The Buildings
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| There are some 20 buildings of varying age and condition at Auchindrain. Most are of dry stone construction pointed with clay mortar, and subsequently patched and pointed with lime mortar. The cobbled areas in front of many of the buildings give dry passage in a climate that would otherwise reduce these areas to mud for much of the year. The buildings are all single storey, some of them with lofts or part lofts, and some with attic floors added in relatively recent times. |
Filming at Auchindrain |
MacCallum's House is a longhouse with the domestic and animal quarters all under the same roof. Eddie MacCallum, the last tennant, lived here before moving into the timber house down the hill. It is probably the most recent of the tenants' houses built in the township - about 1820 - and was lived in by three generations of MacCallums.
The MacCallums, as well as being farmers, were Registrars of Births, Deaths and Marriages for the area, so the house is also known as The Registrars House. |
MacCallum's House |
MacCallum's Barn is next to the house. Inside the barn are displays illustrating cultivation. Close to the lower door is a stone protruding from the wall. This was used as a simple method of thrashing corn to feed the hens. Bundles of grain on the stalk were lashed against the stone to loosen the grain. It was also a way of getting clean unbroken straw for rope or basket-weaving or for use in the corn-drying kiln.
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MacCallum's Barn |
| Munro's House is similar to MacCallum's House, in having a byre at one end and the living quarters at the other. The half loft in the byre once stored hay and straw for fodder. The byre end was later used as a stable by the last tenant and the remains of the stalls for the horses can still be seen. The living end was originally heated by a fireplace in the middle of the floor. There are traces of a smokehole in the thatched roof, above the site of the mid-floor hearth. Later a stone partition with a fireplace was built to separate the living end from the byre end. |
Munro's House |
| Cottar's House shows how a small thatched house might have looked at Auchindrain in the eighteenth century. Inside, the thatched roof is supported by a cruck frame. There was a light partition separating the living end from the byre, and there would have been a fire built in the middle of the floor. The house is dark inside, and would have been smoky, but it reflects what was common in these times - it was clarty but cosy. It may originally have been a cottar's house. A cottar was not a township tenant, but a subtenant who had just a small house and kailyard in return for work for the tenant. |
Inside Cottar's House |
The Cart Shed at one time had a high thatched roof and was used by the township inhabitants as a wash house. Subsequently the roof was replaced with a flat corrugated iron roof and the building used to house a cart.
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The Cart Shed |
| The Stable is the only slate roofed building at Auchindrain, the slates having been put on sometime after 1904. In the rear wall is carved 'D Munro, 1897'. He was of the same family of masons who lived in Stoner's House. At present the stable is the home of the township's hens. |
The Stable |
| Stoner's House is a whitewashed longhouse with a red corrugated iron roof and an adjacent barn. It was called Stoner's House, after the stonemason 'Stoner' Munro, who lived there before the First World War. The house was modernised in 1907, when the height of the dwelling-house roof may have been increased. What is now the window to the left of the house door may have been where a previous doorway gave common entry to the house and byre, used by man and beast alike. |
Stoner's House |
Stoner's Barn
The roof of the barn dates from 1968 after the hurricane, and its walls have interesting triangular shaped vents for air circulation. In the middle of the barn there are two doors opposite each other, set so as to provide a through draught to blow away the chaff when winnowing. All the township's barns were built across the direction of the prevailing wind, whereas the houses were built end on to the wind. |
Inside Stoner's House |
The Smiddy was once referred to as the 'Wool and Bull House' being a small barn used for storing sheep's fleeces or housing the township bull. It is now equipped as a blacksmith's shop.
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The Smiddy |
| Bell Pol's Cottage is a small white house with a thatched roof. Not all the people who lived at Auchindrain were tenants who needed houses for their families, byres for their animals, and barns to store their grain. This house was used to accommodate one of the poor people of the village. At one time it was lived in by Bell Pol, or Muddy Bell. She had worked in lead mines nearby, and had come back to spend her remaining days with her kinsfolk. Because the people of Auchindrain provided a house for the poor, they were exempt from contributing to the parish poor rate. |
Bell Pol's Cottage |