21 small pieces of bog iron iron found by Dr John Holliday at Pàirc na Coille, Balephuil, in 2021. Bog iron ore occurs naturally in wet ground associated with sand. It was refined and used by Iron Age settlers to make tools etc.
Poem by Flora MacPhail, Ruaig, about a Harris Tweed jacket made by Dugald MacArthur, Sliabh, Balephuil in around 1940. In Gaelic with an English translation. It was worn by Jamie MacDonald, Ruaig, on TV for the Scots Trad Music Awards in 2018.
Click here to view 2021.15.1
Colour photograph of the former Mission Hall / Missionary House in Balephuil.
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.
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Hardback book ‘John G Paton – The Missionary Hero of the New Hebrides’ by Charles D Michael, ca 1900, about the life and times of Rev John Gibson Paton of Kirkmahoe, pioneering minister in the South Pacific Islands (now Vanuatu) in the mid 1800s. On the inside front cover is written ‘Malcolm Brown 1st Prize 1933’ and John Brown, Balephuil, Tiree. From the house of John Brown, The Sliabh, Balephuil.
Hardback book ‘Lord Clive’, 1901, composed from essays by MacAulay about the life of Lord Robert Clive (b. 1725), founder of the British empire in India in the 1700s. On the inside front cover is handwritten ‘This book belongs to Mr John Brown, The Sliabh, Balephuil, Tiree’ and stamped with his name next to ‘Balemartine P Sch’.
Small hardback book in Gaelic ‘An Saoghal a ta ri Teachd / The World to Come’ or ‘Seallaidhean Nèimh agus Ifrinn / Visions of Heaven and Hell’ by John Bunyan, 1891. On the inside front cover is handwritten ‘Francis Wm Taylor, 26th Janry 1901’. Rev Taylor was a Baptist minister. The book was in the belongings of John Brown, Sliabh, Balephuil.
Set of 13 brass numbers with sharp steel teeth used for tattooing identification marks on the ears of livestock during the 1950s and 60s. Kept in a ‘Four Square’ metal cigarette tin bearing a crown. From the house of John Brown, Sliabh, Balephuil.
Scanned copy of a package label of Duncan MacKinnon & Son, General Merchants, Balephuil. Duncan MacKinnon and later his son, Alasdair, ran a large shop in Balephuil, which sold all manner of household items and petrol. It closed in 1974.
Summary of research into the families and descendants of people at the centre of the Balephuil Fishing Disaster of 1856, by descendant Sharon Clayton, Canada, in 2020.
Click here to view 2020.60.1
