A lifetime of Islands: Boreray, Stac Lee and Stac an Armin

I haven't landed on Boreray and am never likely to, so I can't count it as part of my personal "collection". However it deserves its own blog post.

Boreray is located 3.5 miles to the north east of Hirta. It has two enormous rock stacks flanking it: Stac Lee, which lies to the west of Boreray and Stac an Armin, which lies to the north. Most of St Kilda's seabirds nest on Boreray and its stacks: gannets, fulmars, guillemots and puffins.
Jim Crumley sums up Boreray very well in his prose to go with Colin Baxter's photographs in their 1988 book St Kilda: a portrait of Britain's remotest island landscape:

"Those three essential elements of St Kilda, rock, sea and seabirds, coincide and collide nowhere more forcefully than Boreray and its stacs - Stac Lee and Stac an Armin - and all their rocky hangers-on."

There is evidence that Boreray was inhabited in prehistoric times. It is an extremely difficult island to land on but the top of the island is covered in lush grass. The island rises to a height of 384 metres above sea level. There are a number of stone cleits and bothies on Boreray.

The St Kildans used Boreray to graze some of their sheep and a distinctive breed of Boreray sheep still live a feral existence on the island. They are the descendants of the now extinct Scottish Tan Face with a bit of Hebridean Blackface added to the mix at some point. Boreray sheep are small and have short-tails They shed their fleece naturally and are long lived. Most of them are creamy white in colour with some black, tan or speckled markings on their faces and legs and sometimes also on their bodies and shoulders. A few sheep are a darker colour. This breed of sheep was originally also kept on Hirta but in 1930 when the island was evacuated, all the sheep were taken off the island. However those living on Boreray were left to fend for themselves.

Stac an Armin is the highest sea stack in Britain at 196 metres above sea level. This qualifies it as a Marilyn (relative hill). The St Kildans visited the stack regularly to collect seabirds and eggs.

In 1727 three men and eight boys from Hirta were marooned on Stac an Armin for nine months. They had been left on the stack on about 15th August, supposedly for a few days to harvest seabirds, but after their departure there was a smallpox outbreak on Hirta, which killed all but 4 adults and 26 children. This meant that there weren't enough men to row a boat over to Boreray to pick them up. They sheltered in a small bothy on the stack and survived an entire winter by eating seabirds and their eggs and drinking spring and rainwater. They were finally rescued on 13th May 1728 by the steward.

In 1840 the last great auk ever seen in Britain was caught on Stac an Armin and killed by two St Kildans, who thought it was a witch!

Stac Lee is 172 metres above sea level and therefore is also a Marilyn.

I will leave the final word to Jim Crumley from his 1988 book:

"It matters that a place like St Kilda exists and that within it there should be places left to their own devices, wild for their own sake."