Life and Death on St Kilda

From the Gap below Oiseval on the NE coast of Hirta I turned my back to the sea and the wheeling fulmars. I made my way back down to the village.


From above I could see that what I had thought was a vegetable enclosure behind the village, is actually the burial ground.


It is the site of the ancient Christ chapel though no trace of it remains.
Photo JLW


Most of the grave stones are rough hewn with no inscription.
Photo JLW


Others are more elaborate and carved from imported stone, a sign that the Victorian St Kildans' contact with tourists had given them access to money.
Photo JLW


Although this was the remotest inhabited part of the British Isles, its very remoteness attracted wealthy Victorian tourists. They have left a photographic record of the islanders from about 1860. This is Rachel Gillies, whose grave stone is in the photo above. This photo is in the island museum.


Some of the gravestones are quite recent. Malcolm MacDonald left the island in 1924 and spent most of his life in London. He always missed the island home of his youth. He visited St Kilda again in 1967 and found it very hard to leave for a second time and return to London.
Photo JLW


His name, and that of his father, is still just legible on the faded pupil roll in the school house.

Malcolm did make one final trip to St Kilda. His ashes were buried next to the remains of his ancestors. It is likely to be one of the last internments on this island, at the edge of the world, which was inhabited for thousands of years but now stands silent, as a museum to the past.

For a moment, as the wind blew round the walls of the burial ground, I thought I could hear distant voices. But it was only the cries of the sea birds and I turned back to the village street.

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130 fulmars per year.

The cliff ledges of Hirta are home to thousands of pairs of fulmars. At one time fulmars were confined to the St Kilda archipelago but since the end of the 19th century they have spread to Scotland and the rest of the British Isles.


This pair are nesting on a bed of sea pink and sea campion but fulmars do not construct a nest for their single egg. They do not begin breeding until they are 8 to 10 years old and can live to over 50.


Superficially fulmars look like gulls but are actually petrels, related to shearwaters and albatrosses. They have a graceful stiff winged flight and glide for long distances skimming the waves with their wingtips. They protect their nests by projectile vomiting a nasty oil.


Fulmars formed a staple of the St Kildans' diet. Each person would eat about 130 fulmars per year. The men scrambled over the crags catching the birds and collecting their eggs. If you follow this link to the Scottish Screen Archive you can see a dizzying clip, shot in 1923, of St Kildans going over the cliffs in search of fulmars at this very spot.

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Between a pox and a hard place on Stac Lee.

From the cliffs on the NE coast of Hirta it is less than 7km across the Atlantic to Boreray and its two satellite stacs. They are Stac Lee and Stac an Armin (in the shade behind). They are the highest stacks in the British Isles. The islanders kept sheep on Boreray and also visited these islands for the sea bird harvest in August. Amazingly there are also about 50 cleitean on Boreray and about 80 on Stac an Armin!

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There were also bothies on all three. The one on Stac Lee can still be found. It is just below the dark "V" under the left of the white stained summit cap of the island. The island and stacs are too exposed to leave a boat, so work parties were dropped off by a boat from Hirta, which would return when a signal indicated the work was done.

In 1729 a smallpox epidemic was started after a St Kildan had died on Harris from smallpox the previous year. As his clothes were still good, they were brought back to St Kilda and the smallpox gripped the population. At the time, three adults and eight boys were marooned on Stac Lee because there were no surviving adults, strong enough to man the boat from Hirta, to rescue them. They remained on this windswept rock for 9 months, through the winter and into the next summer, until the factor's boat from Harris relieved them. When they returned to Hirta, they found only one adult and 18 children had survived the epidemic from the population of nearly 200.

Remarkably St Kilda was repopulated in the 1730's from Harris, Uist and Skye. Life may have been tough on St Kilda but it was even worse for many on these other islands. The incomers were taught how to climb the cliffs and harvest birds by the few survivors. By 1758 the population had risen to 88 but it would never again reach 200. The decline had started.

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A Rock at the Edge of the World: St Kilda

The slope up to the Gap ended abruptly. At my feet the ground fell away into vertiginous nothingness. The cliffs on the north coast of Hirta are the highest sea cliffs in the British Isles. This truly was the edge of the St Kildan's little World but it was upon the cliffs that their survival depended. They harvested eggs and birds, especially young gannets, fulmars and puffins from the huge breeding colonies on the cliffs.

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The mysterious enclosures of An Lag, St Kilda.

As I entered the hidden hollow high above the village, the slope levelled off and I was drawn towards some large, stone walled enclosures.


From up here, there was no sign of the village or the bay far below. Only the distant Atlantic could be seen through gaps in the rocky ramparts of distant Dun.


After the enclosures the slope steepened towards the Gap between Oisebhal (293m) to the SE and Connachair (776m) to the NW. Lines of cleitean marched boldly up the slope and I was soon perspiring in the hot June sun as I rested by each.


Nearing the top, I turned to catch my breath. Then I saw for the first time, the true complexity and apparent randomness of the enclosures. At first, I thought they were sheep fanks (stone pens) but they looked like they were designed to keep animals out rather than in. The exterior of the walls is vertical but the interior is sloped. It is thought they were built relatively late in St Kilda's history, probably about 1830. No one really knows their purpose or why they were built in such a way but one theory is that they were to shelter growing vegetables and crops.

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Cleitean on the climb to An Lag, St Kilda.

Leaving the village street on St Kilda, I proceeded up the hill towards the head wall. On the way I passed more cleitean.


Some of them appeared to grow out of the slope of the steep ground.


Some had two roofs of slabs forming a handy storage space well above the ground and out of reach of animals.


Inside they were remarkably dry. There is evidence that the survival of Soay sheep is enhanced by their use of cleitean in winter


Once through the head wall of the village the ground steepened. Looking back, the view included the spread of Village Bay, with Dun behind, and the houses nestling round the crescent of its shore. MV Cuma remained at anchor but all the other tour boats had left in the face of the increasing southerly wind.


The steep ground gave way to an area of flatter ground which was not visible from below. It is called An Lag Bho 'n Tuath.

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The village street, St Kilda.

Leaving the Factor's house we approached the village proper and arrived at No 1 St Kilda. The first 6 houses of the type built in the early 1860's have been restored by National Trust for Scotland work parties.


The 1860s houses were built after a hurricane in October 1860 stripped the roofs off of most of the blackhouses which were built in the 1830's which were built using the gift from Sir Thomas Acland. In this view looking back down the street you can see the older blackhouses between the more modern gabled houses.


In the fireplaces of many of the houses, a simple stone commemorates the last residents.


This is No 16, the last of the 1860's houses.


Beyond it you can see blackhouse "V". It has thick walls with rounded corners not to catch the wind. It is built end on to the sea and the low door which served for both animals and people is on the side. In winter the beasts stayed in the downhill part of the house. The dung stayed there (until spring) but their heat rose. There are no windows. After the new houses were built most of the blackhouses were used as byres but some of the old folk returned to them as they were warmer and quieter than the modern houses with their galvanized iron roofs.


Looking back down the street towards No 1. Three figures high in the gap on the horizon give scale.


The relationship between the houses, the blackhouses and the cleitean can be seen in this telephoto view from outside No 12.

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