West Side Dunnet, Cottage

This is a particularly well preserved croft complex, with many features typical of the last century which on other crofts have been altered out of all recognition or destroyed. In the centre of a line buildings is the stone house built by Mrs Mary Ann Calder's grandfather around the middle of the last century. She was born there as the youngest of five children in a crofting family. As the croft land was only 11 1/2 acres, her father also fished (she helped salt down the catch) and sailed on the schooners shipping flags our of Castlerown. Mrs CaIder left the croft in 1990 at the age of 93, and the local trust which has taken it over, complete with furniture and tools, has been able to learn from her in detail how the croft worked and the family lived. It has thus kept its lived-in atmosphere; indeed you feel the owner has just stepped outside.

The house has the typical 19th-century lay-out of two larger rooms, each with one window and a chimney in the gable, a central front door opening into a lobby, and a tiny mid-toom behind. The kitchen fireplace has no grate but a peat fire laid directly on the hearth, where Mrs Calder baked beremeal bread, oatbread and scones, while a kettle hangs from the swey above. The furniture ranges from box-beds to a television. A more up-to-date back kitchen was added in 1960, but there was never a bathroom or privy-men used the stable, women the byre.

The outbuildings provide separa te accommodation for all needs; a henhouse, workshop and store, byre with slate partitions, stable, cartshed, turnip store (these under a roof of huge Caithness slabs), a threshing barn which was the last building erected on the croft in 1906, a thatched prighouse, and a small milk-house (dairy) by the front door. The adjacent flagged enclosure was first a duck house, later the dogkennel. The animals on the croft, typically four horses, two cows and six sheep with their lambs, were kept tethered, a practice that reflects older, pre-improvement farming methods. The croft land lies behind the buildings; the land in front is communal and used to be cultivated by the township in strips on the run-rig system.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).

ND 21051 71550 Group listing of a mid to late 19th century croft house, with adjoining outbuildings and detached pig house and privy. The croft is also known as Mary Ann’s Cottage, after the last owner and occupier of the buildings, and is now open to the public as a museum. Only the pig house is listed as having a thatched roof, which is currently thatched in marram. The small structure has a continuous marram ridge, and the entire roof has been netted including over the ridge. The netting has not been weighted in any way, and instead it has been nailed into the mortar joints along the gables but has been left unsecured along the eaves. The netting along the ridge is slightly higher than the thatch, indicating that the thatch may have experienced some compaction. There are a few patches of grassy vegetation growth across the surface of the thatch, as well as an algae-type growth across the surface of the rear elevation.

Visited by Zoe Herbert (SPAB) 13 July 2015, survey no.115