St Kilda (Hiort in Gaelic) is not one island but an archipelago of four islands (Hirta, Soay, Dùn and Boreray), several enormous rock stacks (Stac Lee, Stac an Armin and Levenish) and some smaller ones. The archipelago is located 40 miles west north west of North Uist. Geologically the St Kilda archipelago is all that remains above sea level of a large ring volcano, which was last active a mere 60 million years ago! Hirta is made of two igneous rocks: granophyre and gabbro.
The biggest island is Hirta, which only has one sheltered landing place - the amphitheatre of Village Bay, which faces south east and is sheltered from the prevailing south west winds by the island of Dùn and to the west, north and east by steep sided hills. The area of Hirta is 670 hectares and the highest point is Conachair at 430 metres above sea level. The sea cliffs at this point are the highest in Britain.
Jim Crumley describes the landscape of Hirta beautifully in his prose to go with Colin Baxter's photographs in their book St Kilda: A Portrait of Britain's remotest island landscape (1988):
"There are no short miles on St Kilda, and no easy prizes. For all the modest scale of the hills they all begin at sea level and climb either steeply or impossibly. Mostly the hills have no "other sides", only sea cliffs, so that the view of the hills around Village Bay, for example is a stupendous sham, a masterly St Kilda deception, a brilliant bluff."
He also describes the archipelago very succinctly:
"There is a central island - Hirta - for a crown, with a cluster of satellite stacs and smaller islands for jewels, an eager sea for a setting, an ocean's light and winds to set it off to best effect; scale and deception on the grand scale are its stock in trade."
There never was a saint called Kilda. There are various theories about the origin of the name but a couple of the most likely are that it is derived from the Norse word Skildir meaning shields and referring to the shape of the islands when viewed from a distance or that it is a corruption of the word Hirta.
Hirta is thought to have been inhabited since the Bronze Age. In 1697 the population was estimated by a visitor called Martin Martin (his parent's lacked imagination when choosing a name for him!) to be 180. In the early 18th century visiting ships brought cholera and smallpox to St Kilda, which reduced the population. A smallpox outbreak in 1727 reduced the population to 42. St Kilda was later repopulated by people from Skye and Harris and in 1764 the population was recorded as 90 individuals. In 1851 there were 112 people living on St Kilda but the following year 36 St Kildans emigrated to Australia. In 1871 the population was 70 and in 1911 it was 74. By 1927 the population had fallen to 43.
The St Kildans never owned their island or their homes. They paid rent to their landlord - the MacLeods of Harris and Dunvegan on Skye, who had been given St Kilda by a descendant of the Lord of the Isles. Until the late 19th century the St Kildans paid their rent in goods: woollen tweed, seabird feathers and oil.
The islanders survived by eating fish, dulse (a seaweed) and the meat and eggs of seabirds. Gannets and fulmars were the seabirds most often eaten. They also grew barley, oats, potatoes and vegetables such as cabbage, turnips and rhubarb. They kept a few cows for milk. They grazed sheep (for wool and meat) on Hirta, Soay, Dùn and Boreray. The St Kildans' diet was deficient in vitamin C.
The St Kildans harvested seabirds and their eggs from the cliffs around the islands and from the rock stacks of Stac Lee and Stac an Armin each spring and summer. They did this by climbing barefoot down the cliffs on homemade ropes and catching the birds with their hands or using fowling rods. The oil obtained from fulmars was used as fuel for lamps, the skin of gannets was used to make shoes and the feathers were used as part payment of their annual rent.
The St Kildans had no leadership structure: an informal "Parliament" of able bodied men met each day in the main street to discuss what work needed to be done.
Lady Grange (Rachel Chiesley) became estranged from her husband James Erskine (Lord Grange) in 1730. He was a Jacobite sympathiser and he feared that his wife would expose him, so in 1732 he had her kidnapped and taken firstly to the Monach Islands off North Uist. In 1734 she was moved to St Kilda where she was forced to live in a black house until 1740 when she was moved to Skye, where she died in 1745.
Until 1705 there was no resident minister on St Kilda. In the late 1820s a kirk was built at the eastern end of Village Bay. In 1898 a schoolroom was built on the side of the kirk.
The first tourist ship (Glenalbyn) visited St Kilda in 1834. This marked the start of the loss of the islanders' independence. Other ships visited every summer from the 1870s. However they often brought with them diseases to which the St Kildans had little immunity e.g. measles, influenza, mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough and respiratory infections.
In 1861 the thatched black houses in Village Bay, which had been aligned end on to the main street, were replaced by sixteen single storey houses with chimneys and slate roofs, which faced the main street. The Factor's House was also built at the eastern end of Main Street in the 1860s. The factor represented the landlord and he visited each summer to collect the rent. The house is now used as accommodation for National Trust staff and researchers.
