The Peasant Houses of the South-west Highlands of Scotland: Distribution, Parallels and Evolution

Gailey, Alan

doi:10.1179/gwr.1962.025

Cited by 4 publications

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“…They have been destroyed down to their foundations and the sites have in all probability been ploughed over; the absence of foundation trenches in the later structures of 1800 shows how complete the destruction may have been. In the Papers of the Commissioners for the Forfeited Estates, a factor's report for about 1755 states specifically that the buildings at Lix were of stone, but Gailey has shown that other materials such as turf, earth and branches, and wickerwork, could all be used and relatively flimsy dwellings must be suspected for this period 5 .…”

Section: Scottish Clachans H: LIX and Rosal Horace Fairhurst And Gordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scottish clachans II: Lix and rosal

Fairhurst

Petrie

1964

Scottish Geographical Magazine

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Section: Scottish Clachans H: LIX and Rosal Horace Fairhurst And Gordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scottish clachans II: Lix and rosal

Fairhurst

Petrie

1964

Scottish Geographical Magazine

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“…These mark the positions of cruck couples or other timbers to support the roof; an anachronism, it is supposed, carried over from turf building as unlike turf, stone walls have the structural strength to support a roof laid on the wallhead. 22 However, the former existence of a two storey turf-walled farmhouse in Nebraska, USA questions this supposition about the load bearing capacity of turf walls. 23 In Scotland the skills once employed to construct a turf building have now been largely lost and forgotten although efforts have been made to rediscover them.…”

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confidence: 99%

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

Wilkinson¹

2009

Architectural Heritage

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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.

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Scottish historical geography — A review

Whyte

1978

Scottish Geographical Magazine

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The Peasant Houses of the South-west Highlands of Scotland: Distribution, Parallels and Evolution

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Scottish clachans II: Lix and rosal

Scottish clachans II: Lix and rosal

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

Scottish historical geography — A review

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