General view showing black houses at Kentangaval, Barra.
SC 747068
Description General view showing black houses at Kentangaval, Barra.
Date 24/9/1895
Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Catalogue Number SC 747068
Category On-line Digital Images
Copy of IN 876
Scope and Content Kentangaval, Barra, Western Isles Barra is one of the southernmost islands in the Outer Hebrides, and the most westerly inhabited in Scotland. This photograph of a crofting community in Kentangaval, taken in 1895 by Erskine Beveridge, provides a unique photographic record of the island's traditional blackhouses. This squat, 19th-century house has thick rounded walls, constructed of local stones and boulders held together without mortar. The wall-top forms an exposed broad ledge which extends round the house, a characteristic feature of this type of architecture. The roof is of thatch, secured by ropes which are anchored by stones tied round the ropes at the wall-head. At the apex of each hip of the roof, a protruding 'raven-stick' serves as an anchor for the ropes that hold the thatch. The front wall has a main door, and a single window, cut through the top of the double wall, to light the bedroom. The 'blackhouse' was designed for both people and their animals, and was divided into three compartments. The front door opens into an entrance area, formerly used as a henhouse, which was used by both people and cattle. To the left is the kitchen, entered through a wooden partition which could be screened to keep the hens out. The kitchen, in turn, leads to the bedroom, the only room in the house to have a window (which did not open, but simply let light in). The byre is entered through a wooden partition to the right of the entrance door, and has stalls along one side where cattle were tied by ropes to an upright wooden pole fixed against the wall at the front of the each stall. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.
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