No 227 The Crofter's Barn Itself

 

No 227 Crofter's Barn Itself.

 

No 227 THE CROFTER'S BARN ITSELF

 No 227. THE CROFTRE'S BARN ITSELF

What of the Crofter’s Barn itself, the actual building  So much of the crofter’s land was hard won by himself or his forebears from non productive heathery peat covered land, full of stones and boulders. And water. The peat would eventually have been cut, dried and burnt in the kitchen fire. The clay soil underneath when the peat had been cleared would be spade or caschrom dug, slowly brought into productive fertility. A favourite pioneer crop was potatoes, making good use of the poor turf and providing sustainance sooner than any crops of grain.  Many crofts were made following the Clearances.  Melvich is but one example, Badbea is another. There are many many more, all too many!!  

Of Melvich there is a letter witten in February 1831 to Dunrobin Castle, the Landlords.

The letter, written either by Innes of Sandside or by the Rev David Mackenzie, Minister of Farr, stated that the crofter’s at Melvich, newly cleared from Strath Halladale, some from Golval, some from the Bighouse which lies half way up the west side of the river, did not even have the security of leases though allocated small unimproved plots of newly laid out sea side heath.

 The letter went on to state that the crofters, trying to make crofts out of hard land, were prevented from using sea ware as fertiliser by the Landlords, in this case the Sutherland Estate, or their factor. Sea weed, and little enough there was of it, was being burnt at that time as kelp for the Landlord’s profit!! .

From this small patch of land stones, or sometimes rough boulders, were laboriously dug out and moved to clear the land for the plough. Nothing or no effort was wasted, so the stones were made use of to make field dykes, still to be seen at Melvich, or to build a small enough house, byre and barn on the crofts.

The barns of the big Caithness farms were built at the same time with quarried stone and by skilled masons. The barn at Greenland Mains, then called the Ha’ of Greenland, was built by James Traill of Castelhill, the Landlord. The date 1832 is still on the gable end.

William Pyper, a mason and one of my forebears, spent about ten years down at Dunbeath building the steadings there for Sinclair of Dunbeath before finally moving to Castletown. He spent the rest of his life building new steadings for James Traill, a never ending task. That time span illustrated just how long a time was needed to build these larger steadings which still stand today. The barn at Stanstill, still standing and in good use, was built in 1802 for Colonel Williamson of Banniskirk, the then owner. I have a copy of the old account somewhere!!!  

A comparison of the crofter’s barn and the bigger farms shows that while the large farm quarried stone and built to a very regular rythym of stonework, the crofter used whatever stone was handy at the time, and built it to his own particular or peculiar design, or lack of design!!.  Some stones were heavy boulders and could only have been raised and built in place by more than one man.

The barn at Strathan, Skerray, is a good example. Though now roofed with modern but green painted galvanised sheeting, the gable end is as it was. The walls have an inward slope called batter which helped the building to stand the more secure There was no horizontal layering pattern to be seen as with barns built with Caithness quarried flagstone. At Greenland Mains a large quarry was opened up the hill to provide stone for the new steading and the extensive field dykes.

 At Strathan any large stone lay in the wall where it was placed, to be built around with smaller stones. A big stone like that was sometimes called a riser, which applied to dry stone dyking too. A few of these well placed stones allowed building to proceed much faster, though more than one man would be needed to lift such a heavy stone into place . The shape of these boulders was not designed for building, some boulders being almost round. Still, they were dug out of the often peaty ground and made good use of. Probably of glacial origin, the result was a multi-coloured wall with stones obviously carried from another place to be left after the glacier melted, to lie just where they fell. Years ago, when draining a field at Isauld, we found rounded fist sized granitic pebbles and a few small boulders over 4 feet down and much below ploughing depth. They had obviously been carried there by the ice sheet from the granitic or dioritic rock lying to the west of Reay. They did not belong to the Caithness sedimentary flagstone bedrock lying underneath.

 I still marvel at the sight of roofless crofts in Caithness, Brubster being but one of many such areas.  On passing them by I find an empty sadness within me that will not go away !!

No 228 THAT OLD PETROL PUMP.

 

No 228. That Old Petrol Pump.

“That old petrol pump, she just keeps pumping, she just keeps pumping along!!”  

Not so many around these days. Yet many a crofter might put one in at the end of his barn to augment his living on hard ground. Sufficient for small townships and villages, and small towns too, but town ones were replaced by better pumps as time moved along, leaving the old hand-worked petrol pump to soldier on in many a remote township. The reservoir tank below ground was filled from heavy galvanised iron 50 gallon barrels, taken by horse and cart from the pier in the case of the Stronsay of my youth, or just rolled up the pier to Davie Chalmers store and his two pumps beside his coal yard. The pumps were painted green, but you could have whatever colour you wished. Red was good for obvious reasons.

There was no electricity to power them so petrol was dispensed by a hand pump that worked with a seesaw backwards and forwards movement. At the top of the pump assembly were two glass cylinders that contained the petrol once it had been drawn up by the pump from the underground tank.

Sometimes, depending on the efficiency of the pump, it took quite a few minutes to prime the cylinders. Then, showing that they were full, the hose pipe could be turned on by a  top lever and filling the car, or the can as chance would have it, could begin. The petrol flowed into the car by gravity. The operator had to keep his or her arm going to keep the flow going, back and fore, back and fore, endless in the case of a big car, or what we called a big car in these bygone days!!. .

There were no metering devices other than the glass cylinders which were filled and emptied just so many times to give the required gallons.  Payment of course was by cash, no credit cards then!!

Towards the end of the War, or rather soon after, we got five gallon jerricans, near enough 25 litres, weighing about 60 lbs when full. It is probably illegal to lift such a weight now under Health and Safety rules and regulations!!! .

 Their origin is interesting. The Africa Corps Germans at El Alamein and other places had them, and filled their armoured tanks with fuel many times faster than the traditional British red two gallon square cans. Hence “jerricans” 

 These original jerricans had a small tube inside the top which let in air so the flow was not interrupted by gurgling snatches of air trying to replace the petrol as it was poured out. Very efficient indeed, they worked very well and the flow was rapid. They also did not have a screw-on top but a latched lid that snapped open in one movement when needed. The modern ones still do but with our present version without the inset tube as far as I have seen, they pour that much less quickly. Hence the name of “jerrican” comes down to us. They were very efficient, and I have an old one somewhere still in use for the sit-on lawnmower.

 The other petrol can was the two gallon can, always red to my memory.  There was  a green Pratt can, a red Shell can, a BP can, and no doubt many others .  Standard size was two gallons. They had a flexible steel wound hose pipe which screwed onto the top for pouring, capable of being bent to whatever angle you wanted. There was always a few of these cans in the garage. 

At the Water Reservoir half way down to Whitehall Village the engine which pumped the water uphill to our Whitehall Farm House had a couple of two gallon cans in the wee shed.  Our father would take one down to the Village for re-filling as he passed by and drop it off at the shed on his return to the farm, stopping the engine as well. He also had a self timer when needed in only putting a measured amount of petrol in the engine, having a can for that purpose.

We had other cans for petrol over the years. An empty five gallon oil can could be used.

When petrol was either rationed or in short supply I had an old 1927 Austin12 car that ran well on a mixture of half petrol, half tractor paraffin. It did need to warm up to get the best results, but once warmed up on petrol alone it would do 60 mph flat out on a level road, on the mixture it did 63.!!

There was a time when to clean an oily greasy tractor we took about half a bucket of petrol and washed the machine. No smoking!!