Easdale islander initiative

The little island of Easdale (which I recently described ) has been cut off from its larger neighbour, the island of Seil for nearly a week. Winter storms have shifted the slate spoil at the mouth of its sheltered harbour. The open passenger ferry boat has been unable to access its jetty and islanders have been stranded on the mainland and schoolchildren have been unable to get to school. The local council were not making very fast progress to dredge the harbour but The Herald reports a story of great island initiative. Islander Mike Mackenzie bought a 12 ton JCB excavator on the mainland and had it shipped to Easdale on a landing craft. He then spent 36 hours excavating the harbour mouth himself and restored the islanders' ferry link. Wonderful!



Easdale has 60 permanent residents and 13 of these are children of school age or younger. The island is car free and the passenger ferry takes just 5 minutes to cross to Seil.



The harbour was built in the 18th century and its beautifully constructed walls are now protected by an architectural "B" listing. There is a great deal of interesting industrial architecture and heritage on Seil as it was once a centre for slate mining.



It is easy to kayak through the narrow harbour mouth and explore the sheltered jetties and inlets within.



The little harbour is dominated by the bulk of Dun Mor on Seil and by the initiative of the islanders.

Easdale buoys, fools and slates.

We took the Aleut Sea II out to the small island of Easdale that lies off the west coast of Argyll's Island of Seil. We landed on a beach of dark grey slates.



These buoys adorned a building of slate.



Climbing to the top of the island, we saw the great flooded slate quarries that have hollowed out this island's heart. The photo shows the breaches in the quarry wall that a tidal wave made during the great storm of 1881. At low tide the walls are still complete and locals try and catch the fish that have been trapped inside. The quarries go down to 80m below sea level. At their peak of production, in the 1860s, Easdale slates were exported to, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, the United States, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador.



Easdale slate is very fine grained but it contains little cubes of iron pyrites or "fool's gold". If you break the slate open the crystals shine brightly but they soon rust when exposed to the air. If you live in one of the above countries and you come across a building with a slate roof have a look and see if the slates came from the little island of Easdale.

After the collapse of their industry, the miners and their families followed their slates to Australia, New Zealand........ They carried the names of their families and villages with them.