From the edge of the world 2025 – part 3

I had some help to move the heavy biosecurity foot-mat down the jetty and refilled it with disinfectant – this is one of our preventative measures against the spread of avian flu and other pathogens. I was glad I’d made the effort to drag it to safety the other night, because it would have certainly been swept out to sea. Similarly, the shop container had been securely locked to protect it from the weather, so we got that opened up and ready to welcome the day’s visitors. I checked over the kirk and ensured that the Bible was open at the Book of Exodus (just as the islanders had done with their own Bibles in their homes, 95 years ago).

We were expecting a group of day visitors, a group of mountaineers and a film crew. Quite a selection for one morning! Sarah and I had a ‘team tag’ strategy ready to ensure that we were able to provide the welcome briefing slickly. Each group would have different needs, but everyone needed to know about essential safety information (eg the weather conditions, the limitation on walking areas following the landslide on Conachair earlier in August, and the fact that today was the 95th anniversary of the evacuation). 

We divided the day visitors from the mountaineers, and I bounced over to talk to the latter about their proposed routes. Some looked very anxious when I mentioned this, until it transpired that the original group had cancelled the night before and had been swiftly replaced with day visitors. The relief on their faces when they realised I wasn’t going to send them up the highest peaks! I think it added to their joy to be here!

Once they were safely on their journeys around the village, I was able to welcome the film crew – a small team from BBC Alba, making a documentary about Soay sheep. I was on hand throughout the day to help with any queries.

At 7pm, we joined everybody for the annual all-island census photo, which this year had everybody who is currently residing here in it for the first time! After tea, I had to mentally prepare myself for an early start the next day … a 7.20am slot live on BBC Scotland’s Out of Doors, following the 95th anniversary. I hope I can do them proud.

Beyond the nest boxes is the Manx shearwater colony, where for the last month the Trust has been working in partnership with researcher Tim Guilford to monitor foraging patterns of this highly pelagic species (they spend most of their lives out at sea). Tim’s work with Manx shearwaters has led to a greater understanding of foraging and wintering movements from multiple colonies on the eastern Atlantic seaboard, and supporting this research has been fascinating although at times also challenging. On this day, we deployed remote devices within the colony to hopefully enable more data to be downloaded from 10 satellite tags currently deployed on individual birds. 

Afterwards, I continued down into Carn Mor, a large boulder field below Mullach Bi. It is particularly notable for its extensive puffin colony, but it’s also home to the highest density of Leach’s storm petrels and Manx shearwaters on Hirta. Carn Mor is difficult to access, but evenings down there reveal an entirely different side to the diurnal seabird colony that most people associate with St Kilda – nocturnal birds return en masse to feed hungry chicks in burrows and crevices, long after all the puffins have settled in their own burrows for the night. We are currently trialling new sound recording devices called audio moths, initially obtained as a tool for recording the presence or absence of storm petrels in structures scheduled for repair. Carn Mor is the perfect place to trial these devices, so for the last month we have been deploying an audio moth there and analysing the sound recordings.

Upon returning to the Village, I was delighted to find a common tern fishing in the bay. This is only the second tern I’ve seen on St Kilda, with the first being the very similar Arctic tern last season – a nice wee treat after a long day in the field! Despite the long day out, I was back for 7pm to gather with everyone else and fulfil my role as official photographer for the census photo.  

It was therefore unusual to head out on the anniversary with a very busy day ahead, due to ongoing excavations at the rear of the schoolroom and a large complicated cleit repair. These works are happening late in the season to allow time for the supplies to have been delivered over summer. The cleit is better known as Lady Grange’s House; unfortunately most of the front wall collapsed in January 2022.

Read more about Lady Grange’s House

As it’s one of the largest cleitean on Hirta, the repair requires building a bespoke wooden structure to facilitate safe working and keep it stable. In addition, I am busy excavating a trench for a new drain as part of our ongoing project to repair the kirk and schoolroom. Over the summer, timber, gravel, pipework, stakes, screws, bolts, sandbags and assorted other bits and bobs have been arriving for these two projects.

Below the topsoil a line of rubble has appeared in the drainage trench, and the finds coming from it are notably less modern. I decided I needed to establish what the relationship is between the schoolroom wall and the rubble, so I dug a small slot trench to the wall. The rubble butts up against the building. After recording, I removed some of it to expose a line of large capping stones. It’s starting to look very like … an old drain.

I took a break to return to the cleit and check progress. The sun had come out and the island looked magnificent. It’s taken a long time to get this work underway, such were the logistical issues, but we have benefitted greatly from a range of external expertise. With the loose material removed and stone starting to go back up, I believe we will get this done – something which did not always feel possible in the early days of the collapse. We wonder how the St Kildan builders would view our timber safety structure. With their legendary fearlessness, both on the cliffs and in moving the colossal stones, we think they would probably find it a bit over-the-top and, as joiner Nev points out, a waste of good timber! If we have issues getting supplies here, it is nothing compared to what they faced. So much changes on an island in 95 years, and yet some things remain the same. 

At 5pm I returned to the trench and lifted one of the capstones. Below was a perfectly clear and very substantial stone-lined drain. Talk about luck, finding a drain in the drainage trench! As the artefacts from this horizon are no later than the 19th century, and the drain similar to many others built by the St Kildans, this was probably constructed at the same time as the schoolroom. Amongst the material packed around the stones were flakes of waste slate, the Scottish slate used on the original roof. 

A drain is just a functional thing, and every bit as necessary now as they were then. But I could have been the first person to see this feature since the St Kildans covered it up, brushing the waste from dressing the new roof slates into the hole as they did so. There is always something exciting about revealing something long-hidden and seeing the scene before your eyes just as it was then: a community together at the end of the 19th century, delighted with their lovely new schoolroom; an investment in a future they didn’t know would soon take them far from here to new lives, in new places. 

As the sun started to lower and the soft evening light slanted across the houses of the old village, I headed towards the modern community gathering for our census photo. It strikes me what a privilege it is to be so busy today caring for the legacy the St Kildans left us. The schoolroom and Lady Grange’s House represent very different elements of their society: one was the last building constructed before the evacuation; the other has a story more fascinating and unusual than any other. One was associated with a formal education system; the other is wrapped in the colourful legacy of folklore, its tale passed through generations by word of mouth, right down to us in the present day.