General view of thatched barn and windmill with round-ended grain-drying kiln on its gable end. Viewed from the south east.
SC 746873
Description General view of thatched barn and windmill with round-ended grain-drying kiln on its gable end. Viewed from the south east.
Date 4/9/1894
Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Catalogue Number SC 746873
Category On-line Digital Images
Copy of O 586
Scope and Content Hall of Seatter, Hoy, Orkney Islands Hall of Seatter, a farm on Hoy, the second largest island in the Orkney archipelago, is situated near North Ness on the south-east coast of the island. This photograph, taken by Erskine Beveridge c.1890, shows the house and steading, and a fine example of a grain-drying kiln built in traditional style. The house (right) is a low stone-walled dwelling with a thatched roof. A thatched barn (centre) stands at right angles to the house, with a round-ended grain-drying kiln at one end. Both the kiln and the barn are built of flagstone, thin sections of local stone which were commonly used as a building material in Orkney and Caithness. A windmill, presumably attached to an outbuilding on the far side of the barn, has four sail arms which would have turned to generate the power for a threshing machine inside the barn. Hoy is the hilliest and wettest of all the Orkney Islands. Grain-drying kilns were common in the wetter agricultural regions, and were often built for individual farmsteads or small farming groups. Originally the grain for the kiln would have been threshed by hand, a slow and costly process to separate the grain from the straw which was eventually eliminated by the invention of the threshing machine. The machine used a source of power, usually supplied by a windmill, watermill or, more commonly, by horses. Horse-powered engines were used well into the 20th century before they were eventually superseded by the steam engine. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.
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