About 4 miles north of Uig, on the west coast of Trottenish, we found the Skye folk museum.
It consisted of a number of traditional style buildings – thatched and with heavy stones to help keep that roof in place. Each was set up with a different function and by the time we reached the fifth we found a note banning photography in the buildings. So apologies, but we’ll start in the blacksmiths.
This was his box of peat along with cans of paraffin to get a furnace going.
The bellows needed to produce a really fierce flame.
Now to the weaver’s shop where we found a Victorian loom that was in use until the 1950s.
What a weaver needs, of course, is wool in different colours.
Now to the barn. The red item in the middle is a fiddle for sowing seeds – similar to one we are being offered at Market Lavington, I believe.
Here we have dairying oddments – a lovely collection.
And now we’ll go legal and look at outsides only.
A thatched roof, well weighted down.
A wagon, a seed drill, a grass cutter and scarifiers of a type I don’t know – all on the edge of the sea.
A water bowser, a wagon and a plough.
Near the museum was Flora Macdonald’s burial place. She was the one who saved the British Monarchy by dressing Bonnie Prince Charlie up as her maid and getting him over the seas to Skye. The prince later became King Charles II of Britain.
The grave above, has a mention of Flora’s birthplace on South Uist. Let’s read the inscription.
There we are, Flora was born at Milton on South Uist.
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A very hard to photograph eulogy to Flora.
It was time for us to move on.
