General view Digital image of IN/5610

Description General view Digital image of IN/5610

Date 1975 to 1976

Collection List C Survey

Catalogue Number SC 746486

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of IN 5610

Scope and Content Vallay House, North Uist, Western Isles Vallay, a low-lying tidal island, is connected to the north-west coast of North Uist by the Strand, a huge expanse of sand which allows access to the island by foot at low water. Vallay House, an Edwardian mansion built c.1901, was the home of Erskine Beveridge, a writer, antiquarian and linen manufacturer who wrote extensively on the archaeology of the Hebrides with particular reference to North Uist. This photograph, taken in 1975-6, shows Beveridge's house on the left of the picture. The house, a cement and half-brick building, stands on the south side of the island. Despite its remote situation, it was a comfortable, even fashionable mansion, with all the 'mod cons' of the day, including water piped over from North Uist. Erskine Beveridge (1851-1920), son of the founder of St Leonard's Linen Works in Dunfermline, had a private income that allowed him to indulge his two main passions, archaeology and photography. His acquisition of the Vallay Estate on North Uist allowed him to excavate a number of archaeological sites on the island, the results of which were published in one of his main archaeological works, 'North Uist: its Archaeology and Topography' in 1911. A collection of his photographic landscapes and archaeological views of Scotland, including many taken of remote island sites in the Hebrides, appears in 'Wanderings with a Camera 1882-98', published posthumously by his son, John Henry Beveridge, in 1923. Beveridge also collected agricultural implements as well as archaeological finds from his Hebridean excursions, and these were donated to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/746486

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap