FOULA HERITAGE

Foula - The Edge of the World

FOULA’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES

The following maps are based on the work of Helen Bradley, Sheffield University. The site drawings and many of the colour photographs are from her 2004 and 2005 reports on Foula’s archaeology. Many thanks Helen.

Film Stills from The Edge of the World appear here courtesy of the British Film Institute and the estate of Michael Powell. Some other photographs are from the archives of the Shetland Museum.

Boat Noosts

These are hollows dug out in the shape a Shetland fourern (four oared boat) to shelter the boats from strong winds. The boats were also tied down fore and aft to large boulders.

Ham Ayre (beach). Three fourerns being pulled from their noosts with two others still in their noosts. Boathouse in the upper right. From The Edge of the World. 1936

Noosts at Da Riggs, Da Nort Tuns

Two noosts at Da Riggs more than half eroded away by the sea.

Boat noost at da Riggs

Boat Noosts at Da Doon Banks

Islander repairing his boat in its Noost at da Doon Banks.

From The Edge of the World. 1936

Boat noost at da Doon Banks. 2005

Boat House

An outhouse roofed with an upturned boat.

Boathouse used as a store by the mail boat's crew.

From The Edge of the World. 1936

Meid Cairns

Meids were used to fix positions out at sea. Lining up two landscape features at one end of the Isle and another two at the other end enabled fishermen to find their favourite spots. A cairn would be built if there was no obvious feature to use as a meid.

Two meid cairns on the South Ness

Distribution of Boat Noosts, Boathouses and
Meid Cairns in Foula

Burnt Mounds

Grass covered mounds of burnt stones alongside a source of water. Thought perhaps to be places where communal cooking took place. The stones being heated and then plunged into water, held within a skin or stone receptacle, to keep the water at boiling point.

Wurly Knowe Burnt Mound

Burnt Mound called the Wurly Knowe, alongside the Hametoun Burn

Harrier Burnt Mound

Burnt Mound alongside the Harrier Burn

Distribution of Burnt Mounds in Foula

Cooie Dykes

Dykes built with turf and/or stone to prevent the cattle from venturing into the cliffs or steep hillsides.

Corn Mills

The old Norse Horizontal Water Mills

The Water Wheel, called the Tirl. From The Edge of the World 1936

Feeding grain to the Bankwell millstone. From The Edge of the World 1936

Feeding Grain close up. From The Edge of the World 1936

Very low door of the Bankwell Mill. From The Edge of the World 1936

That's me finished. From The Edge of the World 1936

Shut the water off please. From The Edge of the World 1936

Shutting off the water supply. From The Edge of the World 1936

Tirl stopping. From The Edge of the World 1936

Flour gets everywhere. From The Edge of the World 1936

Bankwell Mill. 2003

Turf roofed Harrier Corn Mill. From The Edge of the World. 1936

Dam and sluice at Da Fleck Loch which fed the Harrier Mill.

From The Edge of the World. 1936

Stoel Mill 2005

Distribution of Horizontal Corn Mills and
associated dams and sluices in Foula

Croft Dykes

Dyke topped off with posts and a strand of wire

Where a dyke meets the cliff edge. From The Edge of the World 1936

Drawing of a dyke at Bloburn, built with holes in it to stop the wind blowing
it down

Part of the dyke which surrounds the Hametoun Crofts

Distribution of Croft dykes in Foula

Funerary Sites

Burial Cairns, Chambered Tombs, Cist Graves, Buried Urns and Bog
Bodies.

North Harrier Burial Cairn

North Harrier Burial Cairn with a planticrub built on top.

Cist Grave called Da Brederin

Da Brederin on the ridge of Da Sneug

Chambered Tomb at the summit of Da Sneug

Lamus o da Wilse Burial Cairn

This site demonstrates how the stone from what must have been a substantial Cairn has been reused for other purposes. A lamus is a building used for overwintering lambs during their first winter. The snaa buil gives shelter to sheep in times of snow.

South Ness Burial Cairn 46

South Ness Burial Cairn 46, showing remains of part of the kerb

South Ness Burial Cairn 48

Burial Cairn at Da Auld Skeos

Burial Cairn at da Auld Skeos with the Cist bottom left

South Ness Burial Cairn 77

Cist detail from South Ness Burial Cairn 77

South Ness Chambered Tomb 50

South Ness Chambered Tomb 50 showing part of possible Stall

Funerary Site distribution in Foula

Kail Yards

Full Kail Yard at the South Biggins Hill Dyke. From The Edge of the World 1936

Edith Gray in her mid eighties still tends her Kail.

There's always room in a Kail Yard for some bushes and flowers.

Distribution of Kail Yards in Foula

Mooldikus

Mooldie Kuses and Scalping in Foula By Sheila Gear.

The commonest feature which our group, Foula Heritage, comes across, whilst recording sites for Shetland’s Past, is the mooldie kus. There are several hundred of these on the island. Moold is peat dust and a kus is a heap, from the very similar Old Norse word kos. The remains of these heaps are scattered all over much of the lowland, particularly at the south part of the island, where the population was highest. The most carefully built ones consist of a circular stone wall, up to one metre high, and half a metre thick, with a doorway at one side, which was closed with a stone slab, once the kus was full. The conical top of the heap was then meticulously roofed with turfs, to make it completely waterproof. The turfs were laid with the heather side innermost and flat stones were laid over them to stop the wind from damaging it. The topmost turf was cut round in shape and a stone was laid on top of it. Steven Smith has recently rebuilt two of this type so as to show people what they looked like when they were in use. Simpler ones were made with lower walls of single stones, roofed over with turfs. Most of them, however, were made entirely of turfs, weighted down here and there with stones. They range in diameter from four and a half meters to one and a half metres and sometimes one is built onto the side of another. They can now be seen in all stages of ruin, from the newly rebuilt ones, to ones that are only slight mounds, or circles of occasional stones, barely visible. Some are hard to distinguish from the remains of plantie crubs and some look suspiciously like ancient monuments. In the summer, after a spell of dry weather, the peat dust was scraped up from the surface of bare peaty areas, known as mooldy bletts or gruips, with a tool called a mooldie brod, a flat board attached at an angle to a long handle. Byre shuls were also used sometimes. The moold was scraped up into small heaps first, kishieful in size. If it rained, it had to be spread out again and redried. When enough was gathered, it was carried to the kus and stored inside. It was fetched home in kishies and barrows throughout the winter, and spread on the byre floor, under the cows’ feet, to keep them dry. Mixed with the cows’ manure, it made a very good fertiliser, which was then spread on the rigs in the springtime. A few mooldie kuses were still in use in the 1960s, but the practice entirely died out when the island cows were all sold in 1974. Good earth was also dug up and stored in kuses and later carried onto the crofts to improve the land. Particularly favoured was earth from along the edge of the cliffs where it was sandy and fertile. Such was the extent of this activity, that large areas of the lowland were scraped bare, down to the clay and stones. The practice was known as scalping. It became less common towards the end of the 19^th century and died out completely in the early part of the 20^th century. Now the scalped land has started to grow green again. shetland-museum.org.uk

Møldi kus, at tail of Soberlie, built by Peter Manson, Bloburn.
Peterson, J. 1933

A mooldie-koose at the North End of Foula, 1958, consisting of turf to be used as
byre bedding, kept from being blown away by a stone covering. From The Northern
Isles by Alexander Fenton. page 280. (n.b. Photo is a mirror image)

In the windy conditions of Foula, the mooldie-kooses were formed within a ring of stones and the conical top of the heap covered by a number of flat stones. In some cases, light mossy earth gathered in summer was kept in storehouses for winter use in the byres. Mould was gathered during dry weather, using especially the dry upper surface of peaty hill land where vegetation had not taken root. Seaweed collecting, on the other hand, was more of a winter job. The peeling of turf for manure and bedding did much harm to the common grazings. The Northern Isles page 281.

An area of heavy scalping between Bankwell and the sea. From The Edge of the World. 1936

Pones, thin strips of turf stripped off from the commonty or scathold for roofing cottages or using as a top-dressing. Enormous mischief was done in former times by this practice, and in some places, as at Soneyfield, in Foula, the ground has been irremediably destroyed by it. The Orkneys and Shetland by J.R.Tudor 1883. Page 663.

Notes: The chief purpose of the peat moold was to soak up the cows’ urine to enable it to be used as fertilizer. Straw from the Shetland oats was a major part of the cows’ winter diet and was never used as bedding. As Sandy Fenton and Sheila Gear say in their articles this widespread scalping had a devastating effect on the scattald (common grazing). Many Lairds prohibited the practise, but it was hard to stop it in a place as remote as Foula. Paradoxically many of the scalped areas, having over time regrown, now support a richer vegetation than they did before.

The remains of a ruined Mouldie Kus

A ruined Mouldie Kus

Restored Mouldi Kus with a door

Restored muldikus on Soberlie 2003

Mooldikus Distribution in Foula

Mounds, Old Road under the Hill, and Rests

The age of the old road under the hill is unknown. It connected the settlements of Harrier and the Hametoun, both thought to date back to the Bronze age and probably the Neolithic. Rests have three short walls meeting each other at 120 degrees, giving protection from the wind whatever its direction.

Mound to the NW of the Chapel Site at North Harrier

Artefacts from late Neolithic right through to Medieval have been found on and around this mound.

