The Corr
Date 11 September 2008
Event ID 910374
Category Management
Type Site Management
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/910374
Traditional Caithness croft complex. 2 L-plan, single storey rubble ranges, comprising dwelling of longhouse type facing SW with byre in end SE bay with gable entrance (former access from kitchen). Barn and stable range at right angles, with garden enclosed; further L-plan range, one arm of which backs onto garden, with later 19th century hen house, wash house and cartshed. Dwelling has 2 doors, small windows, ridge and end stacks and rush thatch roof. Henhouse and workshop range also thatched; remainder with corrugated iron or asbestos roofing. Formerly all of cruck construction. (Historic Environment Scotland List Entry)
The Corr is unique in the survival of an original extended longhouse, but it also represents the natural growth into a small self sufficient working farm of many functions with ranges of buildings still surviving; it has been lived and worked in the traditional way until relatively recently (Andrew PK Wright :Caithness Redundant Buildings Inventory)
Relatives of the last resident advise they took over the property circa 1820s. The last resident's (who crofted from the 1950s into her 90s) ancestor having enlarged the croft extensively with the aid of his father John Keith, a fisherman by occupation, who'd fought in the Crimean War. In the early 1900s two bedrooms were added. The main dwelling having flagstone floors from the Byre to the Closet. The main hearth had a particularly large lintel to counter balance the heating of two large cauldrons of water for the laundering of clothes. The interior remains virtually unchanged since this time. The last room to be added to the accommodation was an end room constructed in the late 1930s. Electricity and a phone line were only recently installed.
The phasing of construction at the site is thought to have been living area/ byre first with barn and stables next, then workshop (a thriving smithy), calf house, laundry room, hen house and cart garage. North of the byre survives a cast iron ring, set in lead, used for the tethering of horses.
