A copy of an article, The Highland Kelp Proprietors and their Struggle Over The Salt and Barilla Duties, 1817-1831. By John Macaskill. From the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 26.1+2, 2006, 60-82. Edinburgh Press 2006. 22pp
A collection of 53 postcards from between 1912 and 1980.
This collection has been digitally scanned and interesting examples generally not found elsewhere in our collection appear here.
Kirkapol church
The Hebrides steam ship off Scarinish
Caolis
Silversands, Gott Bay
Cornaigmore High School
Island House
Post Office, Soroby Burn, Balinoe
ferry
Kelp burning, Kenavara
Ruaig
Digitised copy of an article entitled ‘New Method of Working Seaweed’ by Edward C C Stanford, F.C.S., c.1884. Stanford was the Chairman of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Section of the Society of Chemical Industry.
The article describes a process invented to supersede the plan of burning seaweed into Kelp ash, and mentions that works were erected in Tiree and North Uist in 1863 to carry it out this process. Contains tables of cost of working different amounts of seaweed, the cost of materials, the value of the produce, and the advantages of the new process.
From the archives of the Dukes of Argyll at Inveraray Castle, made available through the Written in the Landscape project.
Collection of articles, poems, photographs and illustrations by Alistair MacNeill of Hynish (b. 1940). Alistair recollects his experiences competing in the County Sports, Skerryvore Lighthouse, the Great China Tea Race of 1866, rock fishing with a bamboo rod, ‘The Wembly Wizards’ Scottish football team of 1928, gathering tangles (seaweed) for the kelp industry, Ben Nevis, a puffer coal boat at Hynish pier. Includes two covering letters with further information.
Photocopy of an article titled ‘The crofters and the kelp’ by Roger Butler and published in Scottish Island Explorer magazine, Feb-Mar 2022. It gives an account of the kelp industry in the western islands of Scotland, including Tiree, in the early 19th century, and of the people who worked at it.
Digitised copy of Account of kelp made on the island of Tiree, 1792. Contains an account of kelp made out of bose and black wreck, with a list of tons produced per area. There is no transcript for this item.
Click to view a record for this item on Inveraray’s online catalogue.
From the archives of the Dukes of Argyll at Inveraray Castle, made available through the Written in the Landscape project.
Academic paper on ‘The Natural and Economic History of Kelp’ by Archibald and Nan Clow, published in the Annals of Science in 1947. Although Tiree is not mentioned in the paper, it gives an excellent account of the kelp industry, which boomed on Tiree during the 1800s.
Click here for Page 1. The full text is available at www.tandfonline.com/loi/tasc20 and a printed copy is held in An Iodhlann.
Softback book ‘The Secret Island – towards a history of Tiree’, 2014. Published proceedings of a three-day conference held on Tiree by the Islands Book Trust in September 2013, with chapters by many authors on a wide variety of aspects of Tiree’s history and culture.
Click here to view contents
Memoirs of Alistair MacNeill, Hynish, ‘They were our Vital Sparks’ which recall his fascination with the coal puffers that visited Hynish to off-load coal and other goods during the 1950s. The puffers also took away bundles of kelp for processing on the mainland.
Click here to view 2017.70.4
Hardback book ‘Gaelic Scotland: The Transformation of a Culture Region’ by W. J. Withers, 1988. Covers the process of cultural change in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, particularly during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (Including policies of successive governments, the decline of the Gaelic language, and the Clearances.) Tiree mentioned pages 8, 181, 209, 214, 219, 225, 241, 285, 357, 359, 373-5 & 380.
