The Blackhouse Village at Garanin and the Pentland Road

At Carloway we had been able to see how the old blackhouses were built with their inner and outer stone walls infilled with soil. It wasn’t far to a preserved blackhouse village at Garanin. This village did not finally depopulate until modern times – the 1970s and subsequently it has been externally restored and internally made habitable for present day life. Mostly, I think, it is holiday lets and we were advised that on a Sunday we should keep out.

And here’s the start of this village.

The Village Street.

A view from the village.

Keeping the roof in place.

Our rather elderly OS map showed a track across the desolate wastelands between Carloway and Stornoway. We wondered if it might be usable. Had we had a modern map we’d have had no doubts for it has been upgraded to road status.

So we drove the Pentland Road which not a lot of other people did and had a chance to see the wild desolation of this part of the Isle of Lewis.

The road crosses the island on an amazingly level route. It was almost as though it was designed as a railway line – and actually, it was. This quote is from the BBC’s Island Blogging site.

The Pentland Road is not very well known to non-islanders, and takes a bit of finding. Residents of Carloway and Breascleit use it as a shortcut into town; it's only 16 miles to Carloway along the Pentland Road, but as much as 26 along the main road through Leurbost and Callanish. Its origins go back to Lord Leverhulme's years of ownership of Lewis. As I mentioned in a previous article, he had contrived plans to industrialise the island, and one of the projects was to establish a fishery station at Carlabhagh / Carloway. Fishermen from the West Side would land their catches at the pier there, which would save them the trip round the Butt of Lewis to Stornoway. They would refuel at Carloway and set out again. Their catches would be transferred to Stornoway by railway.

 

The Carloway Railway never came into existence. New information suggests that Lord Leverhulme abandoned his industrial revolution for Lewis, because the Stornoway merchants were opposed to them. They saw those industries as competition and a threat to their businesses and interests. So, they agitated amongst the crofters with whom they traded, telling them that Leverhulme was out to get them off their land. With the Crofting Act barely 35 years in existence, and the memories of the land struggle of the 1880s still within living memory, they did rise up.

The Pentland Road was left as a dug out trackbed, barely passable in a motor vehicle. A branch was created to Breascleit Pier, where until very recently a small pharmaceutical plant operated. It was used for extracting a compound which was used in the treatment of cancer. Its uptake was limited, for the simple reason that its efficacy was not adequately proven. Nonetheless, the loss of 11 jobs is a blow for a small community like Breascleit. I am not aware that anyone has taken over the enterprise. 

 Back at the campsite all was quiet, the rogue market traders had gone and peace reigned. We could even get to know our neighbours.