In the 19th century up to 80% of the babies born on St Kilda died a few days after their birth of what became known as the "eight day sickness". In the 1890s the cause of this was found to be tetanus. The infection was thought to have been caused by midwives using fulmar oil on the umbilical cords.
Following a severe food shortage a wireless transmitter was erected on Hirta by the UK Government in 1912 . Hirta was shelled by a German submarine during the First World War in an attempt to destroy the wireless mast. The kirk was damaged and the Store was destroyed. In 1918 a gun and ammunition store were placed on St Hirta near the store but it was never fired in anger. After the end of the First World War more St Kildans (mainly young men) emigrated.
By 1930 the population of St Kilda consisted of 13 men, 10 women, 8 girls and 5 boys. 6 of the women were widows and 3 or 4 of the men were widowers. This wasn't enough to sustain their traditional way of life and the winter of 1929/30 had been particularly harsh. The islanders were advised to ask the UK Government to evacuate them by the island's resident nurse Williamina Barclay and the authorities in Edinburgh. On 10th May 1930 twenty of the islanders signed a petition requesting the UK government to resettle them on the mainland. On 29th August 1930 the last 36 native St Kildans left the islands. Most of them were resettled at Lochaline near Oban (where some of the men were given forestry work, despite them never having seen trees before!) but a few went to live in Strome Ferry in Ross-shire, Culcabock near Inverness or Culross in Fife.
Rachel Johnson (nee Gillies), the last surviving St Kildan, died in 2016 aged 93. She was 8 years old in 1930.
John Crichton-Stuart, the 5th Marquess of Bute bequeathed St Kilda to the National Trust for Scotland in 1956 and they accepted his gift in 1957. He had bought St Kilda in 1931 from Sir Reginald MacLeod of MacLeod. The Marquess of Bute agreed to lease a small area of land on Hirta to the Ministry of Defence as a radar tracking station for its missile range on Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides just before his death. The lease was renewed in 1976 for a further 25 years.
In 1986 St Kilda became Scotland's first natural World Heritage Site for its terrestrial natural features. In 2004 this was extended to include the marine environment around the islands and in 2005 St Kilda became one of only a couple of dozen locations in the world to be designated for its cultural significance as well as its natural features. St Kilda is also a National Nature Reserve, National Scenic Area, European Community Special Protection Area and Site of Special Scientific Interest.
St Kilda has the largest seabird colony in Northern Europe. It has over 60,000 breeding pairs (20% of the world's total population) of northern gannets (one of which opened its bowels on my hat during our tour around Stac an Armin - a fitting farewell present!). There are also around 68,000 pairs of fulmars and Britain's biggest colony of puffins with over 140,000 pairs.
The St Kildans showed signs of OCD when it came to constructing cleits. There are over 1,260 of these stone "sheds" all over Hirta. The walls were constructed of stones, with small gaps between them, so the strong winds, which are so common in this exposed location, could pass through them without destroying them and also keep the contents cool and dry. They were roofed with a large flat stones, which was covered with earth and turf. The cleits were used for storing dead seabirds, eggs, feathers, crops, peat and turf.
The island of Soay gave its name to a breed of small goat like sheep with dark or light brown fleeces. Most, but not all, Soay sheep have horns. They have short tails and naturally shed their fleeces every summer. They are the most primitive domesticated sheep in the world and may have been brought to St Kilda with the first settlers about 4,000 years ago. They have remained virtually unchanged since then. Soay is the Viking name for "sheep island". Until 1932 all the Soay sheep in the world lived on the island of Soay. In 1932 107 Soay sheep were rounded up on Soay and moved to Hirta, where their descendants still live a feral life. I have come across Soay sheep on many other islands I have visited e.g. Holy Island off Arran and Flat Holm in the Bristol Channel.
St Kilda is home to two unique sub-species:
- wrens, which are heavier than those on the mainland. They have longer wings, longer thicker bills and legs and they lay bigger heavier eggs. They are also paler but more striped than mainland wrens.
- field mice, which are twice the size of their mainland relatives. They have darker more reddish coloured coats and paler bellies and also longer more fluffy fur.
I travelled to St Kilda for the day on a mercifully calm and mainly warm and sunny day at the beginning of June 2018. A planned trip in June 2016 was cancelled due to poor weather conditions. I travelled with Sea Harris (run by Seamus Morrison), which departs from Leverburgh at the southern end of Harris, as do Kilda Cruises. Both companies operate trips up to every day weather permitting (often it does not permit!) from mid April to mid September. Kilda Cruises has two boats and Sea Harris has one that goes to St Kilda. Kilda Cruises is more expensive (£225) than Sea Harris (£185). Both companies offer a 2 day booking window (if you can't go on the first day, hopefully you might get there on Day 2). If the trip goes ahead on the first day and the weather is good the next day too, then those people on the reserve list get to go too.
