Photograph and sample of gutta-percha from a bale found embedded in the machair shore at Sandaig (NL 936 436) by visitor Jennie Hynd in September 2022. The extent of the lichen and vegetation on the bale suggests that it had been there for some time.
Gutta-percha is a stretchy, rubbery material, derived from the latex of the Palaquium gutta tree in Malaysia. During the second half of the 19th century, gutta-percha was imported into Britain in vast quanities and used as insulation for underwater electrical cables, golf balls, chewing gum and root canal treatment. Synthetic materials have since largely replaced it.
Bales of gutta-percha have been washed up on the beaches of western Europe for over 100 years, with many likely to have come from ships wrecked during WWI such as the Japanese liner Miyazaki Maru, which was sunk by a German U-boat off the Scilly Isles in 1917.
Two colour photographs of the front and back of a crude wooden cross, hand-carved from a driftwood branch, probably pine. The back has been fashioned to hang flat on a wall. Found in the dunes at Salum Bay in 1998, it hung in ‘The Wee Church’ at Ruaig.
As there are no pine trees on Tiree, it is likely to have drifted there from Coll or Mull.
Large, round, worked, flint scraper found at Keeper’s Cottage in Scarinish (NM 03893 44266) in 2018. It may have been found elsewhere and discarded in the garden. Includes notes by the finder.
Two original monochrome postcards showing Scarinish Harbour and Island House. These are originals of digital copies already held in the collection. See 2000.230.4 and 2013.33.2, respectively.
Black & white photo postcard of a view of “Scarinish Village” taken from the south in around 1910. Visible in the distance are the manse/care home, school, bakery, The Reading Room/An Iodhlann, Brown’s Store, Mary Stewart, old lighthouse.
Black & white postcard photograph of cattle standing in Loch a’ Phuil in around the 1920s. Houses and barns of ‘The Land’, Barrapol, are visible in the background.
Black & white postcard produced by MacNeill, Post Office, Balemartine in around 1910, showing a photograph of a woman and a girl outside a black-roofed house at “Machrie, Balinoe”. Date-stamped 1919.
Colour postcard of a full flit-boat leaving Scarinish harbour to join the ferry, which would have been at anchor off-shore pre-1915. The image appears to have been created from a hand-coloured glass plate photograph. Date-stamped Aug 1919.
