What Kevin told about the history of St. Kilda

Kevin gave us a tour around the village of St. Kilda, showing us interesting places and told us something about it.

An underground cleith, dating from the Iron Age

The story of the habitation of St. Kilda starts about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

According to Kevin St. Kilda was never as isolated as generally is believed. Even from the Bronze age the inhabitants must have had contact with the other isles of the Outer Hebrides. They cultivated crops and traded with them. One of the oldest artefacts Kevin shows us is an old Celtic cross; one of the oldest in the entire UK. It was found on a stone that is used as pavement near a house and hardly visible. So Christianity also reached the isles in an early stage.

In the Middle Ages the inhabitants lived primarily from the cultivation of oats, barley and rye. The exploitation of the enormous amounts of birds became important in the 19th century, when feathers and down became popular for clothes and pillows.

The stories about the harrowing poverty of the inhabitants of St. Kilda were not exaggerated, but compared with the other isles of the Outer Hebrides the St. Kildans were not bad off. The first better houses were built on St. Kilda, while some people on Harris still lived in Blackhouses until the first half of the twentieth century.