The journey time to Hirta is 2.5 hours and you get just under 5 hours ashore on Hirta. You have to climb into a small RIB to land at the quay, The reason for this is to minimise the chance of rats landing on the island. The journey home is 3.5 hours long, as you spend the first hour of it touring round Boreray, Stac Lee and Stac an Armin. There are a couple of other companies who run more occasional day trips to St Kilda from Lewis or Skye. There is no café on the island, so you need to bring enough food and drink for the day. If you travel with Sea Harris you get a piece of ginger cake and a cup of tea when you get back on the boat to start the long journey home.
You can't explore the whole of Hirta in one visit. I chose to walk up the military road to the military installations on Mullach Mor and then walked east up to the top of Conachair dodging aerial attacks by great skuas on the way (holding one of my walking poles above my head proved an excellent way of preventing them from swooping too low but it is still rather disconcerting hearing and seeing a large seabird flying very fast towards you at a low level). On the day I visited there wasn't a breath of wind at the top of Conachair. There was however quite a bit of low cloud and Boreray kept disappearing from view and then reappearing. I then walked down to The Gap via the small peninsula of Aird Uachdarachd and then back down to Village Bay where I spent a while looking around the cleits, houses, graveyard, house of the fairies, kirk etc. Five hours sounds like a long time but it whizzes by. You have to spend the first 10 minutes or so listening to an introductory talk by someone from the National Trust, which includes safety information but then you are free to go off and explore.
The worst part of the day was queuing to buy postcards in the shop, which for some reason only opens 30 minutes before the boat departure time. However I wasn't leaving without purchasing postcards to tell my friends that I had finally ticked off the only item on my personal bucket list.
On our journey to St Kilda we saw a minke whale and on the way home three common dolphins performed a synchronised farewell. I stayed on deck the whole time, to avoid sea sickness and also because I didn't want to miss anything. Visibility was only a few miles on the day we visited and on the journey home I watched as first Hirta, then Levenish and finally Boreray gradually vanished from sight. I blinked and St Kilda had disappeared from view and faded into memory.
I will leave the final words to Jim Crumley (from St Kilda: a portrait of Britain's remotest island landscape):
"It is to the landscape itself, however, that the St Kilda voyager is drawn again and again, rich beyond all the dreams and dire warnings, illustrations and eulogies you will ever encounter. You may study these and believe, but you must go and stand and stare to be convinced."
Tall ship in Village Bay
Dùn from across Village Bay
Quay at Village Bay
Kirk
Soay Sheep (and MOD buildings) in Village Bay with Levenish in the distance
Houses in Village Bay
Cleit looking over Village Bay to Oiseabhal and Levenish
Village Bay and Oiseabhal
Glen Bay with An Cambar and Soay in the distance
Cleit - overlooking Village Bay and Dùn
Heath spotted orchid in flower on the way up to Mullach Mor
Cleits, cleits and more cleits - Mullach Mor
Ministry of Defence Buildings on Mullach Mor
Soay in the distance across Glen Bay and An Cambar
Mullach Mor - beware low flying great skuas
Cairn on the top of Conachair - 430 metres above sea level - highest point on St Kilda
View along the north coast of Hirta from Aird Uachdarachd
Looking west along the north coast towards Soay
Looking south east towards The Gap and Oiseabhal
Village Bay and Dùn from above The Gap
Boreray from The Gap
Looking west from The Gap
Cleit - overlooking Village Bay and Dùn
The Gap
Boreray from The Gap
Oiseabhal from The Gap
Boreray from The Gap
Cleit overlooking Village Bay from below The Gap
Sheepfolds - looking west towards Ruabhal
Soay sheep in Village Bay - Dùn in the distance
Large cleit in Village Bay
House of the Fairies, Village Bay
This is an underground store, which possibly dates back as far as 500BC
Graveyard
Houses in Village Bay
Inside one of the houses in Village Bay - Oiseabhal in the distance
Looking across Village Bay to Dùn
Last resident of this house
Ruined house in Village Bay
Site of Lady Grange's House, Village Bay
Black house ruin, Village Bay
Re-roofed house in Village Bay
Re-roofed house in Village Bay
Inside a cleit
Factor's House - undergoing building work
Church and School with Dùn in the distance
Inside the Kirk
Store
This was used to store the goods with which the St Kildans paid their rent. It was rebuilt after being destroyed by a German submarine in 1918.
Soay sheep, Manse and Church with Conachair and Mullach Mor in the background
Schoolroom
Manse and shop
Farewell to Dùn
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