Skye, 5 Luib
Cottage (19th Century), Museum (20th Century)
Site Name Skye, 5 Luib
Classification Cottage (19th Century), Museum (20th Century)
Alternative Name(s) Folk Museum
Canmore ID 173644
Site Number NG52NE 27
NGR NG 56420 27733
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/173644
- Council Highland
- Parish Strath
- Former Region Highland
- Former District Skye And Lochalsh
- Former County Inverness-shire
Luib Nineteenth century crofting and fishing village with a good group of traditional Skye dwellings, though most are now roofless. An exception is No 2, rescued and re-thatched several times in recent decades. The stoneweighted straw thatch is piended between wallhead stacks and rounded at the ridge; mudmortared rubble walls are thick and roundangled; the front is of three bays with a central House, with simplest Arts & Crafts detail. door. But like No 5, which was reconstructed as a croft house museum before recently falling derelict, its appearance today is a late 20th-century interpretation of the original.
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
Traditional Skye cottage. Single storey, 3 bays with centre door; roughly coursed rubble with some roughly dressed stone at squared corners; small 4-pane windows; similar window centre rear. 1 gable end chimney (renewed) to left; piended thatched roof. (Historic Scotland)
Luib is situated on the southern shore of Loch Ainort, on a long bend in the main Kyleakin to Portree road. Luib is derived from the Gaelic for a bend or corner. Even after the Second World War, many of the thatched houses pictured remained intact, and the village was popular with visitors for that reason. (Am Baile)
Field Visit (12 June 2015)
NG 56418 27735 Mid/late 19th century cottage, originally used residentially and then more recently as a museum. The building was listed in 1971 and the listing description reads that the building has ‘1 gable end chimney (renewed) to left’ and a ‘piended thatched roof’. The cottage is now a roofless ruin and has been on the Buildings at Risk (BAR) Register since 2002 (BAR reference number 2828). In 2002, The Aberdeen Press and Journal reported that the building had closed as a museum two years ago when a piece of timber fell from the roof and injured a visitor. Also in 2002, upon BAR inspection, the thatched roof was found to have deteriorated with the roof trusses collapsing at one end. There are still visible signs of the netting, stones and metal ties that once weighted down the thatch, as well as some material on the wallheads that could be the remains of the thatch.
Visited by Zoe Herbert (SPAB) 12 June 2015, survey no.093
