Sanna Bheag

Sanna Bheag, 1927, rebuilt 1967 Large, single storey, loosely T-plan house conceived in the spirit of the Arts & Crafts movement and incorporating elements of the West Highland vernacular. The 'pioneering building adventure' of eccentric writer/folkloreist and photographer, M. E. M. Donaldson, it was built with low buttressed drystone walls of locally quarried blue granite and roofed with heather cut from a nearby glen, and with straw, laid over felt-covered sarking boards. Miss Donaldson employed local crofters - assisted by stonemasons from Tobermory - to build the house, and helped with the thatching herself. 'In order to perpetuate native fashions throughout, we knocked the bottoms out of zinc pails for our chimney tops' she wrote in 1928. The house had its own hydro electricity and stood in a meadow enclosed by a drystone dyke, whose entrance gates she made herself from local timber. In 1947, all but the walls were destroyed by fire, and the present flat tarred roof and modern windows have drastically altered its character.

Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk