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Ardelve, 12 Lower Ardelve
Cruck Framed Cottage (19th Century)
Site Name Ardelve, 12 Lower Ardelve
Classification Cruck Framed Cottage (19th Century)
Canmore ID 11822
Site Number NG82NE 29
NGR NG 87413 26671
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/11822
- Council Highland
- Parish Lochalsh
- Former Region Highland
- Former District Skye And Lochalsh
- Former County Ross And Cromarty
Ardelve Once an important market village on the Loch Long ferry crossing; now something of a backwater.
12 Lower Ardelve, c.1840 Last intact survivor of a traditional Lochalsh cottage, occupied until 1990. The roof, originally of rushes and heather, re-thatched with rushes pinned with hazel wands in 1996, is supported on four pairs of scarf-jointed cruck blades or 'couples', their shaped wooden pegs still in situ. Protruding from the eastern end is a rare timber 'box' chimney serving the kitchen/living room hearth as a canopied 'hanging lum'.
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
Traditional Lochalsh single storey, 3-bay cottage. Whitewashed rubble, rounded corners, heavy boulder footings. 4 pairs scarfed crucks. Centre door with later projecting corrugated iron porch; flanking 4-pane sashes; small 4-pane sash window rear. Gable end chimney of Skye type in west gable; straw "lum" with wooden cap and lining within piended thatched roof at east, bound with thatch and twine. Rush and/or straw thatch with some heather at eaves, pinned at ridge and eaves with bent hazel wands. Interior: 2 rooms right and left, with small "press" room at centre rear. Left room (south) has projecting fireplace (served by straw "lum") with flanking "cheeks" and metal canopy. Rare survival, particularly the "lum". (Historic Environment Scotland List Entry)
Field Visit (12 June 2015)
NG 87412 26671 19th century cottage with later central projecting corrugated iron porch to front elevation. The cottage is listed as having a roof of ‘rush and/or straw thatch with some heather at eaves, pinned at ridge and eaves with bent hazel wands’, though according to Mary Myers in her book Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide (2008), the roof, ‘originally of rushes and heather’, was ‘re-thatched with rushes pinned with hazel wands in 1996’. The building has been on the Buildings at Risk (BAR) Register since 1998 (BAR reference number 876), and since then BAR has documented its deterioration as well as a series of ongoing repairs in its vacant state. The thatch has some vegetation growth throughout, patches of both moss and grass. The roof is entirely netted, and has had a number of timber branches secured horizontally across the surface of the thatch by hazel, a few of which have become loose and slipped down the roof. The netting is weighted at the eaves, by metal poles that have been hooked into the holes of the netting. The metal poles then have stones hanging from them, secured to the poles by string. Along the back elevation, two sections of the netting have been weighted by two steel beams attached to the base of the netting at the eaves, which do not have any stones hanging from them. At the west end of the ridge there is a straw-thatched wooden capping to the lum, which has been bound with twine.
Visited by Zoe Herbert (SPAB) 12 June 2015, survey no.091