing we have no difficulty in sleeping!