port henderson : past & present - Royal Commission on the Ancient ...

fourth was another cottar’s house, but larger with four rooms and a closet and this was of stone and
lime with a corrugated iron roof. Croft 21 detailed the salmon bothy. The 1901 census indicates three
houses, two houses with two windows and a smaller one with one window. On the Inland Revenue
forms a thatched house of stone and clay, a drystone byre and a small stone-felted cottar’s house are
mentioned but there are no details of rooms. However, there are two structures connected with salmon
fishing consisting of stone and a bothy, part stone and lime felted and part wood. The only rent shown
for the croft is £2 but separate amounts (£20 and £30) are shown as amelioration by the tenant for the
dwelling houses and the salmon fishing buildings.
A house site was shown for an Alex Mackenzie giving details of outgoings such as Land Tax of
¼d. This would be a stone and lime house with a corrugated iron roof with two rooms and a closet
downstairs and a first floor as yet unfinished. The only Alex Mackenzie on the 1901 census who might
be building such a house is shown on croft 10, a 29 year old shoemaker living with his widowed
mother in a two-windowed house whilst his brother Murdo with his family lived in a separate house
which was shown on the Inland Revenue forms. In 1901 the two
Croft 10 in
the 1950s
houses on croft 10 were only two-windowed so it seems that
improvements were soon made.
Although Sir Francis Mackenzie believed that he was
helping his tenants by allocating them areas of land upon which
to build their houses and separate byres and other outhouses and
where they could grow their own crops it must have been a great
upheaval especially in a fishing village where all the inhabitants
originally lived by the sea.
Once the crofts were allocated then the tenants had to rebuild their houses and improvements
were made. Stones were chosen and dressed with infill placed into the cracks. More windows were
inserted and any cattle that were owned were housed in separate byres and barns. Two rooms would
become the norm with at least one fireplace placed at the end of
Thatching
the main room with a chimney breast and a real chimney. The fire
still used peat. Roofs continued to be thatched with the thatch
made from bent grass, heather, barley straw or rushes, depending
on what was available. In later times corrugated iron replaced the
thatch. The roof on the house on croft 18 was replaced with
corrugated iron in 1916. Within living memory the last house
which remained thatched was one on croft 8 in the early 1950s and a barn on croft 19 was thatched
until quite recently (see photographs on next page).
After the land was parcelled out (and the crofts were not allocated the same total acreage for
both arable and <strong>past</strong>ure - this ranged from 1.5 to 8.25 acres) land was still turned by the cas chrom, the
44