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The Summer Shielings

The traditional shielings that can still be found in various conditions on the Lewis moorland are valuable examples of our vernacular building heritage.  These summer habitations were crucial to the wellbeing of crofter families as they provided a base from which to graze cattle on the lush moorland heather and grass.  In places like Ness, where the shielings were situated close to the sea, kelp was also harvested from the shore to supplement the cattle’s feed.

This annual migration from the villages to the moor during the summer allowed residents to move their livestock away from the more fertile arable land near the villages to allow crops to be grown and harvested during the spring and summer months.  The shielings typically formed moorland ‘villages’ and were mainly be populated by the women, with the men remaining behind to cultivate the land, clean the byres of waste and manure, re-thatch the dwellings and generally repair and prepare the homestead for the year ahead.

As the shielings were only temporary habitations, winter flooding or wind damage could be tolerated, with extensive repairs being made each spring in preparation for the new season.

The shielings were commonly known by their Gaelic name, 'airigh'.  In the central and eastern Highlands they were known as ‘ruigh’, and in the south ‘shiel’ (from Middle English) was used, as in Galashiels.

Examples of shieling or shieling village names include:

The Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) described in The Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) described in his Voyage to the Hebrides in 1772 (first published in 1776) the earliest detailed account of Scottish shielings:

“I landed on a bank covered with sheelins, the temporary habitations of some peasants who tend the herds of milch cows. These formed a grotesque group; some were oblong, some conic, and so low that the entrance is forbidden without creeping through the opening, which has no other door than a faggot of birch twigs placed there occasionally; they are constructed of branches of trees covered with sods; the furniture a bed of heath; placed on a bank of sod, two blankets and a rug; some dairy vessels; and above, certain pendent shelves made of basket-work, to hold the cheese, the product of the summer. In one of the little conic huts I spied a little infant asleep.”

Early dwellings in Lewis, known as a ‘bothan’, would have been built with corbelled stone roofs.  This would have restricted the size of buildings to relatively small structures. The later ‘Airigh’ (pl. Airidhean) typically had a timber-framed roof, which allowed for larger buildings.

Life and Work at the Summer Shielings

Norman MacLeod of 5 Melbost, Borve, describes how crofting families like his own used to move out to the shielings with the cattle during the summer :

"The usual time to go to the shieling was after the 15th May when the village was cleared of all stock and sent to the common grazing. There were no fences on the crofts at that time to protect what was sown or planted. The cattle were kept out at the shieling until August then they were taken into the enclosed winter grazing known as the 'fence'. We were the last family in Melbost, Borve to regularly go to the Shieling - that was the Summer of 1946.  We had four dairy cows and a calf. 

"The shieling was a simple construction:  It was about twelve to fourteen feet in length and about six to eight feet wide. The bottom half of the inner wall was built with stone, the rest of the wall was built with heather sods and the outer walls were also built with heather sods.

"Stones for walls were scarce on the moor. The roof had a wooden ridge-pole with timber rafters. The roof was then covered with turf sods to make it water-tight. There were recesses built in the bottom half of the inside wall: they were known as 'uinneagan' (windows).

"There was always a turf standing on end supported by a piece of wood, it was kept on the windward side to give better ventilation. Daylight also came through this opening. There was a 'muran', sods cut and placed across the shieling where the bed was, this was used for sitting on and acted as a sort of bedboard, it was called the 'cailleach'. Furniture was very scant, a wooden box acted as a table and also for storing the pails. The bottom of the bed was filled with dry heather and fianach - moorgrass - put on top of the heather beds were very comfortable. The food on the shieling was always something that did not take any length of time in cooking as there was usually only the one pot. It consisted of oat bread, kippers, eggs, salt herring and salt fish. There was plenty of cream and creamy milk to go with the food. The milk had an appetising taste which you could only get on the shieling, it is known as 'Blas an Sliabh' (taste of the moor).

"The bothan was a crude sort of a bothy for keeping calves in before they would stray and get bogged down. At every shieling there was a long slab stone erected upright and firmly in the ground, it was called 'clach tachas nam bo' (the cow's scratching stone'). The cows, after they were milked, used to scratch their noses and necks on it.

Cha robh Banachag no bo, no ceol, no teine, no smuid
Clach thachas nam bo sa chornair's ise na slaod
Bha cotan nam laogh, gun chean gun chliathaich na cul
Bha mhoine air na poill, gun suim na talamh na smuir

"Work on the shieling was more or less the same routine every day, getting up at six thirty in the morning, getting the fire going and preparing the breakfast. Before starting milking the cows, you had to set the milk in enamel basins and the fresh milk you took home was bottled, the sour milk was in tin pails manufactured by Peter, the tinker in Barvas - 'Padruig Sheonaidh'. 

"The cream was also in a tin pail of a smaller size. They were made leak proof with an iimidal' secured over the top with string. It did not matter how rough the terrain you walked over, they never leaked. The imidal' was a sheep's skin with the wool removed from it, it was always kept in salty water to keep fresh and pliable. You scrubbed all the pails, cutlery and crockery down at the river with sand and sprigs of heather. 

 "Before you left for home you fed the calves and banked the fire with peat and peat sods, the fire was kept burning twenty four hours a day. The boys carried all the produce from the shieling in hessian bags and the girls used the creels. You left for home about eight o'clock, the route was following the Galson river to Auigh Mhuraidh Chalum and then you veered westward to a landmark called "Cape", it was like a cabin built with peat sods, you rested here for a while before proceeding on the next stage of the journey which was still westerly until you came to Alt Grandal. You followed the burn until you came to the main road and then home. 

"After you got home, croft work had to be done, also you had to go to the shore for seaweed which was made into small bundles called 'paisgans'; you took this out to the shieling in the evening and gave it to the cows when you were milking them. The cattle were very fond of this - probably because of a lack of salt and other proteins in the diet. Sometimes after getting to the shieling in the evening you would have to herd the cows for milking. You always went barefooted as footwear was of not much use on the moor. Some of the older women wore "ossinans"; this was long woollen hose with the soles cut off them. 

"The Taigh Earraich (Spring house) was of bigger construction than a shieling, the idea of it, as the name states, was going out to the moor in the spring with the cattle when fodder was scarce. There was room at the end of the taigh earraich for taking the milking cows in and keeping them in overnight. The Gaelic name for a cluster of shielings was 'geraidh'. All you can see of these shielings now is ruins covered in heather and moorgrass."