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Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 566514
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/566514
Barra's principal settlement lolls peacefully round the rocky fringes of the bay. At its core, the 'half-dozen good and well-placed buildings, Roman Catholic Church [and] few neat slateroofed houses belonging to successful tradesmen ...' observed in 1917 are still visible, although the village's character today as a Cal. Mac. ferry port bears little resemblance to the stirring scenes of a century ago. Castlebay became the 'herring metropolis' of the Hebrides, the key to Barra's relative prosperity at the turn of the 19th century. During the summer months, the bay was thick with tawny-sailed fishing boats, the 24 piers cluttered with curing stations and busy with the activities of an 'army of fishermen, gutters, coopers, curers and foreign buyers'.
Gen. MacNeil's 'intention to erect 'a fishing village consisting of 70 small houses or thereabouts' (1825) amounted to little more than a scattering of blackhouses, although he sought tenants from as far away as Lewis in a bid to encourage the promotion of industry here. James Wilson, visiting in 1836, wrote: 'There are only a few poor huts along the inner circle of the bay, with a single slated house, of a more substantial kind, with two storeys. The under portion of the latter is occupied as a store, the upper by some well-mannered middleaged ladies'. This is now Pierhead Stores, c.1800, built as a 'town house' for two daughters of MacNeil of Vatersay, with stones from Kisimul Castle (which had suffered a fire in 1795); it survives today as the Post Office.
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
