No 214 The Flagstone Bink.

No 212. The Flagstone Bink.

Such a Caithness speciality, the flagstone bink. Well, not really pertaining solely to Caithness, though we might claim such. They were designed many thousands of years ago by an old Orkneyman living at Skara Brae in Orkney, whose name I have forgotten, and have stood the proverbial test of long time.
There was no old Caithness croft without one, used for so many handy tasks. Nor any other old farmhouse either.
The bink stood outside every farm dairy, a handy table or ledge useful to set the milk pails on before opening the door. Set cheeses on them to set or drain, milk pails new washed set out upside down to dry in the fresh air, cheeses set out to drain and dry, and develope the salt rubbed skin which became rind which kept a farmhouse cheese eatable for a year if need be.
Innumerable other dairy tasks as well, far too many to think of enumerating them.
Made of flagstone, binks did not rot nor fall victim to woodworm or dry out, nor fall apart in the sun as wooden shelves did outdoors. You could even sit down on one for a rest.

Though the dairy had pride of place in my memory, flagstone binks were also found outside the kitchen door of most croft houses and cottages, and many larger ones too. The flagstone bink lasted for ever as Skara Brae well shows, and is still sitting there in many an old roofless and ruined croft house of which Caithness has all too many.]
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Two flagstones were bedded upright in the ground. Sometimes low drystone walls. A dressed or squared length of flagstone was laid across them to make a table. The edges were often just the natural seams of the rock bed, though some were saw cut. They might be sometimes as lifted from the quarry bed, or off the beach. The natural seams were spectacularly good anyway, actually lasting longer and better than a sawn edge as they did not flake with time.
Who today knows just how much Caithness flagstones were used, not just in our own locality but over a great spread of country and reaching far back into antiquity. Castlehill Flagstones went to San Francisco in America, to Sydney in Australia, over much of the still United Kingdom!! . An old map of 1778 of Castlehill drawn by James Aberdeen, Surveyor, shows down on the ebb “Flagstones can be got here”, and when the tide is out the bedrock still shows anyone passing by how easy it was to win flagstones from the beach, the natural seams well shown.
. James Traill would have been about 20 years of age by the date of the 1778 map and Castlehill had just been taken over from Murray of Clardon by his father Dr George Traill of Hobbister in Sanday in Orkney about that date, and by then Minister of Dunnet.
. The map shows the new if tentative layout of the new farm of Castlehill, which work was completed nearly to the old map if not quite. Map making had come a long way by 1778 from the rougher maps of General Roy made in the years just after Culloden in 1746. He surveyed almost the whole of Scotland and his historic surviving maps are still worth a look. He helped to developed a better theodolite in the years after his survey which, though still basic, led to better ones as time moved on.

The layout of Castlehill House, the farm buildings and squared boundaries of the new fields are shown. Indeed the larger general map shows the whole area. It can be seen at Castlehill Heritage Centre. Castletown and Castlehill were almost certainly the first farmlands improved by James Traill though he led the way in laying out much land in Caithness into new farms, clearing many cottars and crofters in so doing. A hard man nonetheless.
The Traills eventually owned the Greenland and Ratter Estate, the Dunnet Estate, Castlehill Estate and much other land.

James Traill would have been a keen young man of 20 in 1778 and, as his father Dr George Traill was the Minister of Dunnet, James would almost certainly have taken over the management of their lands at an early age, never looking back.

That map and farm improvements was well before Traill developed his extensive Flagstone Industry, shipping flagstones about 1828 from his new built harbour. No doubt by then living at Castlehill, he would see the potential of the flagstone beds in the ebb below the house.

Among a myriad of uses of flagstones it also had everyday use within the Crofter’s house, and many a larger farmhouse too. Many a kitchen had a flagstone shelf beside the sink, many had a larder with flagstone shelves as well, cold and long lasting. We had a large outdoor larder at Isauld which we later incorporated and extended into a garage for the house. Some of the flagstone shelves are still there tucked in against the wall.

I have a photograph of a flagstone bink at The Corr, Latheron, recently sold to an enthusiast who intends to restore the thatched roofs and much else. Good luck to him.