Planticrubs

Plantiecrues were turf and stone walled enclosures, used for growing cabbages and kail. They were a feature of the Shetland and Orkney landscape, like these examples on the remote island of Foula, in 1902. The walls have a stone foundation, with turf above and further stones laid on top. Additional height is provided by a fence. The space within gradually rose above ground level with the accumulation of manure. Plantiecrues were used by tenants and could be built anywhere on the common grazings. A few were still being used in the 1960s. In much earlier times, enclosures like these were also found on the Scottish mainland. sites.scran.ac.uk

Stone Planticrubs near Stoel 1902

A very few planticrubs are still in use in 2005. They are used for protecting Shetland Kail seedlings through their first winter. The seeds are sown in late July/August and the seedlings are set out in Kail yards the following spring. Shetland Kail is the only Brassica that can withstand the winter salt blasting in Shetland. It was fed mainly to lambs (called “settnins”) over their first winter, though outside leaves would be given to the cows in autumn and some hearts would be used domestically. Some plants would be left in the yards over the summer to provide seed for the crubs the following summer. A few crubs have now been planted out with shrubs. When Fulmars became numerous in Foula nets had to be put over the crubs. A fulmar can’t get out of a crub, so if one falls in the seedlings are destroyed.

Bankwell Crub full of young kail plants ready for transplantation. 2003

Shetland roses in the Ristie Planticrub. 2002

Planticrub Distribution in Foula

Prehistoric Dykes and Earth Banks

Prehistoric Dyke running across the South Ness

Earth Bank running across several Hametoun Crofts

Part of the Heights Stone Circles complex with stones protruding from the peat

Another part of the Heights Stone Circles complex

Distribution of Prehistoric Dykes and Earth Banks in Foula

House Sites

North Harrier Yard built on the foundations of a dwelling house

North Harrier Chapel Site

Wall that may be part of the old Harrier Chapel

Neolithic House Site on the South Ness

South Ness Neolithic House Sites

Prehistoric, medieval and later house site
distribution in Foula

Ruined Croft houses and old Smithies

Crofthouse and outbuildings at Grisigarth

Ruined Crofthouse and outbuildings at Quinister

Distribution of Ruined Croft Houses and old Smithies
in Foula

Sheep Cruie

A stone pen where sheep are gathered to be rooed (shorn) or to have the lambs separated from their mothers. The walls that guide the sheep to the pen are known as staagies.

Gripster

A small stone pen in a part of the cliffs where sheep can graze. They were positioned so as to make it easy to catch one or two sheep at a time.

Sheep in Da Braidfit cruie from The Edge of the World 1936

Sheep in the Wastin cru down in the cliffs. From The Edge of the World. 1936

Quivrigil Cru - Unusual in not being combined with any other dykes or natural features

Cru/Gripster distribution in Foula

Skeos

Skeos are akin to the cleats of St Kilda. Before salt became available they were used for the drying and storage of fish, cheese, meat, butter and meal. The walls were deliberately built openly to allow the wind to pass through and a windy spot would be chosen for them. The best example in Foula is the one east of Quinister, which is 5m by 3m and 2.5 m high. The name comes from the old norse skjaa – drying house.

Sloag Skeo

Quinister Skeo

Orthostats

Rare in Foula. There are two modern ones. One erected by the Brathay Exploration Group in the garden at Ristie. The other erected by contractors, FLJ, east of Ourafandal Loch, after they had completed the loch’s Hydro Dam.

Stane Brigs

Stone bridge over the Bankwell burn with a horizontal water mill above.

Stane Brigs at Harrier

Skeo, Orthostat and Stane Brig distribution in Foula

Snaa Buils

Snaa means snow and a buil is where an animal lies. In the open Shetland landscape shelter was important for an animal’s welfare and led to the construction of these shelters. Their usually curved shape ranges in length from just a couple of metres to over fifty. In times of snow sheep would gather at the larger snaa buils where their owners had traditionally fed them hay.

The Moder Dye has no direct connection with archaeology, but needs to be recorded somewhere! It was used by Shetlanders, before the days of compasses, to find the land in times of fog. The radar photograph below shows how this was done. The photo was taken the day after the night hurricane Flossie passed through Shetland in September 1978. The heavy westerly sea swells were about 250 yards apart and show up well on this photograph. The swells reflect around the north and south ends of Foula (left centre) to produce an overlapping pattern which continuously broadens out until it reaches the Mainland of Shetland (top right). Any line drawn through the points of overlap, where the two swells peak, leads from the Mainland to Foula. It must however have been rare that the Moder Dye was as easy to interpret as in this example. Andrew Henry (1910-1965) of the North Biggins, Foula, was the last Shetlander known to have been able to use the Moder Dye.

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