From the edge of the world 2022 – part 1

The identification of this cleit as the former home of Lady Grange dates to at least 1927, when it is marked as such on the first Ordnance Survey map of Hirta. Information about events that had happened nearly 200 years earlier was undoubtedly provided to the surveyor by the St Kildans. This structure, on the site of ‘Lady Grange’s House’, is an excellent example of knowledge about the past being handed down to us via the great Hebridean oral tradition of storytelling.

On St Kilda, the whole will always be greater than the sum of its parts. The contribution of every cleit, cottage, blackhouse and enclosure adds immeasurable value. Yet within that deeply layered landscape, some individual elements do carry a greater weight of significance than others. For some, it is because of their age, like the Iron Age souterrain. For others, it is due to the rarity of their survival, like Calum Mor’s House. Some have the potential of holding information within the structure about developments over time, like the gathering folds in Gleann Mor or cleit 122 with its surviving cell – a remnant of an earlier form.

Many structures have a deep and complex intangible significance that is a legacy of their association with certain people, stories or events. The jetty, for example, has been the scene of all the island’s comings and goings for over 100 years, including that most famous day in August 1930, when 36 islanders boarded HMS Harebell and set sail. They left behind their empty homes and a story so powerful that it has captured the imagination ever since.

Cleit 85 is highly significant due to the information it may hold about an earlier settlement. It offers us the chance to combine written records, oral tradition and archaeological evidence through its association with Lady Grange. Even taken as ‘only’ a cleit, 85 is a wonderful example of the architecture of this type of structure. Furthermore, National Trust for Scotland records suggest it has never been repaired and that all the fabric is likely to be authentically St Kildan.

So, how do we begin to fix this? In that moment when I first received the email, I felt a sense of loss – the sadness not because here was another big, complicated repair to be tackled, but because no repair could bring back its authenticity and restore it to what it was. 2022 will forever be a break in the linear history of that structure. Here was the raw reality of the unpredictable nature of structural change on St Kilda. Questions will be asked about the weather that week or any other external factors, but these powerful forces respect neither heritage significance nor decades of devoted care.

Because here, also, is an opportunity for new investigation. Microscopic analysis of the soils from the roof may yield information about both the re-use of land and 19th-century cleit roofing techniques. While clearing the debris from those ragged broken faces, we could learn more about how the structure was put together. Any evidence of phasing that could confirm a link between cleit 85 and its predecessor would be hugely important in establishing the presence of the 1730s settlement. Lady Grange arrived at a strange and fractured time on Hirta. The community in 1734 was largely made up of immigrants re-settled from Skye and Harris – they had come here to swell the numbers after the devastating smallpox epidemic of 1727, which reduced the population from around 120 to only 4 adults and 26 orphans.

What a bewildering world lay in wait for Lady Grange, far from the comforts of polite Edinburgh society. She lived among a population that was trying to rebuild their community in the shattered wasteland left by disease and immeasurable loss. It has not unreasonably been assumed that the empty houses of those who died from smallpox may not have been immediately re-occupied, if ever; perhaps the village expanded or re-located slightly as a consequence. Might we find traces of one of those post-smallpox houses buried somewhere in the walls of cleit 85?

Whether or not we learn anything, we will rebuild – just as the St Kildans did. We will adhere as authentically to their methods as we always do. In a sense, 1930 is the point when the cultural landscape of St Kilda was fossilised, for it was then that the millennia-old cycle of building, repairing, dismantling and modifying, all for the purpose of surviving on these remote islands, was broken. Yet in another sense, the act of building and repairing has continued to the present day, only now it is about the survival of a cultural tradition.

In good times or bad, it is an honour to be the custodians of a place like St Kilda. To contribute even a tiny part to that rich history. To walk their streets, hear their stories and repair their structures. By the end of this season, we hope that Lady Grange’s House will be whole once more, its presence in the meadows below the street as ever it was – a fitting worldly home for its ethereal former inhabitant. And perhaps, through this rather unfortunate event, we will have learned more of its secrets than we ever thought we could.

As a dual World Heritage Site on the edge of the Atlantic, St Kilda is both a critically important and challenging place for us to care for. In addition to annual maintenance, archaeological survey, conservation, bird monitoring, tours and general care, we also have to respond to urgent conservation works.

In the coming year this will include significant work on the pier and the church – but after recent storm damage, it will also now include emergency exploration and conservation of Lady Grange’s House, a unique cleit in many ways.

As a charity, we can only undertake work such as this with your support. Please, if you can, donate today and help us continue to carry out conservation work like this across St Kilda.

[1] The image of the St Kildans on the jetty in 1930 is a scan of a glass plate held in the National Trust for Scotland archives. No photographer is named. Every effort to trace the copyright holder has been made.