Scottish coasts, communities and crafts

For centuries life in coastal and island communities has depended on what can be harvested from land and sea. Working lives revolving and evolving around the shifting tides and weathers, the rhythm of the seasons and the natural world.

This selection of images gives a glimpse into coastal and island heritage working practices documented between the 1930s and 1980s. The images are accompanied by oral tradition, the voices of people recorded by fieldworkers from the School of Scottish Studies over the past 70 years.​ 

The boy, with such focused attention, looks for flatfish in the ebbing tide. The place is Fadhail a Deas/South Ford between Beinn na Faoghla/Benbecula and Uibhist a Deas/South Uist. ​

Inshore fisherman, Angus Campbell, collects mussels from the shore of Loch Ròg, Leòdhas/Lewis.

Rena Welsh and her mother-in-law, Isabel, bait the lines for fisherman Alec Welsh in the east coast town of Gourdon.​ ​The boat, Enterprise, sets out very early in the morning and lines are set at first light.

Bob Mellis and Alec Welsh out on the North Sea on the Enterprise draw in the lines and remove the catch, mainly codling. Inshore line fishing took place from October to May starting around a mile from shore early in the season to around eight by the end.​

The light goes on at Cape Wrath lighthouse, located in Sutherland at the most north-west point of the Scottish mainland. A white-washed granite tower, 20 metres tall, it was built under Robert Stevenson in 1828 and manned until 1998 when it became automatic.​

Fishermen prepare a stake or fly net in the River Cree estuary on the south-west coast. The net, stretched on stakes, working by the ebb and flow of the tide, is used to trap salmon. Guy ropes supporting the stakes are placed on each side of the net.​

​A fisherman works with his creels on the shore at Poll a' Charra/Polochar, Uibhist a Deas. 

Inshore fishermen, Angus MacDonald, Murdo MacFarlane and Donald MacLeod, clear the nets of flounder and plaice caught in the bay at Port Nis/Ness, Leòdhas.

John Macleod builds a dinghy in his workshop in Port Nis assisted by his sons, John Murdo and Donald.

John Murdo Macleod steams the ribbing so it bends easily into shape. ​

Finlay MacQueen shows how to snare puffins during a visit to his old home in Hiort/St Kilda. Birds were a source of livelihood in many coastal areas providing food, oil for lamps and feathers.​

The SS Hebrides, which operated between 1898 and 1955, sits off Village Bay, Hiort. The sea is often seen as a separator of lands and islands but it is also a connector, an area of transit.

The MacLennan family harrow the machair at Hùisinis, Na Hearadh/Harris with wooden ràcan. The machair is often covered with wild flowers and grasses. 

Various crops are grown on the machair including potatoes, a staple food in island communities. The cròcan (hook-shaped tool) used here in Uibhist a Deas for grubbing potatoes is also used with seaware.​

The Graham familly of Port nan Giùran, Leòdhas, harvest their crop of oats. Mary Graham uses a sickle to cut the oats which are then tied into bundles and made into stooks to dry. ​

Straw, bent grass, hay, horsehair and heather can all be used to make rope. Here in Baghasdal a Deas/South Boisdale, Uibhist a Deas, long grass or hay is wound with a corra-shùgan or wooden twister.

Seaweed, harvested here from the shore in Barraigh/Barra, is commonly added as a fertiliser in the creation of feannagan (strips of land) for cultivation amidst rough, stony ground. It is also used in dyes, foodstuffs and medicines.

Donald Macaulay and Kenneth MacDonald, Beàrnaraigh/Bernera, transporting sheep back home from Na h-Eileanan Flannach/the Flannan Isles where they were taken for the summer grazing. ​

Sheep are gathered into fanks (stone enclosures) for shearing, dipping and marking, a township activity in Beàrnaraigh/Bernera. Sheep are an important part of the domestic and wider economy in the Western and Northern Isles.​

Kate MacLean, Geàrraidh na Mònadh, Uibhist a Deas, examines a fleece that she has just sheared, picking off grasses and thorns. The fleece is then washed in soapy water to remove dirt and grease before being dyed.

Catherine MacInnes dyes wool at Loch a' Charnain, Uibhist a Deas. Crotal (lichen) is scraped off the rocks, added in alternate layers with the washed fleece and boiled to produce a reddish-brown colour. 

Annie Gillies of Hiort/St Kilda spins wool outside her old home on a visit to the island in the summer of 1938.

Waulking is the process of shrinking and finishing handwoven tweed. The wet cloth is kneaded and passed from hand to hand round a group of women seated at a board. This rhythmic, repetitive work is often accompanied by song.​ ​ 

This waulking took place in Iochdar, Uibhist a Deas in 1970.​

The harvest and cultivation of land and sea provides food, fuel and shelter for coastal and, especially, island communities. Working together contributes to the oral culture of song, story and collective memory.​​