Field Visit
Date 25 June 2011
Event ID 932334
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/932334
The largest and most important settlement on Pabbay, at Bailencille, occupies gently pasture land close to the S shore of the island and comprises the dispersed buildings of a pre-Improvement township as well as those of the mid-19th century farmstead that replaced it.
Many of the rectangular buildings are blackhouses, some with attached enclosures, but there are also ancillary buildings and a small number of kiln barns. The best-preserved buildings are situated towards the W side of the township and those on the E, in the vicinity of the comparatively recent sheep enclosures (NF 8890 8694), are generally more poorly preserved. The most notable of these, however, is a rectangular building (NF 8959 8699) situated 20m to the N of the church, which measures about 30m from NW to SE by 10m transversely. It sits atop a subrectangular grass-grown mound along with several banks and what are probably storage pits.
Some of the buildings in the SW part of the township are described individually (see NF88NE 6.1, NF88NE 6.2 and NF88NE 6.3).
Bailenacille was one of three townships on the island that were cleared in the 1840s so that the associated lands could be turned over to sheep (Lawson 1994). Several buildings standing immediately SW of the church were retained for use by the shepherds and their families and by 1878 this farmstead included three roofed buildings, a series of sheep fanks, a larger enclosure to the NW and a long, well-constructed dyke that parcelled off a large area of ground to the SW. The construction of the fanks and stock enclosures resulted in the robbing of stone from earlier buildings in the immediate vicinity (NF 8881 8700), some of which are now only visible as footings. A smaller shepherd’s house and barn were constructed in the 20th century.
Visited by RCAHMS (GFG) June 2011.
