Description

Late 19^th or early 20^th century, Skye-type small thatched crofthouse, built on slight slope. Single-storey, three-bay east front with centre entrance (timber gate across entrance). Single window in centre of west wall. Rubble-built with slightly battered walls and squared angles. Chimney stack on northeast gable. Remnants of a marram thatch roof with a turf underlay, with netting and stone weights.

Statement of Interest

This crofthouse dates to the late 19th or early 20th century. These vernacular buildings, once prolific across Na h-Eileanan Siar, are now extremely rare. The building is a remarkably unaltered example of a late 19th to early 20th century crofthouse, showing regional traditional building methods and materials. Notable features include the battered rubble walls and a marram thatched roof, secured with ropes and some stone weights, and supported on timber structure with turf underlay. The thatch is missing in places but overall enough of the historic fabric and form survives to show that it is characteristic of 19th century Na h-Eileanan Siar vernacular building traditions.

It is one of only 54 buildings or groups of buildings in Na h-Eileanan Siar that are known to retain an intact thatched roof, and is among a very small number of surviving thatched buildings across Scotland. A Survey of Thatched Buildings in Scotland, published in 2016 by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), found there were only around 200 buildings of this type remaining, most of which are found in small rural communities. Thatched buildings are often traditionally built, showing distinctive local and regional building methods and materials. Those that survive are important in helping us understand these traditional skills and an earlier way of life.

Statutory address and listed building record revised in 2021 as part of the Thatched Buildings Listing Review. Previously listed as 'Benbecula Hacklet 1 Aird Cumhang'.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17853783

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)