Black Houses

The skeletal remains of “black houses” dot the Outer Hebrides. The white stone foundations and crumbling walls are what’s left of crofters’ homes built in the 1800s and inhabited until the 1940s and 50s when the government built mortared “white houses” to replace them. Some of the picturesque, thatch-roofed cottages have been reconstructed next to their more modern offspring and serve as outbuildings. Others have been restored as museum pieces like Gearannan, a settlement we visited on our tour. The houses, with few windows and insulated with double stone walls packed with dirt (sometimes 5 feet thick), were heated by a central, peat-burning fire pit. A hole in the roof allowed the smoke to escape - a chimney was a luxury. The family’s livestock—typically two cows, a half-dozen sheep, and a couple dozen chickens—were sheltered in one end of the cottage while a kitchen/living room and a separate, communal bedroom made up the other part. It’s the kind of dwelling where an early Northwest pioneer would have felt at home.