Skye Museum of Island Life, Isle of Skye

...running water the Isle of Skye can still be quite an inhospitable place. In Gaelic it is known as Eilean Cheo (The Misty Isle) and its winters are amongst the harshest endured anywhere in the British Isles. Despite all of this humans have inhabited Skye for at least the last eight thousand years and over this period these people have adapted to cope with the environment. This way of life, which is unique to the Scottish Highlands, is known as crofting ...
...a few isolated pockets on Skye although it is still quite prevalent on the remoter Western Isles of Lewis and Harris. The Museum of Island Skye is an example of a typical crofting community on the northern peninsula. All across Skye crofts were abandoned and fell into disrepair but thankfully a cluster of six different buildings were preserved. These have been converted into the museum that we find today with each of the different buildings furnished ... more

Even with all of today's mod cons like electricity and running water the Isle of Skye can still be quite an inhospitable place. In Gaelic it is known as Eilean Cheo (The Misty Isle) and its winters are amongst the harshest endured anywhere in the British Isles. Despite all of this humans have inhabited Skye for at least the last eight thousand years and over this period these people have adapted to cope with the environment. This way of life, which is unique to the Scottish Highlands, is known as crofting and crofting is still widely practised today.

A croft is traditionally a stone built house with a small patch of land around it that was used to grow crops and support a few animals. Typically a croft would have a few sheep, a couple of cows, some hens and even a pig or two. They would cut and dry peat from the land that provided fuel and fish in the sea everyday. Such communities were virtually self sufficient, making their own clothing from sheep wool and growing their own produce.

In recent years the crofting way of life has however largely disappeared and it is now only practised in a few isolated pockets on Skye although it is still quite prevalent on the remoter Western Isles of Lewis and Harris. The Museum of Island Skye is an example of a typical crofting community on the northern peninsula. All across Skye crofts were abandoned and fell into disrepair but thankfully a cluster of six different buildings were preserved. These have been converted into the museum that we find today with each of the different buildings furnished to represent a different part of the community. These buildings are the shop/reception, the crofthouse, barn, weaver's cottage, old smithy and ceilidh house.

The Crofthouse

The Crofthouse is furnished to resemble a typical croft in which a family would have lived. Like all of the buildings the first thing that you will notice is that the building is incredibly low and it is necessary to bend down to get through the door. You could be forgiven for thinking that these people were all midgets but in fact there is,like everything that you find within this community, a practical reason. The low height sheltered these buildings from the winds and in fact part of the dwellings are actually sunk into the ground so once inside it is possible to stand upright and they look deceptively largely than they do from the outside. The roofs are lined with moss and lichen and then thatched with heather and small branches.

The first thing that I noticed as soon as I stepped into The Crofthouse was that it felt surprisingly warm and cosy. There was a small peat fire burning in the middle of the floor with cooking pans hanging above it but it was May after all, but I am reliably told that even in the winter months these houses are much warmer than the modern houses of today. Oddly there is no chimney, presumably to help keep in the heat, so there was a strong smell of peat and because the windows are so tiny only a little natural daylight penetrated the rooms so they were rather dark. To compensate for the lack of daylight there were oil lamps burning everywhere, originally these would have been filled with oil from Whales, Seals and also the regurgitated oily pellets of a local seabird, the Fulmar.

This building is split into three large rooms. The first room, which you enter, is the living/kitchen area and to the left and right there was a bedroom. The bedrooms had strange box beds that were built into the walls with thick deep red curtains draped across them. The mattress and pillows were stuffed with hay and an information placard told me how the curtains had been made using a coarse hand woven linen and locally grown flax, whilst the deep red dye was obtained by a type of sea lichen that grows on the shore nearby.

The living room was anything but sparse, in fact it was a little bit cluttered. There was a spinning jenny in the corner and a small hand loom for spinning wool in the other corner of the room, plus chairs with comfortable cushions and wooden tables, chests and drawers.

