Photograph of Catriona MacKinnon and Margaret Doig feeding hens at Vaul in the 1930s.
Courtesy of Mrs Nan MacClounnan
Catriona MacKinnon of Rhum View and her niece Margaret Doig are pictured feeding hens in Vaul in the 1930s. Most crofters on Tiree kept poultry, mainly hens but also some ducks. Between the wars, these numbered in total over eight thousand birds.
Up to the 1950s Tiree exported large numbers of eggs to the mainland. Eggs were bought by the local shopkeepers from their customers at a rate of 6d a dozen in payment for groceries and shipped by cargo steamer in wooden boxes of thirty dozen direct to Glasgow.
Eggs were also sent privately by post in boxes of two dozen. The eggs were protected by inserts of corrugated cardboard but even so the corner eggs often arrived broken.
Black and white photograph of Margaret Doig and her Aunt Neen in the 1930s.
Margaret Doig and her Aunt Neen (Catriona MacKinnon, Rhum View) feeding hens in Vaul the 1930s.
Black and white photograph of Taigh Sarah in Vaul in the 1920s.
Taigh Sarah in Vaul in the 1920s. L-R: Margaret Doig`s father; Sarah MacFarlane (Sarah Neill); a friend of Mr Doig. Sarah was a widow; all her family except for one son died of TB. Her house was built by the township `in a day`. A porch was added in the 1930s. The roof was tarred with heated road tar which, if put on too hot, ran down the walls.
Photograph of Sarah MacFarlane outside her house in Vaul in the 1920s.
Courtesy of Mrs Nan MacClounnan
Sarah MacFarlane (Sarah Nèill) is pictured on the right outside her house in Vaul in the 1920s. Sarah was a widow; all her family except for one son had died of tuberculosis, a disease that was prevalent in Tiree in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
After it was established in the 1880s that TB was contagious, it was made a notifiable disease, although it was not recognised until much later that the infection could also be transmitted through milk from infected cows.
Sarah’s original house was destroyed as it was thought a source of infection and a new one was built by the men of the township ‘in a day’. A porch was added in the 1930s. The felt roof was water-proofed with heated road tar which ran down the walls if put on in hot weather.
Black and white photograph of Taigh Sarah in Vaul in the 1920s.
Taigh Sarah in Vaul in the 1920s. L-R: unknown, Margaret Johnston nee Pettigrew, Margaret Doig`s mother; Sarah MacFarlane (Sarah Neill).
Vaul in the 1920s. L-R: Margaret Doig; her aunt Maggie MacKinnon; (seated) Maggie`s brother-in law joiner, boatbuilder and carpenter John MacKinnon (Iain Mac Eoghainn Ruaidh); Margaret Johnston nee Pettigrew, Margaret Doig`s mother; Maggie`s brother-in-law Lachlan MacKinnon (Lachann Mac Eoghainn Ruaidh). The father of Iain and Lachie, Eoghann Ruadh, was Alasdair Sinclair`s grandfather`s father. Outside the MacKinnon home, Gunna View, Vaul.
