A Study of Turf: Historic Rural Settlements in Scotland and Iceland

Abstract

The ruins of abandoned settlements remain visible throughout much of rural Scotland. These represent former townships, farmsteads and shielings which were widespread until relatively recently and began their fall into large-scale decline and abandonment during the eighteenth century. Despite being such a common feature in the landscape relatively few of these abandoned settlements have been recorded in any detail. Since October 2006 the Scotland's Rural Past Project at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) has been working with community groups to discover, survey, and record a small fraction of the thousands of these sites that have the potential to tell a story of rural settlement from the medieval period onwards. 1The extent of abandoned rural settlement remains has been highlighted by a previous RCAHMS project, the First Edition Survey Project. The 6-inch First Edition Ordnance Survey maps, surveyed and drawn in the mid-nineteenth century, were examined and almost 25,000 unroofed buildings were identified; the remains of former rural settlements for which no detailed information exists in the archaeological record. This lack of data represents a considerable gap in our understanding of rural settlement. Further investigation is needed to help create a more detailed picture of these unrecorded rural settlement sites, particularly the nature of settlement prior to the early eighteenth century when agricultural improvements first introduced whole-scale changes to Scotland's landscape.In general, agriculture at that time was based on the joint tenancy farm, or township, farmed collectively by a group of families who each paid a portion of rent to the landlord. Townships consisted of several farmsteads, each of which would have a number of buildings; byre dwellings to house both people and cattle, barns, stables, corn drying kilns, and small garden enclosures as well as peat stacks, cart sheds, animal enclosures and middens, some of which would be held in common. Materials used to construct these buildings were collected locally. The tenant farmers built their settlements from undressed field stone, turf and wood with straw, bracken, and heather or reeds for thatch. The building styles, though broadly similar, varied across Scotland depending on local circumstances such as access to available materials and in response to local environmental conditions. Over time the townships were subject to reorganisation, rebuilding and change in response to social and economic pressures and the introduction of new farming practices.

Icelandic Farmhouses

“…Until today, traditional turf houses have been the object of many studies by contemporary scholars. Several authors have researched turf construction with scientific aims, spanning from an analysis of the inner environment and comfort to the chemistry and botany of the turf layers, also linked to Scottish vernacular architecture (Van Hoof, and Van Dijken 2008;Stampfer 2019;Walker 2006;Wilkinson 2009). Turf houses have been extensively studied by many Icelandic scholars, including architects, architectural historians, and conservation experts, with a recent focus on the classification of heritage sites and their restoration (Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson 2010; Sigríður Sigurðardóttir 2012).…”