In 1933 the Duke and Duchess of York visited Skye and as a part of their tour they visited numerous croft houses to experience this way of life. The croft house at the Museum of Island Life was one of the actual cottages that was visited by the future King and Queen and continued to be occupied by the same family until the late 1950's.

Barn

All of the buildings in this cluster were originally croft houses but the remainder have been furnished to represent different aspects of community life so the second building that we come to has been converted into a barn. This building like the others is long and narrow and arranged at a 90 degree to the coast, which sheltered it from the winds that swept in from the sea.

Inside the barn there were examples of agricultural tools like hand ploughs and peat cutting spades and also horse pulled ploughs which replaced the smaller hand pulled ploughs during the 18th century. Many of the tools like the peat spades were quite crude and basic and would have been made locally over two centuries ago and passed down through the generations.

Weavers cottage

Whilst most homes would have a small hand loom for spinning wool there would be a much larger loom within each community which was used for making garments, tweed and upholstery. The particular loom in this room dates from the 1890's and is a rather late example as they were automated during the early part of the 20th century. Surrounding the loom there are a number of tools associated with the wool spinning and dozens of buckets filled with natural dyes. The dyes were extracted from seaweed, heather, birch, grasses and pretty much anything else that they could find locally but some of the colours are so bright and vivid it is quite remarkable.

Old Smithy

The smithy was vital within the community, and the bulk of his work would involve making horseshoes and other small tools. A huge peat fire in the middle of the room created the heat and all around the room there were examples of the typical tools that were made here.

Shop/Reception

The shop/reception is actually the first building that visitors will find themselves in as this is where the admission fee is paid. It contains a small gift shop along with ultra friendly staff who will happily try and answer any questions that you might have.

Admission prices are:

Adults £2.50
Concessions (OAPs) £2.00
Children (In School) £0.50
Group £2.00

Ceilidh House

Ceilidh is the Gaelic word for a social gathering and The Ceilidh House is where all of the members of the community would meet and entertain each other, especially during the long dark winter nights. Songs would be sung and the older generations would tell tales to the younger generations.

Gaelic was the native tongue of these people and only a few members of the community would have an understanding of the English language. Today almost the entire communities, with the exception of a few elders on the Western Isles, are now fully bi-lingual but the tales told here would have been conducted entirely in Gaelic.

The Ceilidh House is furnished with general memorabilia and artefacts from the community and includes a lot of photographs. Amongst the displays there are photographs relating to a wedding that took place in the 1920's and the original wedding dress, which was handmade in the croft of course.

The buildings here were abandoned by the late 1950's when the residents were re-housed into local purpose built houses by the council. The six remaining buildings date from the late 1700's through to the mid 1800's but they are typical examples of the dwellings that stood here over a thousand years ago and historical evidence suggests that this community has existed for much longer than that. It is assuring to know that at least some of this way of life has been preserved.

I would definitely recommend a visit to this place and I think that the admission charges about right. It's the sort of place where you would spend a couple of hours rather than a full day and it can be visited even if its raining as most of what to see is inside buildings and it's only a short hop between each building. Having said that I visited on a lovely sunny day and there were plenty of people sat on the grass picknicking or simply soaking up the stunning views. The only downside of my visit was that it was spoilt somewhat by two coach loads of American visitors that completely took over the place, pushing and shoving and being generally very rude and arrogant (not all of them but certainly a fair few). Despite signs advising visitors not to touch anything I witnessed some of them removing the signs from the seats so they could have their photos seated around the kitchen table and others clambering onto the beds. Frankly I was appalled but obviously and voicing my opinions very nearly led to a punch up before my other half intervened. This unruly behaviour is no fault of the museum itself and it didn't exactly spoil my visit, it just agitated me so I certainly still recommend it to others.

The Museum of Island Life is open daily (expect Sunday) from Easter until early October. The opening hours are from 9.30am until 5pm.

 

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